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Gig Based Learning - a podcast by Dr Brad Fuller

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by Dr Brad Fuller

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Key reflections on my own beliefs on classroom music education and why I hold them. I hope this can inspire you to question why you hold the beliefs that you do, or at the very least hold more thought out ones. <a href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">gigbasedlearning.substack.com</a>

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8/25/2023

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October 29, 2023

I Can Show You the World(s)

Don’t You Dare Close Your Eyes!In our last post I revealed that we’re living in an Education Multiworld™ and finished with the question: “So, how’s your education world?”. Maybe you’re like me back in the 90s with Jeremy Alsop and you’re thinking: “I have a world?”. Or maybe you already had a world but this Education Multiworld™ concept has blown your mind and you’re desperate to know more? Well, what if I told you that, just like Peabo Bryson in the closing credits of the Disney animated classic Aladin: “I can show you the world” or worlds and maybe even introduce you to “a whole new world”, or two. So “don’t you dare close your eyes”.Revealing the Five WorldsReturning to the five worlds of the Education Multiworld™ revealed in Davis and Francis’ fourth edition of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Minds-Evolving-Learning-Teaching-ebook/dp/B09XFJBXYW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=13E8WVNAOOOSL&keywords=engaging+minds+davis&qid=1695103083&sprefix=engaging+minds+%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-2">Engaging Minds</a>:* Premodern Education - 3000 BCE (updated title circa 2023 website)* Standardised Education - 1600s* Authentic Education - early 1900s* Democratic Citizenship Education - 1960s* Systemic Sustainability Education - 1990s (p. i)I’ll show you how to develop a Worldview X-ray Vision™ “superpower” that will equip you to “see through” the words people use to talk about knowledge, learning, and teaching to “unveil” their education world. This is crucial because it’s likely that conversations between inhabitants of different worlds of the Education Multiworld™ are lost in translation, making it almost impossible to have a shared understanding about what is worth knowing, what good teaching is, and what it means for students to learn, to name just a few big questions. This superpower won’t just allow you to position others though, you can also use this power on your own language and slide into philosophy to find a whole new world or worlds of education for you and your students.What’s a Metaphor For?The key to unlocking our Worldview X-ray Vision™ is to understand the role of metaphors. While humans are capable of logical reasoning, we generally default to analogical reasoning through the use of metaphors. Indeed the word metaphor is a metaphor, coming from the Greek meta + pherein meaning “to carry across”. For example “learning is grasping” carries across the “simple act of a grabbing an object to the complex event of transforming understanding” (Davis & Francis, 2018, p. 11).So, each era of education has a dominant paradigm with “clouds” of associated icons, metaphors and language that guide the action of a community of specialists. Davis and Francis maintain that:metaphors pervade though and influence action, similarly, each synonym for teaching is both a description and a prescription. That is, each point to both a theory (i.e., literally, a ‘way of seeing’) and a practice. And, “every metaphor of knowledge triggers its own cascade of consequences and associations”. (Davis and Francis, 2022, p. 48)As an example, look at this “cascade of entailments”:* Knowledge is an object →* Learning is acquiring →* Learners are repositories (p. 48) →This cascade leads to the prescription that:* Teaching is depositing objects into imperfect receptacles (Davis, 2018, p. 183) While these clouds of metaphors are often implicit or invisible, they frame the discourse of each education world. So, the next step in unlocking our Worldview X-ray Vision™ is to “see” each world’s metaphors and make the implicit explicit by learning to identify the discourse or the shared language associated with each world. Based on Engaging Minds and its associated website, learningdiscourses.com I’ve compiled a hitlist for each world. Let’s begin by meeting educators from each world: 1. Premodern World - 3000 BCEPremodern Educators (PEs) inhabit a world carved out of traditions inherited from the ancient Greek Academy, the medieval university, and the early parochial (or parish) schools. They are devoted to order and believe truth is eternal, universal, and independent of human existence. Their metaphor is clear direction and the “straight and narrow,” avoiding deviations and deflections (i.e., anything off the line) (<a target="_blank" href="https://learningdiscourses.com/discourse/premodern-education/">Davis & Francis, 2023</a>). Their approach to teaching is mainly about helping individuals to understand their place in the universe. (2022, p. 5).2. Standardised World - 1600sStandardised Educators (SEs) inhabit a world that emphasises common programs of study, age-based grade levels, and uniform performance outcomes. They draw much of their inspiration and content from ancient traditions and religion, but their main influences are industry and the physical sciences. Their approach to teaching focuses on facts and skills, and is modeled after working on a factory line. (2022, p. 5).3. Authentic WorldAuthentic Educators (AEs) inhabit a world rooted in the human sciences and emphasise personal engagement, learner difference, developmental stages, and personalised learning aligned with individual curiosities and goals. Their classroom approaches are based in reality, focused on understanding, and rich with inquiry. Their teaching is less directive and more attentive to individuals (2022, p.5).4. Democratic Citizenship WorldDemocratic Citizenship Educators (DCEs) live in a world Informed mainly by the social sciences. They emphasise emancipation, empowerment, and voice, in schools which are democratically governed by students who also have autonomy in managing their own learning. DCEs aim to promote social justice and productive collective action through recognising and (where appropriate) subverting hegemonic structures. They see teaching as preparing students to contribute to a better society by addressing cultural inequities and suppressions through raising awarenesses (2022, p. i).5. Systemic Sustainability WorldSystemic Sustainability Educators (SSEs) inhabit a global, complex ecosystem and believe that formal schooling has been too narrowly focused on humanity – with an either-or approach to individuals and society. They are concerned with educating global citizens with knowledge of political and ecological issues who have the skills, attitudes, and dispositions to participate mindfully in efforts to affect the world in ways that are ecologically sustainable. SSEs look beyond traditional and assumed borders or boundaries and hope to enable and promote interactions between diverse peoples and ideas. They see teaching as raising awareness of and developing effective responses to social, cultural, and ecological issues arising from environmental challenges associated with human activity that move us toward an “ecologically-minded and information-based society” (2022, p.5).So What Is Knowledge, Learning and Teaching?So, what does uncovering these worlds and worldviews mean for the humble classroom music teacher’s understanding of knowledge, learning, and teaching. It means that these matters are not settled (2022, p. 40), they are essentially contested concepts. Davis and Francis remind us that:Our conception of teaching is that of the dominant culture. A sign of the privilege of the dominant culture is a freedom from having to be explicit about assumptions - or, for that matter, even to be aware of them. That's because the traditions and beliefs of the dominant culture are allowed to serve as the normal, commonsensical backdrop. (2022, p. 40)They argue that although Standardised Education has had decades of “extensive criticisms”, it “continues to prevail”, held in place by the * familiarity of practice, * uncritical beliefs about learning, * oppressive regimes of examination, * its momentum (p. 40). They remind us that:It is difficult to conceive of education in terms that depart far from the implicit ideals of objective knowledge, standardised outputs and efficient productivity. No other frame of formal education is so well fitted to the scientised and commercialised culture in which schools must operate. (p. 40)Clearly, it’s time to slide into philosophy.Worldview X-ray Vision™ - Your Discourse Analysis Super PowerTo help us to reveal assumptions and potentially communicate across the Education Multiworld, I’ve created the Education Multiworld Metaphor Matrix. The matrix is adapted from various tables developed by Brent Davis over the last 20 years and draws heavily on a table in the 4th edition of Engaging Minds and information at learningdiscourses.com. Next time you slide into philosophy, use the matrix to help you to unveil your cascade of entailments and/or interrogate the language used in the educational discourse in your community. The matrix can also be employed with the Septem Circumstantiae whenever colleagues, bosses, politicians etc start spruiking “best” teaching practices or argue for more empirical research, to unveil their assumptions about “best where, when, and for whom” (2002, p. 10) etc. Davis and Francis argue that “even evidently scientific discourses on learning are riddled with unexplicated, often naïve, and occasionally problematic metaphors” (p. 13).As we develop our Worldview X-ray Vision, it can help us to understand each other and begin to see how a logical entailment in one world could be completely nonsensical in another. Crucially, for classroom music teachers providing Gig Based Learning opportunities, the world our classroom inhabits might either nurture or reject our approach. Being able to speak across world’s might help us to create more helpful cascades of entailments for ourselves and also, perhaps allow us to translate our work for bosses and other power brokers. Remember, these metaphors are descriptions AND prescriptions. Unlocking a new world doesn’t just open our minds to new possibilities to talk about knowledge, learning, and teaching, it opens up new possibilities for action - new ways to learn, new ways to teach, and potentially gives new, broader, and perhaps even more inspiring purpose\s for our work in the music classroom. This is a big deal!I’ve just scratched the surface of Brent Davis’ work in this post. If it’s ignited a spark for you, you’ll love Inventions of Teaching, and Engaging Minds, and you might even be brave enough to eventually tackle learningdiscourses.com - just make sure you watch the orientation video first - that map is a doozy! Let me know if you do and I’ll join you on the magic carpet ride…I’ll sign off with a personalised provocation from Davis and Francis:The evolution of [your] new horizons of educational possibility might be better served by efforts to understand the current discursive landscape than by claiming and defending patches of [your] terrain. (2022, p. 13)💎 Brad’s Bookmarks:5 things I found interesting this week:* I love these guys. Eye of the tiger | funk cover by Scary Pockets. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr54EEoJqHM">Link</a>* This is a really interesting gig idea for students. Limit them to a certain amount/style of gear. Thanks Andrew Huang & Rob Scallon. <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/maZoTHkRYuI?si=ceQNFOfjZ_wobCTv">Link</a>* ISME just posted a video on AI that has gone viral (for music education = 30 views worldwide!). <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/a4LN1RG01Mc?si=LQF-ouv60SOk0B9J">Link</a>* Seriously so cool. I’d be screaming too. BO DIDDLEY 1965. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZHB3ozglQ">Link</a> * All Blues!! How Pink Floyd used this Miles Davis chord. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hW_JLqMItFw">Link</a>💣 Brad’s Bombshell of the week:“Nevertheless, instead of engaging in the thoughtful diagnosis of local conditions and ofthe philosophy needed to "write curriculum," many music teachers instead adopt this or that technicist method as the curriculum and proceed to teach it-the "method"-in the name of "curriculum"!The problem is not that the tools (the teaching strategies, activities, lessons, materials, and so on) are necessarily faulty. Rather, the problem is the technicist assumption that the tools are "the curriculum" by themselves, regardless of what they may or may not regularly produce!In fact, many of the tools of such methods can often be detached from slavish technicism.In music teaching a wealth of tools exists that can be mindfully used when guided by valid curricular outcomes and professional accountability for right results.” (<a target="_blank" href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/408680/summary?casa_token=vyeIUvjtIq0AAAAA:tsUSiyc3kZ8VHzt28VMHis4ptVh1h6Uzy1-Ygxzst3jep7OXFy4DCsuq1iodQ_oF_gbX1CCr2R7x">Thomas A. Regelski, 2002</a>)P.S: One of the most common questions I get:How do I know what gear to buy for my music classroom?Well, I use the gear on the GBL '“<a target="_blank" href="https://www.gigbasedlearning.com/gear">Gear We Dig</a>” page. It’s all there!BTW our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.skool.com/gblcop">community of practitioners</a> have been chatting classroom music room setups.Thanks for reading this week’s newsletterI also read every comment on our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC57m5qs7Ar4tpcpClany5Mw">YouTube</a>. So, see you there. Dr Brad FullerThanks for reading Gig Based Learning - a substack by Dr Brad Fuller! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">gigbasedlearning.substack.com</a>

September 25, 2023

How's Your World?

Circa 1991/92: I’m 21 and studying at Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts in the Bachelor of Music (Improvisation) degree which includes electric bass guitar lessons with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jeremyalsop.com/home">Jeremy Alsop</a>. Jeremy has just returned from living in New York, playing with The Cats, and has adopted a “New York state of mind”. In a moment that has stayed with me ever since, he enters the room and opens with “How’s your world?”. “Wait a minute!” I thought, “I have a world?!”.Hello, I’m Dr Brad Fuller and this is the Gig Based Learning podcast.Fast forward about 25 years and I’m “<a target="_blank" href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com/p/ep-15-sliding-into-philosophy">sliding into philosophy</a>”, reading Ian Hacking’s introduction in the 50th anniversary edition of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” when he casually drops:And of course there are many worlds: I live in a world different from that of opera divas or the great rappers. Clearly there is a lot of room for confusion if one starts talking about different worlds. All sorts of things may be meant. (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121/ref=sr_1_1?crid=29JQHE4CQCZBB&keywords=the+structure+of+scientific+revolutions&qid=1695103145&sprefix=scientific+revolu%2Caps%2C296&sr=8-1">p 21</a>)Holy Smokes, Jeremy has a world, I have a world, Ian Hacking has a world, opera divas have a world, and great rappers have a world. That does seem to leave a lot of room for confusion. All of these worlds and confusion seem to stem from those stealthy assumptions, beliefs, and ideas we’ve been talking about. Fortunately, Canadian academic <a target="_blank" href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=x5WorP4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Brent Davis</a> and his various co-authors have been working away for most of the century trying to clear up this confusion about worlds in education. Phew.Clouds of IdeasDavis uses Kelly (2010) as a launchpad for his inquiries. Kelly maintains that:Ideas never stand alone. They come woven in a web of auxiliary ideas, consequential notions, supporting concepts, foundational assumptions, side effects, and logical consequences and a cascade of subsequent possibilities. Ideas fly in flocks. To hold one idea in mind means to hold a cloud of them. (Kelly, 2010, pp. 44-45 in <a target="_blank" href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2017.1330423">Davis, 2018</a>)These clouds of ideas and assumptions come together to form an “invisible backdrop” for how an individual “sees” the world or their “worldview” (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Minds-Evolving-Learning-Teaching-ebook/dp/B09XFJBXYW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=13E8WVNAOOOSL&keywords=engaging+minds+davis&qid=1695103083&sprefix=engaging+minds+%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-2">Davis & Francis, 2022</a>, p. 9). Worldviews, Paradigms, and FramesMethodologist <a target="_blank" href="https://www.johnwcreswell.com/">John W. Creswell</a> “favours” the term “worldview” but says it’s often used “synonymously” with “paradigm”, a term Kuhn resurrected from, you guessed it, the Greeks, when he reintroduced it to the world in the aforementioned “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. Aristotle used paradigm like we use “exemplar, i.e., a very best and most instructive example” (Kuhn, 2012, p. 15). Unfortunately, the use of “paradigm” is a bit like “<a target="_blank" href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com/p/introducing-bradagogy-537">pedagogy</a>” and by 1970 Kuhn wrote that he’d “lost control of it” (See Figure 1).I’ve developed a definition that combines versions from research gurus Guba and Creswell to get:A paradigm is a basic set of generalizations, beliefs, and values that guide the action of a community of specialists. (<a target="_blank" href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/designing-and-conducting-mixed-methods-research/book241842">Adapted from Creswell, 2018</a>, p. 88; <a target="_blank" href="https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-paradigm-dialog/book3220">Guba, 1990</a>, p. 17)But I think Davis and Francis’ version might be the most useful for us. They say that:Paradigm refers to both a system of thinking and an image [or metaphor] that can serve as a symbol for that system.They say that a “worldview is a frame”, an “extensive and complex web of meaning” which we “look through’ to see the world (p. 4). They use “frame” to “refer to coherent and resilient systems of thinking” (p. 9). Kuhn believed that paradigm changes in science, like the Copernican Turn in astronomy that swapped the sun for the earth at the centre, “tend to operate sequentially as more powerful images and their associated sensibilities displace entrenched ones” causing scientists to “see the world of their research-engagement differently”. He says:In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world.Kuhn called this movement from one frame to another a Paradigm Shift but Davis observes that “within education, it appears that multiple paradigms can exist simultaneously, all operating in tension with one another” (2018, p. 185).Framing the Education Multiworld™ Whereas scientists seem to eventually move to a new world - OK maybe the sun really is at the centre of the universe - paradigm change in education seems to result in a tension soaked <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_of_Two_Worlds">Marvel-like</a> Education Multiworld™. As new clouds of ideas and assumptions emerge and begin to guide the action of a community of specialists, the old world carries on. In the recently released 4th edition of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Minds-Evolving-Learning-Teaching-ebook/dp/B09XFJBXYW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=13E8WVNAOOOSL&keywords=engaging+minds+davis&qid=1695103083&sprefix=engaging+minds+%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-2">Engaging Minds</a>, Davis and co-author Krista Francis identify five worlds - * Early Formal Education - 3000 BCE* Standardised Education - 1600s* Authentic Education - early 1900s* Democratic Citizenship Education - 1960s* Systemic Sustainability Education - 1990s (p. i)How’s Your (Education) World?So, how’s your education world? This question is crucial because each of these worlds in the Education Multiworld operate in “different webs of metaphors” and it’s likely that inhabitants of different worlds can’t understand each other. Davis and Francis note that:Webs of association are meaning and compelling from the inside, but they can be confusing and nonsensical from the outside. (p. 12)And remember, as Guba explains, these clouds of ideas and assumptions guide our actions and as Kelly pointed out, these actions have side effects, logical consequences, and a cascade of subsequent possibilities. Surely then we should strive to live in the world which is most nurturing for us and our students - nobody should live in a world where their ideas are confusing and nonsensical.To that end, in the next instalment we’ll pack our clouds of ideas into a metaphorical removalist van and maybe head west in search of new classroom music education frontiers. We’ll look at how the words people use to define and explain knowledge, learning, and teaching can reveal their world of residence and slide into some more philosophy about how we can ask better questions to find a better world of education.💎 Brad’s Bookmarks:5 things I found interesting this week:* <a target="_blank" href="https://pressbooks.pub/thegrade/chapter/if-bell-hooks-made-a-learning-management-system/">If bell hooks Made a Learning Management System</a> (Holy Heck that’s a challenging chapter!)* More at his website: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jessestommel.com/">https://www.jessestommel.com/</a>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5K7B3cUO9U">Dave Koz is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.</a>* One benefit of YouTube Premium is that you can create ‘clips’ so here is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxppjyk00OJ22yP42jnLM6yY17nb1kggyv">Tal’s Sick Bass Lick into Larry’s Solo</a>* And <a target="_blank" href="https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5hkn5L4wrd5NIZOIWk7SfeC54M30ey4Q?si=J4Ac-s3gW3yEXEYf">Herbie Tells Jacob Collier that “Music Is Life”</a> (more on this in a future post).💣 Brad’s Bombshell of the week:Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. The conviction persists, though history shows it to be a hallucination, that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But, in fact, intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume, an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitalism and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them, we get over them. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51525/pg51525-images.html#Page_1https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51525/pg51525-images.html#Page_1">(John Dewey, 1910, Section IV, par. 26)</a>P.s. I publish free teacher professional learning courses…Engage with them and join in discussions (we call it “The Weekly Riff”) on music education philosophy, pedagogy, technology and content inside our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.skool.com/gblcop">FREE community</a>.Thanks for reading this week’s newsletterI also read every comment on our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC57m5qs7Ar4tpcpClany5Mw">YouTube</a>. So, see you there. Dr Brad FullerThanks for reading Gig Based Learning - a substack by Dr Brad Fuller! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">gigbasedlearning.substack.com</a>

September 18, 2023

Sliding into Philosophy

Last time, we promised DnM that we’d “get our heads together” and start asking the right questions. In honour of Regelski, I’m going to call this “sliding into philosophy”. Regelski reminded us that when we slide into philosophy we have some rules to go by: like, you need to know what’s already been said on a topic. But what are the topics and what are the questions?The Septem CircumstantiaeEnter Aristotle sometime around 350 BC with the “Septem Circumstantiae” aka the “Seven Circumstances” or what journalists call the “Five W’s (and one H)" (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656196">Sloan, 2010, </a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172741">Robertson Jr, 1946</a>). In Book 3 of Nicomachean Ethics (“<a target="_blank" href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com/p/introducing-bradagogy-537">Say That Word Second™</a>”) Aristotle wrestles with the concept of just vs unjust actions and determines that “it is necessary for students of virtue to differentiate between … voluntary and involuntary [acts]” (Eth. Nic. 1109b32–35), essentially another angle on the “beware of stealthy assumptions” warning.According to Sloan (2010), Aristotle believed that “any statement must be made plausible or convincing by adding detailed information” and he provided the template of the seven types of circumstance as a strategy to work through “in order to supply substantial information to corroborate one’s statement” (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656196">p. 248</a>) and avoid “regretted actions” (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/656196">p. 245</a>). Boethius and the Seven QuestionsAbout 850 years after Aristotle, Roman philosopher <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boethius">Boethius</a> fashioned the circumstances into seven questions that work really well when translated into English as:Who, What, Why, How, Where, When,With what?Aristotle cautions us on the dangers of ignoring the circumstances of our actions saying:Thus with ignorance as a possibility concerning […], the circumstances of the act, the one who acts in ignorance of any of them seems to act involuntarily, and especially regarding the most important ones. And it seems that the most important circumstances are those just listed, including the “why.” Indeed inasmuch as an action has been called involuntary in accordance with such ignorance, still it is necessary that the deed evokes sorrow and regret. (Eth. Nic. 1111a15–20 quoted in Sloan, 2010, p. 240).Thankfully, Boethius, has given us a list of seven questions that we can use to help us to act justly and voluntarily and to hopefully minimise our “sorrow and regret”. But, in a footnote at the bottom of that last quote, Sloan offers an alternative translation that might just be a game changer for us: “And it seems that the most important circumstances are the ‘who’ and the ‘why.’” (2010, p. 240).Sliding into Philosophy with Seven QuestionsNow, we are starting to build in some more rules for “sliding into philosophy”. We can use the Septem Circumstantiae to help us to construct our own philosophies of education which will illustrate our actions (you’ll recall that I call my version: <a target="_blank" href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com/p/introducing-bradagogy-537">Bradagogy</a>). We can begin by using them to interrogate the essentially contested concepts at the core of our profession. Rather than making assumptions about education we can ask questions like:* Who is classroom music education for?* Why should those students have access to classroom music education?* What should they learn about music?* How should they learn it?* With what should they learn? - for example this might open up questions about technology rich vs technology restricted* Where should they have their music classes?* When should they have their music classes?And, of course, these questions rest on assumptions about who is education for generally and why should children be educated in schools etc, so you might like to start there before tackling the classroom music education questions. But remember, we don’t have to start from scratch - The Cats of Music Education have already thought about this so we can draw on their answers to help us to formulate our own.Seven Questions for Reflective PracticeBut wait, there’s more, we can also use the Septum Circumstantiae as the basis for our own reflective practice. This is a micro version of the big questions where we can look at the students in front of us and ask:* Who are these people, or even better, who are these persons, and even better, who is this person? Who am I doing classroom music education with and for?* Why am I doing classroom music education with and for them?By getting the best possible answers to those two key questions, and only then, we can then start to think about the next set. Based on who is in our classrooms (including us), and why we are there:* What should we learn? Should everybody learn the same thing/s?* How should we learn it? Should everyone learn the same way?* What tools/technologies might we employ? Might these be different on a per student basis?* Where should we learn? This also works closely with “the how” and opens up questions about classroom design.* When should we learn? This opens up questions about co-curricular, blended learning etc.As I’ve alluded here, these questions seem to have an interrelated feeling about them. The kinds of answers to one question has flow-on effects to other answers, “ingredients” change, you get better at asking questions, you get better at finding answers, and you test all of this out in real life as your theories illustrate your practice. To that end, I use “The Septum Circumstantiae of Classroom Music Education” as a schema or model to remind me to continue to rotate through these questions in my own practice. It’s a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.yourdictionary.com/recursive">recursive</a> model which simply means that it’s a repeating process whose output at each stage is applied as input in the succeeding stage, essentially a rinse and repeat.Good Questions, Good Teaching, and Good LivesSo there you have it, an Aristotelian basis (that’s what philosophers call anything to do with Aristotle) for your reflective practice that also provides a tool for you to dig into the big questions at the core of our profession. As Aristotle reminds us, the “who” and “why” are the “most important”. I think there’s pretty solid evidence on the macro level that classroom music education has a history of making assumptions about the “who” and the “why” and jumping to the “what” and “how”. On the micro level, these assumptions have resulted in involuntary actions being carried out in music classrooms leading to much “sorrow and regret” for teachers and students. Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics as part of his greater project to understand what human beings need in order to live life at its best (<a target="_blank" href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/aristotle-ethics/">Kraut, 2022</a>). If classroom music education is leading to sorrow and regret rather than life at its best “perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions”?💎 Brad’s Bookmarks:5 things I found interesting this week:* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/">Shutter Encoder</a>: Make webm video’s for your LMS/website for free.* Pete and I (and Dr James Humberstone FRSA) have been alluding to the Mighty Boosh a lot over this week. This <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKwQ_zeRwEs">Jazz Trance</a> scene is iconic.* Sting - <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/aqwhGoEGy6E?si=xTGtjL8hQwaG6yCh">Bring On The Night</a> (1985): The behind the scenes documentary.* Andrew Huang is up to some good things with creative challenges. <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/JUQV-l54TTY?si=S7YPg3IIIwKeuvLW">They weren’t allowed to talk in the creation of this piece</a>.* <a target="_blank" href="https://youtu.be/pnISpahN2dM?si=ZB_dZLpIHYSgwBSh">Hiromi: Tiny Desk Concert</a>. She’s so great.💣 Brad’s Bombshell of the week:How could anything as widespread and culturally pervasive as music education require serious thinking, let alone “a philosophy”? The answer is simple. As the Roman poet Phaedrus said, “Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden” (<a target="_blank" href="https://amzn.to/3MyXVqL">Elliott and Silverman, 2015, p. 6</a>)p.s. Want to get to know me (and other GBLers) further? Engage with free courses, and join in discussions (we call it “The Weekly Riff”) on music education philosophy, pedagogy, technology and content inside our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.skool.com/gig-based-learning-1360">FREE community</a>. Thanks for reading this week’s newsletterI also read every comment on our <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC57m5qs7Ar4tpcpClany5Mw">YouTube</a>. So, see you there. Dr Brad FullerThanks for reading Gig Based Learning - a substack by Dr Brad Fuller! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">gigbasedlearning.substack.com</a>

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What is Gig Based Learning - a podcast by Dr Brad Fuller?: Key reflections on my own beliefs on classroom music education and why I hold them. I hope this can inspire you to question why you hold the beliefs that you do, or at the very least hold more thought out ones. <a href="https://gigbasedlearning.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">gigbasedlearning.substack.com</a>
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