Traditional Music Forum: Non-formal education in Scottish traditional music
Foreword
In 1972 UNESCO developed the idea of Lifelong Learning as the 'master concept' that should shape educational systems (Infed 2009). What emerged from the work around this concept was a way of categorising learning systems under the three broad headings of formal, informal and non-formal education.
Formal education: what we usually understand as the 'education system', running from primary school through to further and higher education, including full-time technical and professional training.
Non-formal education: any organised educational activity outside the established formal system that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives.
Informal education: the truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in his or her environment - from family and neighbours, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media.
(Coombs, Prosser and Ahmed 1973, quoted in Infed 2009)
The terms ‘informal’ and ‘non-formal’ have become somewhat compressed in everyday usage, while ‘non-formal’ goes in and out of fashion in policy discourse. In traditional music terms, however, the distinction is potentially useful. Historically, and up until the latter years of the 20th century, traditional music in Scotland was typically transmitted through an informal process, and has moved increasingly into a non-formal context, arguably beginning with the establishment of first Fèis Bharraigh and Fèis Rois and the Scottish Music Summer Schools at Stirling University in the ‘80s.
While informal learning through family, friends, social gatherings and private tuition is still important, access to and participation in traditional music is increasingly provided by non-formal education organisations. As John Joe MacNeil put it, 'For those who weren't fortunate enough to see their grandfathers keep the tradition alive, the fèis has filled that gap and has had a positive effect on many lives.' (Martin, 2006: 32)
As Heather Downie’s report acknowledges, an important characteristic of the learning environment which traditional music non-formal education organisations (henceforward TMNFs) seek to create is the informality that is prized as a key part of the traditional music experience. One consequence of this approach is that any curricular framework in the TMNF may be loose to non-existent. Enabling organisations may be reluctant to impose any structure on students and tutors, preferring instead a sociable, conversation-based approach that mirrors the ideal of traditional music transmission[1].
Education as a dialogue is indeed a key tenet of the style of education proposed by the Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, and championed by some TMNFs, notably the Scots Music Group in Edinburgh. While the Freirean, dialogical approach may bring about a successful negotiation between student and teacher, which takes account of the student’s needs and the scope of the tutor’s knowledge and skills, what may be missing from the dialogue is the enabling organisation and its mission, aims and objectives. Ideally the final learning experience would show the influence of all three factors. The musician has a key role here. As Moran and Loening (2010) identify, the musician is in a pivotal position, facing both learners and enabling organisation, and able to represent the ethos of the organisation to learners and the experience of learners to the organisation.
A key question then, as the report suggests, is how much information about that learning experience is confined to the student and the teacher and how much feeds back into the TMNF’s future policy and practice, allowing for a continuous loop of review, guideline setting, training, good practice and evaluation.
It may be argued (and Heather Downie reports exactly such arguments) that the vast majority of TMNFs do not have the time, staff or expertise to set up and monitor such systems, and that, in any case, such a professional approach would run counter to the valued informal ethos of traditional music learning. Matarasso (1996) made much of the non-professional, voluntary element in the establishment of many fèisean, the most widespread model of TMNFs in Scotland today. Kate Martin (2006), however, counters that professionalism and informality have long been elements of non-formal traditional education practice, and that they both have their part to play: ‘in fact a wealth of professional skills has been pooled in the creation and support of the fèisean...It may be that this collaboration between communities, community organisers, educators and professional musicians is essential to the success of the movement.’
If we accept that non-formal organisations are now the predominant vehicle for teaching and learning traditional music, and that their development implies maintaining a balance (acceptable to all parties) of informality and best, professional, lifelong learning practice, the organisations face several demanding questions:
who will teach?
how ready are they to do the job in terms of experience, knowledge and personal practice?
what will they teach?
how will they teach?
what outcomes are enabling organisations, teachers and learners looking for?
how can they assess the quality of their practice?
At the heart of these questions is the wide pool of traditional musicians, many of them professional, which Scotland now has. For many musicians the role of ‘tutor’ in TMNFs is one aspect of a professional portfolio that might encompass composition, performing, recording, publishing, a private teaching practice, community arts work and more. Clearly for musicians to keep their portfolio up to date and marketable there has to be a commitment to continuing professional development.
Although the term ‘tutor’ has become the default term in TMNFs and other community arts organisations, observers such as musician and academic Peter Renshaw (2006) have proposed that tutoring is only one aspect of a teaching and learning relationship. Renshaw has identified a range of relationships – buddying, shadowing, advising, instructing, facilitating, coaching and mentoring. Many of these roles are found in informal and formal as well as non-formal contexts, but musicians might be required to fill any or all of them at different times, and need to be prepared for them.
What might be helpful in this respect is a term which potentially goes beyond the narrow scope of ‘tutor’, and which is becoming more prominent in Scotland. The term is ‘teaching artist’, which originated in a practice which began to grow in the US in the 70s and 80s. It is defined by one of its leading proponents, Eric Booth: “A teaching artist is a practising professional artist with the complementary skills and sensibilities of an educator, who engages people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts.” (Association of Teaching Artists 2011)[2] In the US it is rapidly developing its own philosophy and practice, professional networks and even a journal (Booth 2009) and is gathering momentum is Scotland. There is scope here for the traditional music community to bring its own skills and perspectives to the developing field of teaching artists and to expand beyond ‘tutoring’ its conception of educational practices. ‘Tutor training’ then becomes too restricted an idea, whereas ‘developing teaching artists’ seems to offer more possibilities.
Traditional music is not the only field which feels a tension between the informality of its ethos and the need for more rigour in the development of its teaching artists. Community dance practitioner Lise Smith writes:
‘Dance artists who have undergone no formal training themselves – typical in the case of hip-hop and street dancers – may be talented performers, but lack a model of dance training on which to draw when delivering their own sessions.
‘The majority of dance artists working in the community do follow good practice and deliver well-planned, creative dance sessions that are not only fun but give the participants the satisfaction of learning and improving from one week to the next. It’s also clear that community participants of all ages enjoy and can benefit from recreational sessions in modern urban dance forms. But for students to benefit physically and personally from the work… practitioners need to take the challenge of improving delivery on themselves.’ (Smith 2011)
How then do musicians prepare and train for the varying roles they may have to adopt as teaching artists? BOP Consulting (2010) asked a sample of teaching artists how they had acquired the initial skills that enabled them to work in education settings (formal and non-formal).
‘‘On the job’ training is the most frequently mentioned method for acquiring teaching skills (72%), followed by ‘observing or working with peers’ (55%). However, approximately a quarter had attended a specific training workshop or conference to develop their skills (24%).
‘The teaching artists in the sample use more informal, practice-based training methods to either acquire or update their skill set. In part, the high percentage of ‘on the job’ development can be explained by the high levels of experience of this survey’s respondents. Having years of practice, many of the teaching artists don’t necessarily consider a need for formal training. In addition, these experienced artists are more likely to have developed networks of people engaged in similar practice, thus facilitating opportunities for informal peer learning. Less experienced practitioners may find it more difficult to access such informal learning opportunities and are likely to be more reliant on formal training routes or voluntary work…
‘In addition, teaching artists were asked to state how they continue to keep their skills up-to-date. The survey shows that the same means are used to keep skills up-to-date: on-the-job work and interaction with participants being the most frequent (58%), followed by observing/working with peers (48%) and CPD/workshops (41%).’
If, as Lise Smith asserts ‘practitioners need to take the challenge of improving delivery on themselves’ there needs to be a wider appreciation of the opportunities on offer. Heather Downie reports that:
‘Many tutors were not aware of any training being available to them and expressed a keen interest to participate in some form of training. Some tutors were interested in training in specific areas such as teaching children, or working with special needs, but most saw the benefit they could gain through even general teacher training. Through further discussion it was found that many tutors are not aware of specific techniques, or different learning and teaching styles and they take their current approach from what they learnt from their original teacher.’
This should be contrasted with BOP Consulting’s finding that ‘the mapping research reveals a rich picture of training provision for teaching artists in Scotland. For a relatively small country, a considerable range of training opportunities is available across the different art forms’. There is clearly ground to be made up between musicians’ perceptions of the opportunities available and the take up of those opportunities.
Another challenge is that, as with community dance, there is no one model of training for traditional music teaching artists. Work on such models has already been undertaken elsewhere, however. The Association of Teaching Artists in the US, for example, gives three categories of foundation competences and capacities: understanding your art form; understanding the classroom environment, pedagogy and human development; and understanding the collaborative process and working in an educational environment. (See Association of Teaching Artists (2011) for further sub-divisions of these categories.)
BOP acknowledges that in Scotland ‘the approach that training providers take to providing training is…relatively informal and ad-hoc rather than being driven strategically’. While making the point that this informal and ad hoc approach clearly suits the current needs of both training users and providers, they also raise the question of how a balance is to be found between the benefits of an informal system and the strategic need for models of training and some kind of non-prescriptive quality framework.
The question of quality in non-formal teaching and learning is an important one that is beginning to be addressed across the non-formal sector. BOP identifies it as being of concern not only to teaching artists, learners and organisations but also training providers. It is, they say, ‘the largest, and most difficult area that requires attention going forward, as it is relevant at three levels: training providers, teaching artists and employer organisations.’ They might also have added to the list the learners and funding providers, the first of which require some kind of assurance their money will be well spent, and the second of which require some measure of the effectiveness of their investment.
Peter Renshaw has pursued the question over many years, particularly from the practitioner’s perspective: ‘how do arts practitioners determine what constitutes ‘quality’ in their engagement with…projects within different community contexts?’ (Renshaw 2010) Equally, how do learners determine the quality of their experience, and how do enabling organisations know they are getting quality from their teaching faculty and providing it for their learners?
Renshaw directly addresses a theme that concerns many traditional music teaching artists and organisations, who are uneasy with the notion that considerations of quality bring with them a whole cumbersome apparatus of reporting, evaluation, monitoring, accreditation. For Renshaw the conversation about quality should not be ‘allowed to stifle the creative energy of individuals and organisations. In the current era of accountability and measurement the more subtle, reflective processes used to ‘ensure’ quality must not be allowed to be hijacked by the mechanisms of Quality Assurance.’ The inclusion of organisations in his caveat is important in the light of Heather Downie’s finding that many organisations already find it difficult to offer training on a consistent basis, and would find the operation of a quality framework beyond their resources.
How then is the question to be addressed? Renshaw argues for setting aside any notion of an absolute ideal of quality. ‘Definitions of quality will vary depending on the purpose and context of the particular project and on the nature of the activity’. Nor can one set of quality criteria be applied when quality of project, quality of practitioners, quality of process and quality of end-product all have to be considered, although he proposes two overriding principles for determining quality of a project: fitness for purpose and relevance to context. For organisations this implies a clear idea and continuous review of their purpose and mission and the community and cultural contexts in which they find themselves.
For practitioners both Renshaw and BOP propose some form of self-assessment of the quality of practice (by teaching artists and organisations) as a means of addressing the quality question in a way that suits the non-formal education context. BOP points to schemes already under way in the community dance field and to models being used in the GTC Scotland Chartered Teacher scheme.