Sample Research Proposal on Comprehensive Musicianship in the Curriculum of Hong Kong Outreach Musicianship Programme for Secondary Schools

1. Introduction Music teaching and education in Hong Kong has been greatly influenced by developments in Britain. However, since the cessation of Hong Kong as a British territory, Hong Kong has pursued its own music teaching direction. Now, there are significant differences between music teaching in Britain and Hong Kong. One important difference is in the integration of music in the secondary school curriculum, with music included as a mandatory aspect of the secondary education in Britain while music is not included in the regional or national curriculum of the country. (Morris 74) This implies that in Hong Kong, music education is entirely advisory instead of mandatory so that great responsibility rests upon the school administration and teachers to decide whether to introduce music programmes and if so to develop their own teaching strategies. Teachers often base their teaching strategies and students selection criteria based on their personal experiences.             Another related difference is the lesser degree of importance accorded to musical creativity in Hong Kong secondary schools relative to their equivalent educational level in Britain. In most secondary schools in Hong Kong, music is taught at the junior level with the learning focusing on the three areas of singing, listening and music reading. Music creativity is classified as only an additional activity. This is based on the historical trend in music education in Hong Kong of applying the policy that learning be focused on the transmission of musical knowledge and skills from the experts to the students involving a one-way process. During the senior level, music education focuses on the preparation of students for general music—intended to develop the students' music literacy and appreciation and music applicable to public examinations. (Curriculum Development Committee 4) This implies that music education in Hong Kong commonly stops with the transmission of knowledge and skills in singing, listening and reading without necessarily extending towards creative activities that fosters the participation, innovation and learning improvisation of students.             The persistence of this mode of music learning may be attributable to two general problem areas. One is the limitation in the music curriculum in accommodating creative music activities. Musical equipment is limited resulting to the limited access of students to musical instruments and other music learning equipments. The current music education system is not supportive of creativity that is best fostered in small groups when the current system involves an average of 40 students in one class making it difficult for teachers to focus on motivating individual creativity and students from expressing their creative works. Another problem area is the attitude of teachers towards music education. There seems to be reluctance on the part of teachers to introduce creative music activities due to their lack of training in this area, lack of familiarity in creative activities, and the reliance on traditional classroom teaching techniques believed to be necessary in maintaining discipline and order inside the classroom. Moreover, most teachers have the tendency to rely on the western music education system without translating these methods into appropriate application in the cultural context of Hong Kong. This leads to a music education detached from the culture-based musical experiences of students resulting to weaker appreciation of music learning and making creativity difficult to achieve. (Ng and Morris 31)             Overall, the current status of music education in Hong Kong indicates the need to change the system to enhance student and teacher appreciation of music in different cultures including the local music culture and the development of musical creativity based on a two-sided learning, with teachers imparting their knowledge and skills in music and performance and students given the venue and opportunity to build upon learning to achieve musical creativity. 2. Purpose             The research aims to build a new musicianship curriculum for Hong Kong secondary schools that can strengthen the student's creative abilities in this area of learning to prepare them for music institutions and universities. The study proceeds with the recognition of the necessity of developing an inclusive program that involves the students, teachers and directors, and the school administration in determining the music program to ensure dual or multi-level transmission of learning and feedback. The rationale for the inclusive program is to provide opportunity for all students to learn music genre of their interest in a holistic educational process so that the selection and exclusion of students from being considered or referred to music institutions and universities is understood, recognised and respected by students and teachers alike. This is the alternative system to relying on music teachers and directors to select and exclude students based on the personal musical criteria that may create student repulsion towards music or the music programme. 3. Background             Music comprises an important channel for learning and expression supporting the inclusion of this field of study in the curriculum of secondary schools. However, the inclusion of this area of study in the curriculum is just the initial step to the learning process because issues of curriculum effectiveness and appropriateness significantly influence the musicianship of students. The idea of needing reform in music education has existed since the inception of the music profession. In the latter half of the previous century, the profession has experienced immense improvements in various spheres of music education so that educational institutions integrating music education in their curriculum has accords great pride in their music programmes. (O'Toole 23)             Nevertheless, the underlying curriculum models prevalent in music teaching and education remain unchanged because music education remains driven by the pedagogical tradition as well as institutional rigidities. This is exemplified by the identical characteristics of different music education programmes regardless of the differences in the learning context in various educational institutions. On one hand, music education programmes often provide no room for electives or the choice of students on the musical path to study coupled with the general focus on the development of students to fill-in spots in the school band, chorale, and string quartet without considering other alternative student-driven music genre initiatives. On the other hand, music teacher education programmes are expected to integrate emerging developments and issues impinging on music teaching and learning but without being given the leeway to improve or add music courses or gain funds in obtaining the teaching services of specialists. Moreover, development in music teaching and education such as music technology, alternative modes of learning assessment, adjusting to student learning style diversity, and understanding different musical directions of various ethnic populations seem to be in the opposite end of the spectrum relative to the existing level of adaptability of the current curriculum and the traditional foundations of music teaching and learning. (O'Toole 24)             Despite the dynamics of these complex issues, the need to justify existing music programmes in secondary education remains. In the previous years, the expression of programme accountability to school administrators and the entire community is winning is performance competitions and the integration of music programmes in the secondary school curriculum. There is need to develop music programmes designed to function similar to the traditional systems but at the same time integrating developments in music teaching and learning. Accomplishing this involves the development of music programmes inclusive of the musical context and learning needs of the student population.             In particular, improving the Hong Kong outreach musicianship programme in the curriculum of secondary schools involves the development of programmes that offer an alternative to the teaching and learning infrastructures of the traditional system together while considering developments in the context of student and community musical direction, teaching and learning strategies, and motivations for participation and cooperation.                 The comprehensive musicianship through performance (CMP) learning model meets the learning gap in the Hong Kong secondary education curriculum. This model developed in response to the narrow, strictly performance skills dependent programmes able to produce outstanding performances but fail in helping students achieve musical depth or life-ling commitment to music. CMP comprises a teaching process focusing on the students' achievement of knowledge on music structures, history and aesthetics to facilitate their development of informed judgments on their music learning. (Heavner 170)             Technically, the CMP is not a curriculum but a tool for planning and conveying music instruction with the objective of facilitating the development of performance skills together with the achievement of knowledge about music. This process learning process involves the teacher acting as a facilitator propounding tasks and directions for analysis covering music being performed. This allows students to provide limitless scope of feedback giving the process a practical approach. The facilitator deals with five general areas of learning including selection, objectives, analyses, strategies and assessment depending upon the student context and supports active decision-making of students over their progress so that in the area of selection for music institutions and universities, students recognise their individual standing but hold an appreciation of their individual musical creativity just the same. (Heavner 171)             In terms of teaching techniques, CMP encompasses all modalities from verbal or abstract to visual, oral and kinaesthetic. Access to these modalities provides students with the option to learn music through their preferred modality ensuring quality and in-depth learning. Modalities encouraging participation fosters student involvement in creative activities. (Tweed, George and Wilcox 12)             In application, advantages and disadvantages of CMP exist. Advantages encompass the ability to incorporate inclusiveness and creative activities while disadvantages include the time issue since implementing CMP requires more time and the undermining of performance skills due to stress on holistic education. Studies show that despite the additional time requirement of CMP, this process enables educational institutions to achieve the musical education objectives better while contrary to common conception the CMP process actually improves performance skills while facilitating learning in other areas of music. (Tweed, George and Wilcox 15; Heavner 174) 4. Methodology To obtain the data requirements of the research, the survey method will be used to obtain unbiased, accurate and generalisable data. This data gathering method has advantages and disadvantages that should be considered in the application of the method so that disadvantages are as much as possible addressed. First, the method established the existence of a relationship between the variables but it does not determine the direction of the relationship. This issue is addressed in the research through the application of the qualitative method where the perceptions of the research participants are obtained to fill the weakness of the survey method. Second is the reliance of survey method on self-reported data implying great dependence on the truthfulness and accuracy of information given by the participants opening the research to the risk of obtaining unreliable data. The risk is arrested by the use of measurement tools in determining performance so that quantitative data addresses the limitations of qualitative data and vice versa. Third is the tedious research planning required by the survey method necessitating a minimum period of at least seven weeks for the completion of the survey. The current research meets the minimum survey period requirement based on the timetable for the completion of the research. (Salant and Dillman 19; Fowler 27) The method will be applied through a survey questionnaire floated to key administrative personnel, teachers and students of different secondary education institutions in Hong Kong involved in the music education.   Initially, the research will utilize purposive sampling to determine the number of administrators, teachers and student participants and random sampling to choose a representative sample for all these participant groupings. The research applies the simple random sampling method through the formula n/N x 100 = 10% to obtain a minimum representative sample from each educational institution and group classification. The formula affords sufficient representation to support data integrity. 5. Aims of the Study             Achievement of the purpose of the study involves the completion of two interrelated phases. The first phase involves the derivation of knowledge on the status of the music education in Hong Kong by surveying teachers on their attitude over music education and teaching strategies and analyse their answers based on the teacher competency requirements of the CMP infrastructure to determine areas requiring improvement to be addressed by the CMP process. The second phase of the study involves the development of a musicianship programme based on the CMP process addressing the weaknesses of Hong Kong's music education and assessing the viability of the programme based on feedback from music teachers and educational institutions. The end result of the study should be able to develop a musicianship program based on CMP that is acceptable to educational institutions, teachers and students.