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Music Education Research

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How Children Ascribe Meaning to Improvisation and Composition: Rethinking pedagogy in music education
Pamela Burnard Version of record first published: 19 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Pamela Burnard (2000): How Children Ascribe Meaning to Improvisation and Composition: Rethinking pedagogy in music education, Music Education Research, 2:1, 7-23 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613800050004404

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Music Education Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000

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How Children Ascribe Meaning to Improvisation and Composition: rethinking pedagogy in music education

PAMELA BURNARD, School of Education, University of Reading, Bulmershe Court, Reading RG6 1HY, UK (e-mail: p.a.burnard@reading.ac.uk )

This paper is taken from doctoral research which sought to discover how children engage in and re ect on their experiences of improvising and composing. The study was carried out at a comprehensive Middle School in West London where 18 self-selected 12-year-old children participated in weekly music making sessions. Data collected over a six-month period included observations, interviews and the examination of musical artefacts. This paper reports on interview methodology based on constructivist elicitation tools to understand how children ascribe meaning to improvisation and composition. It was found that children represented these phenomena in three ways: (i) distinct forms distinguished by bodily intention; (ii) interrelated forms co-existing functionally in context; and (iii) inseparable processes. The pedagogical signi cance of what is under description here will be discussed.
ABSTRACT

Introduction Our assumptions pertaining to improvising and composing are integral to how improvisation and composition are taught. Some writers (Paynter, 1982, 1992) consider composition to be the preferred means of learning and therefore locate it at the heart of the music curriculum, at the expense of improvisation. Others consider improvisation to be a constant companion to the compositional process (Lawrence, 1978), or an impulse which sets creation in motion (Sessions, 1952, p. 38), and regard the two phenomena as indistinguishably embedded in the one act of creation (Loane, 1984, 1987; Davies, 1992; Marsh, 1995). Certainly, improvisation is integral to genre-speci c styles such as jazz and blues. However, improvising can also be a term used to describe the essence of spontaneity as independence from pre-existing styles (Elliott, 1996). Critically, it is these underlying assumptions which shape our approach to the teaching of improvisation and composition.
ISSN 1461-3808(print) /ISSN 1469-9893(online) /00/010007-1 7 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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Adult understandings of improvisation and composition have been studied extensively and are largely based on anecdotal accounts which can represent highly specialised views of the process of musical creation (Wallas, 1926; Ghiselin, 1952; Sloboda, 1985, 1988; Pressing 1988; Berliner, 1994). However, the relevance of adult practice to childrens musical experience is not clear. The question arises as to the extent to which childrens experience of improvising and composing resonates with those of adults. There is no systematic body of knowledge (or consensus) pertaining to childrens experience of improvisation and composition, only contradictory claims that propose: the existence of different musical processes (Kratus, 1989; 1991; Upitis, 1992); the involvement of distinct abilities (Webster, 1990; McPherson, 1993/4, 1998); and different aptitudes (Gordon, 1989). Other researchers considered the two processes to be indistinguishable (Swanwick & Tillman, 1986; Loane, 1987). The earliest seminal studies of children composing made no distinction between the terms improvisation and composition. Consequently, the term composition was applied to forms of improvisation, invention and creative music (Swanwick & Tillman, 1986; Davies, 1992). Later writers began to delimit these terms more speci cally (Webster, 1990; Kratus, 1994; Barrett, 1996; Folkestad, 1998). However, only a few studies have widened the investigative focus to include childrens musical thinking, the nature of their musical experiences and what meanings they attribute to these experiences (Blacking, 1967; Upitis, 1992; Campbell, 1998). This paper is taken from doctoral research which sought to discover how children engage in, and re ect on, their experiences of improvising and composing. Two questions guided the investigation: (i) what constitutes the dimensions along which children move between improvisation and composing, and (ii) how do childrens re ections of their lived experience provide insight into the intention which directs their processes of music making. The paper focuses on childrens meaning making because of the effect of thinking about what it is to improvise and compose from a constructivist perspective. It has particular relevance for music educators understanding creative modes of experience as diverse forms of meaning, and seeks to illustrate the degree of rethinking we need to engage in if we are to assist children to develop as creators (not only makers) of music. Theoretical Perspective A phenomenological base, theoretically informed by a cognitivistinterpretative paradigm, provided the present study with its descriptive and analytical focus from which an interpretation of childrens understanding of their own experience was developed. Merleau-Ponty (1962) referred to phenomenology as the study of objects and events as they present to, and appear in, our experience wherein the world is what we perceive (p. xi). In this way, experience as we live it becomes a function of how we direct our consciousness in a dialectical relationship toward the world (i.e. revealed by our attempts to construe events and objects). From this perspective, action (including pre-re ective action) as it embodies intention (which is visible in action) becomes the focus of mapping childrens worlds of meaning through their experiential descriptions (Van Manen, 1990). Important issues concerning the context can also be de ned phenomenologically. Context, according to Wertsh (1985), is grounded in a set of assumptions about appropriate roles, goals and means used by the participants in the settings whereupon the activity setting guides the selection of actions and the operational composition of

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actions and it determines the functional signi cance of these actions (p. 212). Thus, the importance of distinguishing characteristics of the context (or activity settings) and the meanings given to intentional acts that characterise improvising and composing, as manifest through the actions and re ections of the children, provided the focus of this research. Given the interpretativeconstructivist tradition in which the central tenet is to describe and interpret the phenomena under investigation, an ethnographic approach was considered appropriate to reveal the meanings constructed by children (Schwandt, 1994). Research Design

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An ethnographic approach using a multi-method research plan was designed. The data were generated from observations of the participants engaged in music making, with the researcher in the role of participant observer; through interviewing both individuals and groups in focused sessions; and from the examination of transcriptions of 116 improvisations and 79 compositions. The study was carried out in a multi-ethnic, comprehensive Middle School in West London, England over a period of six months. Eighteen self-selected 12-year-old children participated in 21 weekly music-making sessions. Of the 18 children, there were 12 girls and 6 boys. Fourteen children had received instrumental tuition and ve had taken graded examinations; four had received no formal instrumental training. There were 14 of British descent, two Afro-Caribbean and two Asian children. I wanted to know in what ways these children carried out single event and spontaneous performances of music (i.e. improvisation) and revised pieces created over time (i.e. composition). I also wanted to explore the nature of the relationship between improvisation and composition from the childrens perspectives. The eldwork took place over a period of six months and divided into three phases referred to as the Early, Middle and Late Phase. Each child was given two individual interviews, which framed the Early and Late Phases. Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of the noematic and noetic, the study focused on the how-issue, as childrens ways of engagement, and the what-issue, as childrens expressed interpretation of these phenomena. However, it is not within the scope of this paper to examine the how-issue. Instead, the what-issue which mapped childrens worlds of meaning through their experiential descriptions, as derived from interview data, will be discussed. Interview Methodology A preliminary one-hour interview provided baseline data concerning the childrens musical background and experiences that in uenced their general musical interests both at home and school. A constructivist elicitation technique developed by Denicolo and Pope (1990), called Critical Incident Charting was used to encourage a re ective conversational style of engagement. The children were asked to re ect on speci c instances, or critical incidents, which they considered had in uenced the direction of their musical lives. I asked the children to re ect upon their experiences of music and share stories which tell me about their memorable experiences of music making at school, with friends and family as well as within the community. Whilst they recalled these events in their musical histories, I located each narration on different bends along the length of a winding river, where each bend represented an in uential incident. This was their musical river. Each bend in the musical river was a manifestation of aspects of the childs formative experiences in music. Then I asked them to re ect upon these

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incidents giving voice to the attitudes and orientations implicit to their musical worlds and identities. At the conclusion of the Late Phase, the nal interview provided the children with an opportunity to re ect upon their experiences of improvisation and composition across the six-month term of the study. An image-based, draw-and-talk technique (Prosser, 1998), based on respondent veri cation (Becker, 1998) of the varied forms of representing relationships between improvisation and composition, was used. The children were asked to draw an image or pictorial representation to convey some aspect (or aspects) of what it was to improvise and compose. Then, they were invited to explain in detail how these pictures related to their own experiences. The speci c concerns addressed in this interview included the critical question: Thinking back over your experience of music making, what, for you, does it mean to improvise and compose?. The idea was to focus on the phenomenological issues of what it means to improvise and compose as well as to enhance the credibility of ndings through triangulation of data sources (Denzin, 1978). The themes arising from the analysis of one source of data (i.e. observation of action) were compared with the evidence found in another source (i.e. childrens re ection on action), which in turn was compared with the data from the musical transcription and nally checked against the accounts from the initial interviews. Analysis of Data All qualitative research is based upon the interpretation of a selection of the data. In this study, the segmentation and selection of data were governed by the technique known as theoretical or purposive sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The general approach adopted was to subject the data to analysis for thematic content using the method of iterative inductive coding, as described in many standard texts on qualitative, naturalistic social research methods (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Analysis of the data collected in the initial interviews was done by hand on printed copies of the full transcriptions. The data from each musical river was summarised and presented in a form which could be scanned sequentially; next to each extract passage placed on each bend in the river, a thematic category was pencilled in the margin of the page. At this initial stage of data analysis, every descriptive incident about a musical episode or encounter contributed to the representation of children voicing their relationship to music. Thus, each musical memory had a potential relationship to the purpose of the study. The images and language collected in the nal interviews, representing the childrens nal re ections on improvisation and composition, were analysed in the form of a picture-by-picture comparison to gain impressions of similarities and differences between cases. Then, reading and re-reading the childrens explanations in order to identify any possible relationships tested my visual impressions. When all the drawings had been compared, a form of relationship was sought. Then, a type of theoretical generalisation was employed and re-tested against the earlier phases. Many of the children explained their pictures of improvisation and composition metaphorically, making their meanings easily apparent, a technique advocated by Eisner (1991), for making public the ineffable (p. 227). A variety of validity check procedures included the use of independent referees to evaluate the credibility of the researchers thematic categorisation of the data. This was achieved by sending the presentation of data to two independent researchers. The coding agreement or disagreement was noted and discussed in detail in order to eliminate the

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risk of false coding and to publicly test my interpretation (Denzin, 1978; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Becker, 1998). Introducing Individual Realities as Essential Backgrounds of Musical Experience This paper pro les three children with different instrumental training and performance backgrounds. An elicitation technique is used to chart their perspective music-rivers. Each river re ects differences in musical identity and beliefs about music making. This was apparent in the varying extent to which children focus on different facets of musical experience in relation to their backgrounds. Links between musical biographies and childrens experience of improvising and composing are developed later in the paper. Introducing Diane. Diane has played the piano since the age of eight and the clarinet for nearly two years. She is familiar with performing in both solo and orchestral settings. She expresses great interest in exploring different ways of creating music on a range of instruments. Her Dad makes up songs on guitar. At home, she uses her Dads guitar to just play about. She also makes up little pieces on the piano. Figure 1 shows a pre cis of Dianes recollections at different phases of her musical development. Dianes need to express herself and discover the extent of her artistic capabilities is illustrated by her individual passion for creating her own music and playing around on a variety of instruments. Her reluctance to conform and periodic impatience re ects her desire to do something[s] different. She recalls creative encounters which both stimulated and frustrated her. These encounters play an important role in making sense of music and in establishing her musical identity. She prefers to make her own music at home, but still values the music she makes in school even though, as she says, sometimes I get put in groups with people who dont get along very well and then we waste time arguing. These collaborative encounters serve to reaf rm her identity as she becomes aware of her own music-making processes whose meaning she nds embodied in personal ownership. Introducing Tim. Tim has completed ve years of formal instrumental tuition on piano and has taken graded examinations in piano (Grade 5), violin (Grade 3) and theory (Grade 4). He has also completed two terms of group lessons at school in percussion. He is a member of the school choir, string orchestra and attended a Saturday morning School of Young Musicians. According to Tim, he has really got into the rhythm doing grades and intends to go all the way to Grade 8. His mother is a professional piano teacher and father plays the guitar, piano, saxophone and banjo. His younger brother also plays the piano and cello. At home, they have a variety of digital and acoustic pianos. What strikes me most about Tims recollections is that they are primarily de ned in terms of progress, achievement and competition. Consequently, his river begins and ends with expressions relating to proper pieces like the Allegro by Bach and the ambition of getting it right. He also speaks of the pressures of preparing for exams and the frustrations of having to practise. What is interesting is how he emphasises the salient issues of experiences that are set by expectations, standards of achievement and success as characterised by subjective values, particular to a set of goals. Tim is an ambitious player who reveals his thoughts and feelings in terms of musical training rather than musical experience. For Tim, musical meaning seems to be based on the highly structured and sequential learning techniques, which form the basis of his musical instruction (see Figure 2).

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FIG. 1. Dianes musical river.

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FIG. 2. Tims musical river.

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Introducing Sidin. Sidin is a 12-year-old Asian girl who receives no formal training on a musical instrument. She is the youngest member of a family who has no instruments to play at home and Sidin is the least musically experienced member of the group. She considers that people fall into one of three categories in terms of musical ability. Firstly, there are those that are really talented and play good music. Secondly, there are those that are good but need improvement and thirdly, there are those that like music but are not good or looked up to. Sidin conceptualises her own reality when she says:

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When I play, I think Im the third type of person but I want to be like others and play the way they do. I want to play it but I think I shouldnt play it. Despite her self-consciousness and shyness, Sidin indicates a strong desire to play music as evident in re ections relating to her musical experiences. This is shown in her musical river (see Figure 3) which shows a pre cis of her six-page transcription. The qualities that characterise Sidin are her self-consciousness and low self-esteem. Her great admiration of those with performance skills is a re ection of her interest in music. Her re ections relate to private and imagined performance within the security of her home environment. Clearly, she feels intimidated by performing in a school context whereas her private musical world is a safe, non-threatening place where she can nd expression as it doesnt matter if it sounds silly. Part of her fear of public performance is a result of the dif culties with reading notation, which required her to look at it and think and play it. In summary, while the musical rivers reveal diverse experiences, they also convey similarities identi ed as an interest in playing instruments and a desire to be involved with music. This was a common characteristic of all the participants recollections. The musical rivers also illustrate some important issues relating to experiential knowledge of music. These representations highlight the in uence of prior experience on artistic activity as ways of knowing that involve re ection, production and musical perception (Gardner, 1989). These different ways of knowing seem to be in uenced by the sources of their knowledge and motivation. Tims production and perception skills are the result of specialist instrumental training. On the other hand, Diane strongly identi es with the production of her own music, whilst Sidin focuses critical judgement on her own music-making and considers herself to be the least musically skilled of the group. Music is integral and yet differently situated in the lives of these children. Thus, it is important to examine the ways in which different children make sense of their experiences of improvising and composing (Van Manen, 1990). Representing Experiences of Improvising and Composing The three children (Diane, Tim and Sidin) drew the following forms of representation. They do more than recount experiences. They also convey possible interpretations of the nature of improvising and composing, and perceived relationships (Van Manen, 1990). The images demonstrate three forms of relationship between improvising and composing. These images fall into categories of experiencing differences, interrelatedness, or sameness. It was found that children experienced improvising and composing differently according to context (i.e. characteristics of the activity setting) and intention (i.e. directed by speci c orientations). Most of the children described improvisation and composition as distinct forms distinguished by bodily intention, whilst some experienced them as interrelated forms, co-existing functionally in context.

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FIG. 3. Sidins musical river.

A few children regarded them as inseparable processes, highlighting a sameness in orientation. Experiencing Difference The following drawings by Diane convey improvisation as a kind of continuity in action whilst composition is expressed in terms of xing thoughts by setting parameters. Figure 4 shows a vivid depiction of improvisation as, metaphorically speaking, a roller coaster ride and composition as a ow chart of xed action sequences. The roller coaster ride re ects the momentum of a short-lived and fast-paced experience in which you just play and it keeps going until you nish. The metaphor offers a potent way of

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FIG. 4.

representing the temporal quality of being carried forward. What seems to make the experience of improvisation possible is that, from the starting point, the player engages in a process of focusing on a continuing impulse of ongoing activity in which s/he is thinking in action. Drawn again by Diane, the compositional image in Figure 5 conveys a multi-directional rather than uni-directional mode. The arrow directions, geared toward building structures, indicate a back-and-forth movement of revising parts in relation to the whole, as a way of forming a musical Gestalt. As shown in many images, re ection as the act of thinking back over it speaks of composition as a process of revision and rehearsal. Figure 5 makes explicit the setting of limits by bracketing the musical events into segments. Clearly, the intention was to build a structure as I was thinking back over it to the beginning to make sure it went with the middle then I worked out the end. The arrows show the compositional path of revision, shifting back and forth across bracketed segments as she sorts, selects and assembles the piece.

Experiencing Interrelatedness Drawn by Tim, Figure 6 conveys visual images that are conceived largely as a journey toward a composition which is generated through improvising. The mutuality is shown by way of the improvisation which starts with a pattern Ive played before [Tim points to the straight line], progresses to bursts of going higher and then lower [Tims nger follows the curved lines] and then you stop [Tim hits the precise point on the page]. The composition is described as a proper piece which incorporates a bit of structure and a bit made on the spot and a bit more structure. These images create the impression of improvisation in the service of composition as a closely associated, role-related activity. Composition begins with improvisation and it is improvisation which acts as the creative catalyst to externalise musical thoughts. Similarly, many adult composers improvise as an important tool for realising ideas (Lawrence, 1978). However, whilst Tims compositional process emphasised formation and revision of ideas, as the result of thinking re ectively about relationships within the whole piece, there were moments of improvisation during the repeat performances of the revised piece. Thus, improvisation and composition are interrelated in all aspects of the process of performance.

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How children ascribe meaning to improvisation and composition

FIG. 5.

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FIG. 6.

Experiencing Sameness In contrast, Sidin considers that there is no difference between improvisation and composition (see Figure 7). She explains: Improvising and composing [are] no different, they are the same piece to me. I can spend a lot of time playing around trying to settle ideas. Its supposed

FIG. 7.

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FIG. 8.

to get better when you spend lots of time on it but I get so nervous when I perform. I keep losing my ideas and all of a sudden Ill forget what Im supposed to do and think Im going to play something wrong. Everyones going to hate it. So now when I lose my ideas all of a sudden, I dont look up and see what everyone is thinking and stop, I say I dont really care what anyone else thinks, Im just going to play on with my partner. I never used to play pieces in front of anyone but now I play with my musician friends and whatever I play comes up good. [Source: Final Interview] Sidin is an inexperienced player whose unwillingness to take risks means that she deliberately seeks to play with others. Her performance fears can be attributed to a myriad of factors (some of which were reported in earlier chapters). For example, she makes a distinction between externalising ideas (playing around), the internalised work of memory (losing my ideas) and maintaining continuity in performance (look up and see what everyone is thinking and stop). In other words, she used to encounter a complex interplay of cognitive and performance dif culties, mechanisms in which the music was sounded out, selected, grouped and recalled or lost in subsequent performances. Despite these skills-related issues, Sidins fear of memory lapses and performance errors diminished with increasing support of playing partners whom she could trust and who trusted her. Sidin found collaborative settings allowed her to feel less vulnerable for reasons that were more social than musical. Thus, it was the interdependence between improvisatory and compositional processes, where one depends on and is inseparable from the other, as mirrored by the musical partnership, to make pieces afresh in performance. As in the case of Sidin, there were other children who expressed a similar perspective. One further drawing by a participant called Katya will provide a further illustration of the importance of intention where the creation of music is concerned. Katya (who shares

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a similar musical background to Diane) has played the piano for four years and clarinet for two years. In Figure 8, we see two versions of an intersection which re ect Katyas performance-directed desire to make pieces afresh. She explains: Improvising is different ideas jumbled up coming in from all directions. Its no different to composing cause your ideas come from different places and they meet in what your playing. They are not really set because youre always improvising in some ways. I like changing my ideas around. Its not about remembering it. [Source: Final Interview]

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These remarks illustrate several issues about improvisation. Firstly, the experience is characterised by spontaneity making the music fresh, free of the need for memorisation and fear of making mistakes. Secondly, that the process of performance is, by nature, improvisatory means there is little need to encode or set the music in memory. Thirdly, the sameness becomes a manifestation of musical divergence as in nite combinations of ideas come from all directions or from different places. Finally, the image of an intersection suggests a musical convergence of all these ideas at a place where sound meets and play exists free of expectations about remembering it. Unlike the previous images, improvising does not represent a stage of a process that is going on to another point but rather, represents the continuity of each moment being led up to and led away from. Sidin and Katya represent aspects of similar experiences in as much as both are concerned with a desire to perform, a passion for sound and reluctance towards memory-directed composition. Interestingly, Katya is a keen and experienced performer whilst Sidin is as keen but much less experienced. For Sidin, it makes no difference if pieces are planned or not. In the ux of things, the details become apparent only in the contingent and precarious moment of performance. Improvising and composing come to represent a similar process because they are interlaced and overlapping, in the service of each other; as the direct outcomes of the vagaries of performance. By bringing a sharper focus on performance the intentions underlying improvising and composing become inseparable and mutually dependent. At the intersection, improvising occurs in the service of composition to generate a divergence of ideas and, similarly, composing occurs in the service of improvisation to establish a divergence of ideas. Thus, neither experience is marked out from the other in the streams of ideas. A Model of Childrens Experience of Improvisation and Composition It was apparent that improvising and composing seemed to be as much about the childrens relationship to musical activity as improvisation and composition were to each other. These formed relationships that comprised: 1 Improvisation activities; 2 Improvisation in the service 3 Improvisation intention. and composition as ends in themselves and differently orientated and composition as interrelated entities whereby improvisation is used of making and performing a composition; and and composition as indistinguishable forms that are inseparable in

Thus, it emerged that the children incorporated improvisation into the compositional process. However, their underlying intentions resulted in different ways of experiencing improvisation and composition. Figure 9 is a shaded Venn diagram that depicts the three

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FIG. 9. A model of the relationshi p between improvisation and composition .

forms of relationship between improvisation and composition. From a childs perspective, the relationship between improvisation and composition can be described as follows: (i) distinct and separate (see lightest areas); (ii) interrelated (see shaded areas); and (iii) indistinguishable, where no distinction is apparent (see darkest area). This study highlighted the diversity of childrens understandings of both the nature and relationship between improvisation and composition. Surprisingly, musical training was a less critical determinant of the ways of experiencing improvising and composing than the creative intention.

Implications For Teachers: rethinking pedagogy The ndings contained a number of implications for teaching. For instance, childrens willingness to improvise and compose is a function of creating an environment where children can express their creativity. By starting with activities that are not too far removed from the childs immediate experience, creativity becomes integrated within the childs existing musical experiences and skills. Furthermore, by locating children in a range of musical settings they come to recognise the multidimensional nature of music resulting in greater valuing of what they already know, think, and can do. Inevitably, teachers have their pre-conceptions regarding improvising and composing, which must in uence their pedagogic approach. However, the ndings from my research suggest that it is advantageous to apply the potential of both improvising and composing to enhance the social dimension of music learning which recognises the signi cance of childrens perspectives. For learning should be perceived as meanings negotiated amongst learners as well as between learners and their teachers. Teachers should, therefore, try not to impose their values but rather encourage the children to discuss and develop their own. Our aim as music educators should be to facilitate a form of music education that focuses on genuine experiences of children being improvisers and composers rather than acting out a pre-de ned model. Subsequently, we must encourage and assist the children to think critically and creatively. As Dewey (1916) claimed each [individual] has to refer his [sic] own action to that of others and to consider the actions of others to give point and direction to his own (p. 87). Children should be encouraged to: (i) discuss what it is that is intrinsic to their own musical experience; (ii) identify themselves not only as music makers but as music creators; and (iii) encouraged to re ect on what it is to improvise and compose.

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If we acknowledge the importance of the words of children then they will socially construct the ways they compose and improvise in the classroom. Sharing understanding will help the children to recognise why they are doing a certain activity and what they are doing, leading to an awareness of how they are doing it. Thus, by giving children the opportunity to articulate their understandings we enhance learning. It was Polanyi (1966) who said that within the domain of human knowledge, we can know far more than we can tell (p. 4). This view re ects the experiential nature of learning and the importance of incorporating re ection in the curriculum. Children should be encouraged to talk about, re ect upon and write about (in re ective journals) their musical experiences in order to help make meaning of their learning. The ndings from my study indicated that all children, irrespective of musical backgrounds, have the potential to think explicitly about music experiences. Thus, teaching improvisation and composition should incorporate: (i) examining past and present assumptions about what it is to improvise and compose; (ii) encouraging children to be more re ective by asking children to think about how as well as what they improvise and compose; (iii) ensuring the starting points for improvising and composing are based on childrens existing knowledge and experience; (iv) ensuring children have the opportunity to select from a wide range of instruments; (v) suf cient time for children to clarify conceptual modi cation or changes and to test and extend ideas through their actions and re ections; (vi) a clear distinction between critical appraisal and interpretation of improvised and composed outcomes; and (vii) opportunities for children to confer meaning on the creation of their own music and musical experiences. Without doubt, teachers will meet with some dif culties when they try to apply the re ective methods discussed in this paper. However, it is important for teachers to prioritise time for re ection in the curriculum. It is hoped, that once children and their teachers re ect on what improvising and composing means to them they will become better equipped and more likely to envisage what they could come to mean within and beyond the classroom.

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