Community music-based structures of learning (CoMu-Based SL): Pedagogical framework for the nurturance of future-ready habits of mind

Abstract

The landscape in which music is experienced in the 21st century has dramatically changed and scholarship in music education calls for classrooms in which teaching and learning are responsive to the new challenges. Furthermore, within the broader concerns of the place of the arts in the curriculum, the literature calls for empirical evidences grounded in the actual teaching and learning processes in the arts, in order to support claims that they nurture future-ready habits of mind and enhance academic performance. This study responds to these gaps by: (a) adapting the studio thinking framework of Hetland, Winner, Veneema and Sheridan to extract, through grounded theory methods, community music-based structures of learning and observe their corresponding pedagogies to nurture artistic thinking; (b) providing evidence for specific claims of community music such as inclusiveness through evidence of engagement across learner abilities; (c) demonstrating partnerships between community musicians, teachers and researchers; and (d) showing community music’s potential to develop students’ critical musicality.