3 Minute Literature

Thomas Breeze
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  • Education

From the team behind Emma and Tom Talk Teaching, this is a pilot project in which we try to summarise a book chapter or journal article from the field of education in under three minutes. The aim is not for people to avoid reading the original material, but for time-poor teachers to decide whether an article/chapter is relevant and therefore worth reading. If any authors feel that the summary misrepresents their work, please get in touch!

  1. 11/05/2025

    A National Plan for Music Education: A comparative “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” analysis across England and Wales (MacGregor, Breeze & John, 2025)

    Abstract: In 2022 both England and Wales released policy documents entitled A National Plan for Music Education. While the English policy was a long-awaited update to a similar policy published in 2011, the Welsh policy was unexpected and seemingly lacked precedent. Despite some attempt to align itself with the concurrent implementation of the new Curriculum for Wales, it more closely mirrored the English policy in seeking to address inequity in music education provision through the development of local music services providing extracurricular instrumental and vocal tuition. In light of these similarities, in this article we undertake a comparative policy analysis framed using Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” approach. We explore the way in which the English policy problematizes access to “excellent” music education and proposes new discursive and institutional structures to “level up” opportunities. In contrast, we highlight how the equivalent Welsh policy conceptualizes the problem of music education as relating solely to access to “learning to play a musical instrument” and proposes the expansion of extracurricular music tuition through a national music service as the solution. Finally, we compare these two political approaches and ask whether the notion of “good-enough” music education could disrupt elitist notions of training in high-quality art musics and unlock new possibilities for music education. MacGregor, E. H., Breeze, T., & John, V. (2025). A National Plan for Music Education: A comparative “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” analysis across England and Wales. Arts Education Policy Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2025.2541817

    3 min

  2. 02/09/2024

    On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One (Sfard, 1998)

    Abstract: This article is a sequel to the conversation on learning initiated by the editors of Educational Researcher in volume 25, number 4. The author’s first aim is to elicit the metaphors for learning that guide our work as learners, teachers, and researchers. Two such metaphors are identified: the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. Subsequently, their entailments are discussed and evaluated. Although some of the implications are deemed desirable and others are regarded as harmful, the article neither speaks against a particular metaphor nor tries to make a case for the other. Rather, these interpretations and applications of the metaphors undergo critical evaluation. In the end, the question of theoretical unification of the research on learning is addressed, wherein the purpose is to show how too great a devotion to one particular metaphor can lead to theoretical distortions and to undesirable practices. Sfard, A. (1998). On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One. Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4-13.  https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X027002004

    3 min

  3. 10/20/2023

    Mentoring novices' teaching of historical reasoning: Opportunities for pedagogical content knowledge development through mentor-facilitated practice (Achinstein & Fogo, 2015)

    Abstract: While worldwide policy attention turns to mentoring to develop new teachers' practice, researchers have not investigated mentoring exchanges that support novices' teaching of historical reasoning and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development. Drawing on case studies of U.S. mentor-novice pairs, authors ask: How, if at all, is the teaching of history represented in mentoring conversations? How, if at all, do mentoring exchanges support novices' teaching of historical reasoning? Authors illustrate how mentoring conversations can support PCK elements through guided conceptual and practical representations of disciplinary history instruction; and reveal a form of mentor PCK for diagnosing and supporting novices' PCK development. Achinstein, A. and Fogo, B. (2015) 'Mentoring novices' teaching of historical reasoning: Opportunities for pedagogical content knowledge development through mentor-facilitated practice', Teaching and Teaching Education, 45, pp. 45-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.09.002

    3 min

  4. 07/02/2023

    Characterizing musical vulnerability: Toward a typology of receptivity and susceptibility in the secondary music classroom (MacGregor, 2023)

    Abstract Although teachers and researchers frequently acknowledge that music education can benefit pupils’ academic achievement, health and well-being, and social development, classroom music-making can have long-lasting, detrimental impacts. Individuals’ experiences of failure, disappointment, and exclusion in the music classroom highlight an urgent need for music education to be reframed by an understanding of “musical vulnerability”: individuals’ inherent and situational openness to being affected—positively or negatively—by the semantic and somatic properties of music-making. Drawing on existing vulnerability studies, I evaluate how classroom music-making can foster both positive receptivity and negative susceptibility, depending on its delineation of identity and physical embodiment. I then present reductive analyses of phenomenologically-informed interviews in which 12 secondary music teachers described their past experiences of being pupils, and their present experiences of teaching pupils, in music classrooms in the United Kingdom. Using excerpts from their observations of teaching pupils, I describe how interactions between individuals’ interpersonal and personal vulnerabilities—including personality, musical, and neurological differences—affected occasions of musical receptivity and susceptibility. As individuals negotiated conflicting musical expectations, they sometimes fostered fruitful resilience but sometimes encountered profound resignation. I draw on these findings to construct a preliminary typology of musical vulnerability and emphasize the need for future research into proactive differentiation in the music classroom. MacGregor, E. H. (2023). 'Characterizing musical vulnerability: Toward a typology of receptivity and susceptibility in the secondary music classroom.' Research Studies in Music Education.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X231162981

    3 min

  5. 04/03/2023

    Justifying music in the national curriculum: The habit concept and the question of social justice and academic rigour (Bate, 2020)

    Abstract In June 2015, the British government presented ‘the social justice case for an academic curriculum’ as the justification for recent radical changes to educational policy. However, this justification failed to account for both the key changes in the newly-revised National Curriculum for Music and the place of music in the National Curriculum as a whole. Through a critical evaluation of the National Curriculum for Music, this study will propose how the place of music could successfully be justified within an education system wholly committed to ‘social justice’. Using the ‘habit concept’ of classical philosophical pragmatism, it will assess how and why music's educational value should be understood not through its ‘academic rigour’ but through its distinctive, inherently destabilising nature. Bate, E. (2020). Justifying music in the national curriculum: The habit concept and the question of social justice and academic rigour. British Journal of Music Education, 37(1), 3-15. doi:10.1017/S0265051718000098

    3 min

  6. 03/19/2023

    Kicking the habitus: power, culture and pedagogy in the secondary school music curriculum (Wright, 2008)

    Abstract Within a theoretical framework drawn from sociologists of education Bourdieu and Bernstein, this paper will examine some of the findings of an ethnographic case study conducted with a secondary school music teacher and one class of her pupils in Wales. This teacher attracted 25% of Year 10 (14-year-old) pupils to study music as an optional subject against a national background of 8% average. The study attempted to examine the lived experiences of the participants in music at home and school. Teacher and pupils had much to say about music teaching and learning in the classroom and beyond. Much of the success of this particular music curriculum model appeared to stem from the teacher's ability to empathise with her pupils’ musical interests and recontextualise the National Curriculum for music to reflect these. Pupil voice was instrumental in curriculum design and delivery and the teacher showed the empathy required to ‘kick’ her Western Art Music-informed habitus to enable her to enter her pupils’ musical worlds. There were however points of tension between teacher and pupil evaluations of the curriculum reflecting differences of habitus and unequal distribution of power: the ultimate power over curriculum and pedagogy rested firmly with the teacher. Furthermore, in order to work with her pupils in the time allowed the teacher had to make compromises as to the instruments she could allow the majority of her pupils to play. For many of her pupils, this did not appear to present a problem but for a significant number it alienated them from their music education. ‘Informal’ pedagogy might offer a solution to these problems by locating the production and development of musical knowledge with the pupils themselves – for the pupils at the research school this would mean, among other things, allowing groups of pupils opportunities to choose their own curriculum material, providing opportunities for pupils to work in groups sharing knowledge of ‘real’ instruments and techniques and a substantial alteration of the balance of power in lessons, allowing pupils increased control over the pace and sequence of their learning. If such pedagogy is to become more widespread, there are big questions to be asked about the type of person suited to becoming a music teacher and the sort of music education and initial teacher education and training they require. How we as a profession respond to the challenges ahead may well be crucial to the future survival of music in schools. Wright, R. (2008) Kicking the habitus: power, culture and pedagogy in the secondary school music curriculum, Music Education Research, 10:3, 389-402, DOI: 10.1080/14613800802280134

    3 min

  7. 03/19/2023

    Found in Translation: Interdisciplinary Arts Integration in Project AIM (Pruitt, Ingram and Weiss, 2014)

    Abstract: This paper will share the arts-integration methodology used in Project AIM and address the question; “How is translation evident in interdisciplinary arts instruction, and how does it affect students?” Pruitt, L., Ingram, D. and Weiss, C. (2014) 'Found in Translation: Interdisciplinary Arts Integration in Project AIM', Journal for Learning through the Arts: A Research Journal on Arts Integration in Schools and Communities, 10(1). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1050606.pdf

    3 min

  8. 03/19/2023

    The justification for music in the curriculum: music can be bad for you (Philpott, 2012)

    Philpott, C. and Spruce, G. (2012) Debates in music teaching. London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203117446.

    3 min
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About

From the team behind Emma and Tom Talk Teaching, this is a pilot project in which we try to summarise a book chapter or journal article from the field of education in under three minutes. The aim is not for people to avoid reading the original material, but for time-poor teachers to decide whether an article/chapter is relevant and therefore worth reading. If any authors feel that the summary misrepresents their work, please get in touch!

Information

  • Creator
    Thomas Breeze
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Thomas Breeze
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    3 Minute Literature