Group cooperation, inclusion and disaffected pupils: some responses to informal learning in the music classroom



Written version of RIME paper (GCID) for MER, Exeter 2007

11


group should play, and so on. Peer-directed learning is thus a form of learning through
being
taught by a peer.

I would like to suggest that a teaching and learning exchange between peers
has qualities that are distinct from a teaching and learning exchange between an
expert and a novice, or a designated teacher and pupil. Pupils themselves intimated
that they had quite a different response to being taught by their peers; and several
pupils said they
preferred being helped by a peer rather than by a teacher. One reason
for this is no doubt the relative absence of power differential existing between peers.
For there was a strong feeling that teachers put on pressure:

-Alex: You can do it in your own time, and you’re not like being told what to
do by the teacher, or, like being fussed around and stuff.

-Daniel: I think [teaching yourself] is like, a bit better ‘cause like the teacher is
always behind you kind of thing, and you’re like a bit under pressure...

Another reason may be that many pupils are less intimidated by and alienated
from each others’ knowledge and expertise. In particular, many pupils said they felt
that teachers use too much technical vocabulary and theory. By contrast, peers often
used non-verbal ways to help each other, based around listening, watching and
imitating. They avoided technical vocabulary - mainly because they didn’t know any
themselves - in favour of gestures and the use of sonic materials and phrases to
indicate meanings, as in the quote below:

-Michael: Just play it once, just play it once.

-Ross: I’ll go (plays guitar riff).

-Michael: You don’t need to play that, so when I go (starts to play) if you be
silent (guitar plays) and then you go silent for (bass plays).

-Ross: I know! So I’ll just go (guitar plays).

As the educationalist R. E. Slavin (1995, p. 4) puts it: ‘students can do an
outstanding job of explaining difficult ideas to one another by translating the teacher’s
language into kid language’. Another way to put this might be that pupils are



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