Conference Agenda

Research questions

1. What were pupils' preferences regarding the various class session components in the classes taught by the student teachers: literacy, listening to music, singing, playing instruments, and movement?
2. How did the pupils describe their classroom behavior during sessions taught by the student teachers: paid attention, participated, talked to classmates, disrupted, enjoyed themselves and others?

Music is a cornerstone of a broad education that each child should receive: It touches hearts and minds, gladdens and thrills, challenges us, and connects us (HM government, 2022). The 2030 OECD Learning Compass (2019) states that until now, researchers have not succeeded in identifying another activity that develops children's cognitive abilities in the same ways or to the same extent as arts education in general, among which is music. Engagement in the arts develops pupils' empathic intelligence, enhancing emotional involvement, a sense of responsibility, and empathy for others (Davis, 2008). Via art classes, including music, pupils learn to think about what they cannot see. These skills are transferable to other skills, such as hypothesizing, re-enacting events, and future thinking (OECD, 2019).

Listening is an integral part of music education. Rojko (2012) claimed that the essence of music education is discovering the world of music, enabled by listening to music and appreciating its beauty. Listening to music is one of the most complex music skills to transmit to elementary school pupils (Hopper, 2007; Beach & Bolden, 2018). The teaching of listening demands that the teacher be very knowledgeable of the content being learned and lead active listening on the part of the pupils, who do not see the music but instead imagine it.

From an educational perspective, listening lays a foundation for other skills. It is considered an essential first skill in language acquisition, reading, writing, and speech (Hopper, 2007; Prananti, Ratminingsih, & Marjohan, 2019). Therefore, there is broad significance to the skill of listening that is learned in music class, whose environment provides the optimal conditions for listening so that the pupils can follow a line of thought that perhaps differs from their own, sharpen their understanding, and actively link new components to their previous knowledge (Wolvin & Coakley, 2000; Imhof, 2008). Moreover, pupils need listening skills to comprehend the teacher's oral instructions, such as for homework assignments (Owca, Pawlak, & Pronobis, 2003), as well as to develop social skills for school, such as group discussions in the classroom (Wolvin & Coakley, 2000; Adelmann, 2012).

From a constructivist standpoint, Liebman (2013) claimed that it would be a mistake to relate to listening as having no benefit. The main thrust of the constructivist view is how to stimulate the learner to be active and involved in consolidating her knowledge after listening. The methodological implication is to look at various ways of teaching, as these act as links to the process of creating and building among learners, among other things using listening, which is an important activity in all educational approaches.

Listening to music contributes to developing personal and social identity, creating interpersonal connections, and to pupils' mood and emotional regulation. Pupils of various ages created social ties during shared processes of creating, rehearsing, executing, and listening to, music. Specifically, pupils' listening to music develops their focusing ability. Listening activities in music class prepare the pupils for life, i.e., enable them to employ listening skills throughout their schooling and after that. Listening to music is an objective and a means of educational power (Svalina & Sukop, 2021).

The present paper deals with teacher education and more specifically courses in learning theories. The aim of the paper is to shed light on how to organize learning theory courses so that they contribute to teacher students’ creative abilities, for example to contribute with new and valuable solutions to problems (Runco & Jaeger, 2012) related to students’ learning, for example to how to optimize the learning environment for a diverse group of learners.

In our courses of learning theories at the university the students are acquainted with a diverse range of learning theories, spanning from “classical” theories such as behaviorism, cognitivism and socio cultural theory (Säljö, 2015) to more specific theories dealing with delimited phenomena such as motivation (Wery & Thomson, 2013). as well as empirical studies of learning in various contexts (Hattie & Yates, 2014). Thus, there are a diversity of theoretical constructs how to understand the phenomena of learning, that the students become acquainted with.

Some researchers propose that creativity is related to the ability to change perspective when looking at a situation (Yang and Hung, 2021). This is of interest in our learning theory courses because the students are trained to analyze learning situations with help of different learning theories, working as theoretical glasses, each with a certain perspective in focus. Therefor it is possible to argue that being acquainted with several learning theories could help develop teacher students’ creativity.

On the other hand, it is possible to argue that the diversity of learning theories could be confusing to the student, which could counteract their development of creativity. According to Säljö (2009), the knowledge base on learning has gradually become more and more diverse and complex over time, providing different perspectives how to understand learning. However, Alexander, Schallert and Reynolds (2009) argue that the multitude of vantage points are incommensurate in some cases which could present barriers for progress of our understanding of learning. It is here of interest if such inconsistencies also may hamper the ability for students to use the theories to shift perspective to generate creative solutions to learning problems. In a previous study of musical creativity, Hagerman (2016) found that imposing limitations on a problem could actually open doors for creativity rather than close them, for example deciding to explore several possibilities within one particular style, rather than mixing several styles and exploring fewer possibilities in each style. An analogue to this when working with learning theories could be to decide to explore one learning theory in depth rather than working with several theories with a more shallow understanding.

Here lies an interesting question of how to balance diverse and specialized knowledge in a university course of learning theories. On one hand, there exist many different learning theories, and if the students learn all of these theories one could argue that they will be well equipped to change perspective and generate creative solutions to learning problems in their teaching. On the other hand, since it takes time to learn each theory, it might be necessary to delimit a course to some of the theories. In a handbook of university pedagogy Elmgren and Henriksson (2016), discuss the difference between deep and shallow learning strategies and in particular address the problems associated with shallow learning strategies. Confronted with a diversity of learning theory, some students could possible resort to shallow strategies. By that reason, it is of interest how to organize a course resting on a large knowledge base so that the students benefit from the diverse content of learning theories.