How young people develop reflection and evaluation skills with South West Music School
Developing reflection and evaluation skills is part of developing as a musician and young people’s work within South West Music School (SWMS) requires self-reflection, peer evaluation and giving feedback on the programme itself. Young people are encouraged to become more aware of their own, and others’, development and to recognise when they don’t know something – because then they can work on this need.
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 develop reflection and evaluation skills is achieved through a combination of different elements of the SWMS model:
a) Mentoring encourages reflective practice that students can apply across their learning and into their future careers.
b) Specialist tuition encourages students to develop self-evaluation approaches so they can develop their skills and knowledge.
c) Residentials are key opportunities for students to develop constructive critical awareness about themselves and their peers and to become more reflective about their practice.
d) Additional activities are an integral part of students’ learning journeys and this Spotlighting project has enabled students to embrace and learn from it as a reflective process.
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
JOSIE
‘To step forward you need to know what you’ve learnt and where you’re coming from’. This understanding was fundamental to the discussions, feedback and evaluation that characterised the mentoring sessions between Rick and Josie. She really liked ‘looking at things’, thinking how they could be improved and seeing where to go next. It’s an approach she took forward into her later work as an apprentice music leader with PMZ, putting into practice the reflection and evaluation skills she had developed.
b) Specialist tuition
ALFIE
Mary, Alfie’s bass teacher, has also focused on getting Alfie to assess his own performance realistically, understanding what is good and what needs working on, and has seen him enhance his reflection and evaluation skills. He can now play a greater variety of styles and has developed tools to change the character of his playing, expressing himself creatively in the way he wants. She says, ‘His confidence has grown beyond measure’ and ‘he’s a better, more all round, accurate player’, being able to ‘do what he needs to do to make the sounds he wants’.
c) Residentials
BEN & ALFIE
Parents Penny and Chris value the way SWMS provides the benefits of working creatively with others of similar abilities. They’ve watched Ben and Alfie develop not just in their playing and composing but also in their ability to be more discerning, self critical and reflective, in part because being with the other students ‘shakes them up’ in comparison, without it being competitive.
JOSIE
Josie reflects from having to cope with being given notated music at a residential for the first time, ‘I learnt I needed to ask for help. I learnt it was okay to say “I’m not okay”’. Lisa notes this learning that Josie should ask for help – where doing so in the past meant being perceived as a hindrance – was a turning point in her journey. ‘Once she had made this switch, there was no stopping her,’ she says.
d) Additional activities
BEN
The Spotlighting project has provided a particular opportunity for Ben to develop his reflection and evaluation skills, as his filming of the processes around taking his Grade 8 drumming exam show. Here are clips showing him practising for the exam, reflecting on the practice, reflecting on the ‘real thing’ and then evaluating why he got the result he did, and how he feels about it.
THEO
Theo has taken full advantage of the Spotlighting project to think about and share his views on both SWMS and music making more generally, developing further his reflection and evaluation skills.
Here Theo talks about what’s important to him when he composes and plays music, advising other young people on what creativity, exploration and fun can mean.