by Micheila Brigginshaw 29

sound could be combined with other instruments, or the discovered sounds could be the inspiration for an instrumental or vocal composition.

Emily, investigating her school environment, used recordings including corridor chatter, school bell, the sound of writing, and a teacher giving instructions to the class. Her composition opened with the sound of the school bell amidst indistinct chatter and footsteps over a repeated four chord pattern. This was looped to provide a hypnotic accompaniment to her soundscape. This track segued into the sound of the teacher’s voice and then to the sound of writing. The latter had a distinctive rhythmic quality and was layered to build intensity and exploit this. The bell interrupts this sequence and leads back to the opening chatter at a higher volume than before. The sound of writing, on a single track this time, but stretched to distort the sound, was used, juxtaposed with the sound of a cough, then a sigh. A final bell rings and the four chord accompaniment plays out to fade.

How do we become better listeners in a world dominated by visual stimuli while being surrounded by sounds we may not notice? Pupils were encouraged to consider how, as a part of this process, they might listen to their environment in a different way and be more mindful of the sounds by which they are surrounded. For further ideas about listening, investigate Pierre Schaefer’s theory of listening modes (see, for example, Kane 2014, 15-41). He described the ideas of ‘reduced listening’ in which he identified the musicality hidden within commonplace sounds, complex rhythms, interesting textures, or tonal qualities.

Other useful ways to research would be to listen to examples of this process in other composers. Deserts (1950-4) by Edgard Varèse in which sequences of ‘organised sound’ on tape are interwoven into a composition for an orchestra of wind, piano, and percussion. The melodic content of Steve Reich’s Different Trains (1988) is based on the contour and rhythm of ordinary human speech. Many composers have been passionate lovers of nature and show this in their work. Many of Beethoven’s were inspired by his long walks, including the Pastoral Symphony. Much of the music of Claude Debussy evokes the natural world in some form, and he was passionate about the symbiosis between music and nature, capturing the essence of landscapes and the drama of nature in works such as Les Collines d’Anacapri and La Mer. The influence of nature could be explored in the works of other composers, such a Messaiens’s depiction of birdsong in his magnum opus Catalogue d’Oiseaux and Jonathan Harvey’s Bird Concerto with Pianosong, scored for solo piano, instrumental ensemble, and electronic and computerised hardware. Lucy Claire, with her beautifully evocative soundscape compositions, notes how ‘Music is everywhere! It is in the whoosh of the wind, the patter of the rain, the rhythm of a train and the ding of a bell’ (see: <www.lucy-claire.com>).

As an extension to this project, could there be a way of creating a record over time of one’s own personal sound ecology and environment? Soundscape compositions, by their very nature, allow the listener to become immersed in the physical environment of a place, highlighting the ecology of the setting. This idea, in 2020, fifty years on from the publication of Sound and Silence, has been brought into sharp focus with the drastically altered sonic environments across the globe. Sound ecologists are mapping the world, creating a shared audio landscape. For example, the fascinating work on the site of ‘Cities and Memories’ by Stuart Fowkes (<www.citiesandmemory.com>), which explores the unique sounds of different areas, cities and natural sites, and creatively reimagines them, creating unique sounds with an innovative use of technology.

John Paynter writes in Hear and Now: an introduction to modern music in schools that ‘Music is about getting excited by sounds’ (1972, 7-14). There’s not such a big gulf between the music of today and the music of the past. In fact, there’s no gulf at all. All that has happened is that resources have increased. There are now more sounds to be used for making music and more ways of using them. Find some sounds and start making music.

BIO Micheila Brigginshaw is a musician and teacher of music. She is passionate about the power of music to inspire creativity and enable one to reach their full potential. She has worked at Berkhamsted School as a classroom and piano teacher since 2010. Micheila became interested in the writings of Pauline Oliveros, the development of soundscaping in the work of contemporary composers and the way in which that offered an accessible means of composing in the classroom. This led to further research and publication of an essay in Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music, published by Routledge in November 2020. Micheila continues to research in this field. This subject and the importance of ‘listening with attention’ remains a source of fascination for her.

The role of current affairs: Contemporary subject knowledge acquisition at A Level

Introduction

The aim of this action research project was to explore a more holistic approach to studying Sociology A Level, and to combine the metacognitive processes of interleaving and spaced retrieval through the application of sociology to current affairs. This action research project aimed to encourage students to explore the links between their A-level subjects and apply their subject knowledge to contemporary examples in the news. As Browne (2015, 4) notes, for real success in Sociology, students need to be critically engaged with the world around them and use their sociological knowledge to analyse the societies in which they live.‘Pupil Voice’ gained in December 2019 notes that Year 12 students selected Sociology to gain a better understanding of the world around them; to learn about the reasons why people behave the way they do; and because Sociology links in well with their other subjects.

Academic literature notes the importance of encouraging students to be active learners (as my literature review below explores). One of the ways this can be done is by encouraging students to make links between what they are studying and what they see in real life. This will help them to understand the relevance of their studies. There are also many benefits of keeping abreast of current affairs and current events in society, such as the fact that students will develop their skills in critical reading as well as collaborating with their peers to discuss their analysis of the article.

The procedure for this project involved a focus on ‘application’ in lessons with one targetYear 12 class. In these lessons, students would apply their knowledge of sociology to interpret a contemporary news article and explore any links to the exam board syllabus. Any impacts were measured through quantitative data gathered by students’ test scores on four low stakes interleaving-style tests over a 7-week period. The participants were three classes of Year 12 Sociology students. One class of 12 students made up the experimental group, while two classes of 14 and 7 made up the control groups to allow a comparison to be made.

Literature review

The first area of research I explored was looking at active learning (in Brown et al.’s (2014) use of the term). I wanted to focus on enabling students to realise how different parts of a syllabus link together.This is because in Make It Stick, Brown et al. state that one of the

strategies for students to understand concepts better is for them to apply the relevance of an abstract concept and make it something concrete; and to see the relevance of their studies. I considered here the role of holistic learning – aiming to encourage students to see how different subjects and topics link together.

In terms of active strategies for learning, the academic literature was consistent in encouraging students to learn from each other. As Lucas and Bernstein (2015, 78) note, giving students more ownership and responsibility to develop their intellectual skills can enable them to learn from one another. Group discussions are also highlighted as a way to motivate students (Black et al., 2004). Through dialogic talk among students and discussing contemporary topics, pupils can challenge one another’s views or build on them to develop their own understanding of the topic.This is particularly relevant in subjects like Sociology, where there is often no one ‘right’ answer, and all students should have the opportunity to debate their views on differing topics.

This also led me to explore literature on metacognition and strategies for interleaving. Interleaving is a process whereby students switch between topics within a subject in order to improve their learning. In Sociology, this works well by exploring a key sociological theory, such as functionalism, and then studying it in a range of contexts, such as in relation to explaining the family, the education system, and the role of crime and deviance in society.This could be done in this project by taking a news article and modelling how to link it to a variety of topics or concepts students have studied since the beginning of the course.

Low-stakes testing is a strategy which has attracted a lot of research in recent years and is a key way of practising interleaving. By encouraging frequent knowledge recall, the process of ‘forgetting’ becomes interrupted (Brown et al., 2014). As this is an area in which much research has already been done, I decided to amend the strategy and focus on encouraging students to apply their knowledge to news articles, as well as then testing them on the syllabus content, to measure any impact on knowledge recall.

Spaced practice is another area which is mentioned in academic sources as providing a good opportunity for learning. This is where students are tested or invited to recall information that they have studied some time ago. Donovan and Radosevich (1999) reviewed 63 studies carried out on students using cramming (massed practice) and spaced practice and found that students who used spaced practice had superior learning and recall compared to those using cramming. My action research project attempted to use this strategy through the application lessons, where students needed to recall content they have studied throughout the two-year linear A-level course at various intervals.

This ties in with Newman’s (1854) long-established intellectual principle. Success in Sociology requires students to demonstrate this intellectual principle as it highlights that everything must be seen in relation to the whole picture. For example, one cannot analyse an institution in society, such as the family, the education system, religion, or media alone. Rather, one must consider the various links between all of these institutions and how they both shape, and are shaped by, society. If students can demonstrate skills in synthesising, applying, and evaluating information, they are far more likely to be successful. These skills require students to be active in their understanding, rather than just passive receivers of information. Claxton (2008) supports this idea, arguing that schools must train students in particular ways of thinking and learning, and that there must be an emphasis on learning to learn – a metacognitive principle.

Procedure

Based on the literature review, I decided to take the following plan of action: I planned a number of lessons with a specific focus on ‘application’ of sociological knowledge, where students would analyse news articles and apply any sociological links they could. They would also be encouraged to apply links to their other A-level subjects. They would then present their article to other students in the class, giving a short summary of the article, and then explaining the links they had made. To assess whether this was also helping their understanding of Sociology as a whole, I constructed a series of ‘mini tests’ which were based on the principles of interleaving and spaced practice.

In the application lessons, I would select some news articles that had some direct links to what students had been studying recently. For example, in the first application lesson, students had just finished the ‘Families and Households’ module, so I included articles which directly impacted the family, such as an article on smartphone addiction among young people; Northern Ireland decriminalising same-sex marriage and abortion; and an article discussing who is responsible for ill children. I also included other articles which had more indirect links to the family, such as an article on climate change protests, the housing crisis, and London homicides.

Students were put in pairs of similar ability and were invited to ‘bid’ for the article they wanted to analyse. This

was to allow them to have some choice, while making it slightly competitive. Following Black et al.’s (2004) recommendations about student participation, I invited students at first to brainstorm any possible links they could make between their sociological knowledge and understanding and the article they were given. They had 15 minutes to recall their knowledge and apply it to the article they had, before feeding back in a general class discussion and teaching each other.This was because the literature recommendations were to promote student dialogue as a way for them to learn from each other.An example of an annotated article can be seen in Appendix 1.

In order to measure any impact of this project, I designed a series of small tests, around the metacognition principle of interleaving. Students were tested on content they had been studying a few weeks prior to the test, with the aim of interrupting the process of forgetting and encouraging students to retrieve information from memory, thus strengthening their knowledge recall. For example, when studying ‘Education’ as a topic, students would complete a spaced retrieval test on the ‘Families and Household’ module.

Key findings

Students completed 4 tests each over a 7-week period.An example of a test students completed can be seen in Appendix 2.This created 132 individual pieces of data as test scores – 48 in the experimental group, with 84 in the control group. For each test, an average was taken for the class results for the experimental group and the control groups.The table below shows a summary of the main sets of data – a bar chart to show the results from the interleaving tests by the experimental group (who received the application lessons) and the results from the control group.

From the results, two main conclusions can be drawn:

1. The experimental group consistently had higher test scores than the control group.This could show that the application lessons had some effect in enhancing students’ understanding of concepts. Applying the concepts in a new context – to a news article –helped them see the relevance of sociological concepts in contemporary society. This then translated in their ability to recall the concepts at a later date in the interleaving tests.The biggest difference was seen in test 2 – where the experimental group had a class average of 6.5 out of 10, while the control group had an average of 4.3.

2. The control group, despite not having any explicit application lessons, still made consistent progress between the first and the final test.Their average increased from 3.4 out of 10 in the first test, to 6.5 by the final test.This could demonstrate that the process of regular low stakes testing and spaced retrieval can be effective. Students in the control group showed improvements throughout the 7-week period of spaced retrieval tests.These students therefore still benefited from the spaced tests which aimed to interrupt the process of forgetting and enhance their knowledge recall.

Evaluation

The data from my experimental group demonstrates that their performance on interleaving tests did improve throughout the year. In the first test, the mean score for the experimental group was 4.9 and by the last test, the mean score was 7.5. By using the principle of interleaving during the application lessons, the key concepts were more accessible for the students and had become more embedded in their thinking. They were now able to apply these concepts, rather than simply remember them.

However, it is also important to acknowledge that there may be significant individual differences in these classes such as difference in ability, the work they have done in other lessons, etc. These confounding variables were not controlled for in this project. Equally, the control groups, despite not receiving application lessons, made progress over the course of the 4 tests. This shows that it could be the practice of spaced retrieval tests which has an impact on their scores, rather than the application style lessons themselves.