Day 11 – The Immensity of My Assessment as Research Project has Tired my Brain, But it was Worth It

EDUC 5410

As the title says, the immensity of my project left me feeling a little exhausted.  However, designing the project allowed me to prove a few things to myself. 

First, I recognized that an immediate need regarding my passion for music spurred a tremendous body of work of musical assessment development in a short time.  It showed me that with the right topic and working conditions (time) I can research and develop a large amount of what I perceive as quality material and gives me hope that a project, and maybe even a thesis, are well within my realm of possibilities.

Second, that I have the potential to be a leader in music education assessment.  If I look at the various ways practicing is assessed today, I think I may be one of the few not just designing these assessment tools but also perhaps even thinking seriously about the issue.  Though things are changing, practice logs are still too often being used as part of student grades and in essence are simply using these as a weapon to punish what is a perceived behavioural issue.  I know some of the arguments in favour of this all too well: 

1.     It is equitable as stronger and weaker players who don’t turn in practice minutes are equally penalized.

2.     It evens out the grading playing field as weaker students can increase their grades through practice sheets and in some cases receive extra credit for practicing beyond the required amounts. 

These are questionable arguments to support collecting and grading weak, quantitative evidence of practice at often a very high percentage (at times twenty percent of final report card grades).  I believe it is time that I take more initiative in getting the issue of practicing on our agendas for fine arts professional development and begin to debunk the accepted beliefs surrounding band assessment. 

Third, it confirms that my primary focus in teaching is the needs of students and helping them develop these and their own self-efficacy at the same time.  While I realize that not every student will want to work on developing their metacognitive abilities and technical skills, those who truly love making music will buy in for their own enjoyment and for the good of the ensemble as a whole. 

Finally, I believe I may have successfully created an ecological model for music assessment or at least laid the groundwork for one.  I am certain that it will go through many alterations over the next few years as I try to implement it into my practice, but the foundations are there.

Just for interest sake, I tried many different Google searches for pre-existing ecological models of music assessment and came up empty no matter how I altered the wording and limited the search.  I have no idea what the implications for this are, but perhaps it has laid the groundwork for future research in my life. 

EDUC 5400

Because yesterday's class was mostly a work day, I only have a few confusions to post today. 

The first is this: I am still struggling with how to define my worldview.  As a Christian, my beliefs overarch or are fused throughout how I look at everything.  But I realize that for the purposes of research, I have to define my worldview in terms of a philosophy so here is where I am currently at, though this may change by 100 today.

In the research proposal I am designing, I want to get to the heart of how to increase metacognition in band students so that they practice for quality and therefore increase their technical ability.  The assessment tools I designed for this are heavily dependent upon participant feedback and the answers are subjective to the individual learner.  These fit in quite well with Creswell's (2014) description of Constructivism with the exception of one point: in a sense I am starting with a theory  That is that if I am able to increase students' metacognition, their technique will improve.  Now I am not fool enough to believe this will play out exactly as I have theorized.  But that seems more deductive than inductive too me.  

In a way, what I am proposing is a very pragmatic approach to practicing as it is grounded in a sense in what works for the individual learner.  In the assessment process I am taking into account contextual variables such as socio-economic and cultural situations, and also accepting that due to individual situations, to a degree truth is what works at the time for them (Creswell, 2014).  But even hear I am not clear.  

And I am still very uncertain which method to take.  Am I looking for themes and patterns?  I sense that I am seeking "to establish the meaning of a phenomenon from the views of the participants" (Creswell, 2014, p. 19).  

At this point, all I am sure of is that I will take a qualitative approach.