South West Music School ensures that young people are better equipped to direct their own learning journeys
Ensuring young people are better equipped to direct their own learning journeys means supporting them to ask, and answer, their own questions. In this way, they take greater ownership of their progression and develop lifelong skills in working things out for themselves. This approach is about ‘hand holding’ rather than ‘spoon feeding’.
This practice write-up comes from an external evaluation of South West Music School, which looked at what SWMS achieves with its students, and how it does so. It is part of a resource collection: How South West Music School supports musical ability.
At SWMS, supporting young people to be better equipped to direct their own learning journeys is achieved through a combination of different elements of the SWMS model:
a) Mentoring provides students with access to knowledge about opportunities, especially in terms of education and progression, which they might not otherwise have had. This new knowledge makes an impact on how the students can support themselves in directing their own learning journeys.
b) Specialist tuition helps students identify how they can take more control over their own learning journey.
c) Residentials give students the opportunities to learn with and from each other, not just during the events themselves, but afterwards as well, and as part of increasingly directing their own learning journey, students draw support from each other.
These ways of working demonstrate the importance of one particular ingredient – Enabling young people to support themselves and each other.
Supporting evidence showing how the SWMS model delivers this outcome and ingredient is extracted from the case studies, as below.
a) Mentoring
BEN
Ben’s mentor David has been keen to broaden his musical education and ensure he can access opportunities beyond the ‘home drumming’ environment. He’s worked with Ben to make sure he understands that passing the required number of GCSEs is the route to getting on the college course he wants, so he’s better equipped with knowledge to direct his own learning journey.
BEN & ALFIE
In terms of the future, Elfyn arranged for Beni to attend an open day for the Contemporary Music degree programme at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, as part of supporting him to make informed choices. Alfie went along too. The head of department was ‘fascinated’ by them both and spent a long time talking with them. Elfyn saw this as ‘giving him an option to look at’, which could be the ‘right one’ for his multiple talents and if not, could prompt Beni to think about other options. Without Elfyn’s suggestion about this particular direction to take, he wouldn’t have otherwise thought about it, so it’s part of supporting him to be better equipped to direct his own learning journey. Elfyn sees this sort of higher education course, with fewer strictures than school, as supporting ‘who Beni wants to be’ and inviting ‘less tussle with the establishment’.
THEO
Nicola explains that helping Theo to try things out opens his eyes and can break down pre-conceived ideas. It helps him make connections and apply new learning, becoming better equipped to direct his own learning journey and make informed choices.
b) Specialist tuition
ALFIE
When Mary started as Alfie’s double bass teacher, she realised he needed some ideas about how he could help himself in terms of how to practise, how to organise practice and knowing what he was aiming for – in other words, being better equipped to direct his own learning journey.
c) Residentials
BEN & ALFIE
The residentials in particular are in many ways ‘a lifeline’, as living in a rural area, there are very few other young people with the same enthusiasm and talent as Ben and Alfie with whom they can relate. Their mother Penny says SWMS provides an ‘extended family of support’, with Ben and Alfie often contacting fellow students to share experiences and understandings.