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

slightly chaotic feel... After about eight minutes Connor stopped them all and
said they needed to work out how to fit it all together. They switched off the
CD and Connor got them to each play their parts in turn. I suggested to them
that they should think about how to start and end their performance, but gave
them no other help, and Connor immediately grasped onto this idea and
worked out a sequence for how they should all come in and how they should
fade out at the end.

At the end of the lesson, the class teacher, Debbie, asked Connor how well his group
had been getting along:

-Connor: Well, we didn’t have nothing last week, so to have that was really
good, the tune was quite good.

-Debbie: I have to say Connor, that I totally agree with you. Last week I didn’t
think you were going to produce anything, but today all three of you really
pulled yourself together and sorted it out. Well done.

She also asked how he got on with the drum beat:

-Connor: Well I asked Mr X [the assistant teacher] to do it, and he showed me.
He just went (plays basic rock beat), but I thought, ‘Nah that don’t sound like
the beat’, so I thought (plays beat, actually more accurate than the one Mr. X
had shown him).

Connor was deeply encultured in the music he was attempting to play, more so
than the teacher who showed him the drum rhythm. He knew what an appropriate
drum beat should sound like. This affirmed his cultural identity in ways that he felt
had been denied in previous lessons. But not only that, for it also put him, rather than
the teacher, in the role of the ‘knower’ and the ‘expert’ with regard to, not just the
cultural connotations or delineations of the music, but also its inter-sonic
relationships.

At one point during the fifth lesson of the project, the teacher said to the
group:

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