Metacognition In The Secondary Music Classroom

Our role as teachers extends beyond merely teaching knowledge; we wish to foster critical thinking, introspection, and self-directed learning.  As a department, this demands several cultural alignments.  We want children to understand how they learn music, reflect on their knowledge, and understand the steps they have taken to achieve musically; this is called metacognition.  We also want students to develop intrinsic motivations and attitudes towards music, which can be achieved by understanding their own learning.

Metacognition, or the understanding and awareness of one's own mental processes, is critical in this article. The vision for many music departments is that students engage critically with our subject. Incorporating metacognitive strategies into secondary music courses has the potential to improve musical learning and give lifelong skills required for success in any field.  This article investigates how metacognition is used within the strands of musical learning (performance, composition and appraising) and offers insight into how we can use metacognition as a tool to facilitate deeper musical understanding.

Understanding Metacognition

Metacognition refers to the ability to monitor, appraise, and control one's own cognitive processes. It requires students to be aware of their practice routines, learning methods, and ways of thinking about music.  We strive as music educators every day to bridge the gap between students’ outside musical experiences and their musical understanding within the formal classroom.  Metacognition can be a tool that enables this transition.  We regularly empower students to take an active role in their musical journey by developing awareness of their learning and providing them with resources for personal development. However, how does this appear to the average secondary school student during music classes?

Stage 1: Building Metacognitive Skills

When we engage and welcome students to our lessons, we invite them into the world of metacognitive learning, as music inherently requires self-discipline and engagement to promote real success.  The UK’s engagement with Lucy Green’s work loosely established this idea in early 2010 in the form of Musical Futures. This is the idea of using informal strategies and student choice (of instruments, peer groups and repertoire) to build engagement in the classroom. Many departments still use Musical Futures’ intrinsic motivations and pedagogies as a starting point for metacognitive approaches. This article dives deeper into what metacognition means in musical learning.

Within stage one of the metacognition journey, students learn to identify and understand critical musical terms, concepts, and techniques. Students start reflecting on their learning process and pinpointing areas for development through guided activities, including listening assignments and instrument practice. Teachers assist metacognitive growth by providing highly scaffolded support, personalised feedback, and step-by-step instruction to learn skills on instruments, composing and appraising music.

Stage 2: Applying Metacognition in Practice

As students proceed to the second stage of metacognition in their music practice and performance, they use more advanced metacognitive tactics. They learn to evaluate their performances, analyse music objectively, and set realistic development goals. This is accomplished through whole-class rehearsals, interactive student reflections, and tracking their development as they learn to communicate their musical discoveries using expert language. Teachers encourage metacognitive interaction with students by promoting a culture of self-reflection and peer evaluation and forming smaller group ensembles.

Stage 3: Cultivating Independent Metacognitive Learners

As Students show abilities in the third stage of musical metacognition, they become autonomous learners. They can show a thorough comprehension of musical concepts and procedures and the ability to evaluate their own musical experiences and performances critically. Students hone their skills through self-directed practice, performance evaluations, and composition assignments, which they apply confidently and independently. Teachers encourage students to explore their musical identities and goals while empowering them to take responsibility for their education and offering assistance and guidance. This means that students show an emotional and intellectual awareness of their musical choices.

Integrating Metacognition: Strategies and Resources

To establish successful metacognition strategies in secondary music education, educators can utilise an array of tactics and materials, including:

• Metacognitive prompts: Encourage students to consider their musical thinking and practice routines.

• Self-assessment instruments: Provide students with rubrics and checklists to help them assess their performances and compositions.

• Peer feedback: Set up peer-to-peer feedback sessions in which students provide constructive criticism and encouragement to their classmates. This usually involves heavy scaffolding to enable success.

• Goal setting: Help students create SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals for their musical development.

• Reflective journals: Encourage students to keep journals or blogs to record their musical experiences and discoveries.

  
  

The Fluidity of Metacognitive Learning

In the secondary music classroom, students move through the metacognitive phases in a dynamic and diverse way. Students may move freely between the stages of metacognitive development at any one time. A prime example can be where a student is knowledgeable in their application of musical terminology when appraising music but inexperienced as a practical player; it could be the other way around.  The fluidity seen throughout the three stages of metacognition and its links to the interdimensions of musical learning highlight how dynamic the awareness of progress is.  The end game for teachers is pupils’ having the ability to continually evaluate, assess, and understand their own musical learning, whether it be performance, composition, or appraisal.  This also displays the flexibility and beauty of music instruction learning and its multifaceted nature.

Embracing Metacognitive Learning

Metacognitive learning contributes to developing reflective, engaged, and self-directed secondary music students.  By explicitly using this three-stage method for metacognition in the classroom, we can enable students to understand and engage with their musical learning more directly, hopefully resulting in the young musicians understanding, engaging with, and successfully evaluating their achievements within your classroom. Ultimately it supports students in finding their identity as a musician and being able to guide their own learning away from a pre-supposed canon of selected material. 

Strategies for Application

1. Developing reflective learning journals for students, providing students with regular opportunities for reflection and to assess their rehearsal and performance success within the class. Students may also identify individualised targets for the following lesson. I understand that in the early stages, much scaffolding and direction is required to build the metacognitive requirements for this task.

2. Choice boards. I will provide students with various tasks or projects they can choose, catering to those with different interests within the musical strands of learning.

3. Modelling of thinking by ‘thinking out loud’ in lessons whilst showing students a task.

4. Peer-driven lessons, feedback, and discussions. Students will lead lessons in their chosen specialism (instrument) within small groups and offer feedback on each other's rehearsal, performance, and composition progress. 

5. Focus groups and observations of students will allow me to assess their reactions to the current curriculum. It encourages students to talk constructively and critically about curriculum and evaluate its impact. I intend to collaborate with students on future projects and how we sequence musical knowledge within their class.