Critical Perspectives in Canadian Music Education

Ten: E-Teaching and Learning in Music Education: A Case Study of Newfoundland and Labrador

T E N E-Teaching and Learning in Music Education: A Case Study of Newfoundland and Labrador Andrea Rose, Alex Hickey, and Andrew Mercer Introduction Distance education in Newfoundland and Labrador grew from a need to create equal access to high school courses, university programs, and other learning opportunities. Small, geographically isolated rural schools in the province have challenged the province’s ability to provide students with sufficient teacher and resource allocations. Out-migration, educational reform, the collapse of the cod fishery, and the resulting economic restraint have yielded a dramatic change in the demographics of coastal communities and their schools. The inevitable reality is that school enrolments and teacher availability are both declining at rates beyond the capacity of traditional face-to-face teaching and learning models. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a descriptive overview of new and emerging technologies in music education currently being used in e-teaching and learning contexts in Newfoundland and Labrador.1 Because the application of e-teaching and learning in music is still in its nascent stages and remains relatively unstudied in the literature, the purpose of the following discussion is to provide a foundational description of current developments. Topics include: historical contexts for the current initiatives in web-based 14 7 14 8 A n d r e a R o s e , A l e x H i c k e y, a n d A n d r e w M e r c e r teaching and learning music, ongoing developments in e-teaching and learning, emerging questions for research, and potential roles of community partnerships and collaborations. Historical Context: Music Education and Technology The relatively recent development and application of virtual learning technologies to education in Newfoundland and Labrador is part of a century’s worth of innovations intended to address the necessity of distance education in the province. In 1936, the Department of Education introduced the “School Car” initiative, which provided children living along the railway with access to a mobile school and teacher, who taught according to the available correspondence studies curriculum, learning materials, and equipment. The rail car also housed books from the Travelling Library headquartered in St. John’s and was in service until 1942 (Noseworthy, 1997). In 1939 the Department of Education organized a Correspondence Division to educate children living in small, isolated communities without schools. Lessons were sent to the children, who returned them by mail for evaluation (Noseworthy, 1997). These initial attempts at distance education were augmented by the introduction of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio School Broadcast Series, which ran from the 1950s until the 1980s. Content for this series was dovetailed to fit the prescribed provincial curriculum , and schools were encouraged to tune in for the “Schools Broadcast.” These broadcasts included large amounts of music and cultural content, which ranged from plays commissioned for this series, to interviews with artists and authors, to recordings of musical performances   –   all of which were accompanied by information on their relationship to the curriculum. Newfoundland joined the CBC network in 1949 and began contributing to the Maritimes School Broadcasts in 1952. In 1967, a music series (“Music in the Classroom”) for Grades 1 to 4 was created and remained part of the Atlantic school broadcasts from 1968 to 1973. Although Atlantic school broadcasts terminated in June 1975, local programs including “Let’s Sing a Song” (1974–75), “Something to Sing About” (1976–77), and “Old Times and New” (1978–79), continued to be heard in Newfoundland (Historical Foundation of Canada, 2008). At the postsecondary level, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) Extension Services offered some of the earliest postsecondary distance learning opportunities beginning in the late 1960s. Through a combination of teaching manuals, on-site teaching assistants, videotaped lectures, and hands-on support materials, these courses paralleled courses that were taught on campus. These courses were strictly aimed at teachers enrolled E- T e a c h i n g a n d L e a r n i n g i n M u s i c E d u c at i o n 14 9 in undergraduate degree programs (Mugridge, 1986). In 1977, the Telehealth and Educational Resource Agency (TETRA, formerly known as Telemedicine ) was also established (House & Keough, 1989). The Department of Education used TETRA’s network to provide distance education to the province’s K–12 schools, and continued to do so until...