Education acts as a leading cultural institution of Kazakhstani society, the main determinant of quality in the twenty-first century geo- strategic resource i.e. the country's intellectual potential.
The primary challenge in music education today is the shift of music teacher training to a new level of training specialists who possess advanced technologies and methodologies, different means of diagnosis of mental and intellectual development of young people. The foreground task is to study individual-typological characteristics of students, their creative individuality and to design such contents of music teacher education that provides the conditions for the all-round development of each individual. Therefore, modernization of higher pedagogical education in the 21st century requires,the implementation of individual approach to learning.
The article deals with the features of learner-centered educational technology at the university focused on the effective management of learning and educational process. This technology is based on varied forms of pedagogical influence, diagnosis and self-diagnosis of levels of students’ professional training and it involves forming and updating pedagogical skills of the students’ as active subjects of educational process and the following continuous self-development.
The European trend of the Kazakhstani society development actualizes the need for all-round, fully developed, socially active and competent employees with fundamental scientific training, rich inner culture, and high professional level. In this regard, the role of music teachers, the importance of their personal qualities and pedagogical proficiency level are increasing. The Kazakhstani higher pedagogical educational institutions face a complex and multifaceted problem whose solution involves, on the one hand, the formation of future teachers’ competence and, on the other hand, the educational process orientation to general cultural, intellectual and moral development of future music teachers. During the intensive modernization of education characterized by updating training contents and professional training, appearing innovative technologies, improving the forms and methods of training, there is a need to revise the classical approaches to music teachers’ training.
The traditional system of music teacher training, though declared teacher’s personality development as one of priority objectives, mainly focused on the basic needs of education in which a future music teacher is intended to operate. However, a modern music teacher must be not only a high level professional, but also meet the following requirements: to have developed competence in the field of music education; to be able to design individual educational trajectories of students to provide educational content variability; to be prepared to implement interactive, active ingredients into the learning process including training teaching methods, information and communication technologies; to have formed skills needed to continue their own education.
Nowadays the nature of musicians’ careers is changing: they have no longer a job for life, but a portfolio career. The standards of excellence required, (higher artistic quality, higher educational quality, leadership etc.), keep rising.
The changing nature of musicians’ careers asks for transferable skills, and for personal and professional development.
Our observations showed that graduates encounter a variety of problems, nearly all of which are related to using generic skills and finding work. Former students felt that the vocational preparation they received gave little indication of the world they would enter. The strongest needs expressed in their responses were for life skills (e.g. management, health issues, marketing, stage presentation, networking, skills of leadership), all the result of the new demands arising from the rapidly changing profession of music teacher which is divided into related areas, and from there four central roles were defined: those of composer, performer, leader and teacher. These roles are overlapping and they are relevant in all genres of music.
For musicians, this means, that training needs to be provided that offers quality, accessibility, diversity and flexibility. Recommendations encourage music education department to provide a wider curriculum in which the students will be engaged in diverse music activities.
A music teacher has to function in different contexts, with roles including those of performer, composer, teacher, mentor, coach, leader, and so on. A music teacher will thus need to learn to respond accordingly to the variables in environmental contexts. This is why a conceptual framework of training is important to underpin curricula in the university. It implies creating adaptive learning environments in which future music teachers can be trained to function effectively in a continuously changing professional practice. The music departments’ educational practice in the conceptual framework of learner-centered approach should be developed in association with professional organizations. Maintaining a strong relationship with the professional field and a strong network of relevant partners is crucial. Moreover, this educational practice should be relevant to the current and changing cultural landscape, explore different contexts, be intervention oriented, lead to relevant learning experiences, and illuminate attitudes and values.
Central to this educational practice and underpinning the earlier mentioned life skills is the notion of leadership of musicians; within personal, artistic, educational, business and community contexts. Therefore the following roles for future musicians should be explored:
The music teacher as:
- innovator (explorer, creator and risk taker)
- identifier (of missing skills, and means to refresh them)
- partner/cooperator (within formal partnerships)
- reflective practitioner (engaged in research and evaluative processes; able to contextualize experiences)
- collaborator (dialoguing with professional arts practitioners, students, teachers )
- entrepreneur; job creator
These roles are crucial and can be applied to all kinds of practitioners in the music profession.
The primary challenge in music education today is the shift of music teacher training to a new level of training specialists who possess advanced technologies and methodologies, different means of diagnosis of mental and intellectual development of young people. The foreground task is to study individual-typological characteristics of students, their creative individuality and to design such contents of music teacher education that provides the conditions for the all-round development of each individual. Therefore, modernization of higher pedagogical education in the 21st century requires, in our opinion, the implementation of individual approach to learning.
However, in spite of considerable research and pedagogical development and innovation processes in higher education, the implementation of current approaches has not received adequate coverage in pedagogy, psychology and methods of teaching at Kazakhstani higher pedagogical institutions. Despite the considerable amount of theoretical and methodological research on teaching profession, there are still a number of problems, e.g., – future teachers’ formation, his or her pedagogical skills’ formation, readiness for teaching activities, required further research and methodologies to resolve the contradiction between high demands on teachers’ professional and educational training and insufficient scientific and educational software process, weak elaborated technology of its formation. In particular, there are very few studies on implementing ideas of individual approach to preparing future music teachers in higher school.
Instead, education humanization, orientation to person, attempt to find ways of the best use of inexhaustible possibilities of personality suggest a change in priorities in the field of social and educational values. According to the new paradigm of learner-oriented education, training process is directed on formation of advanced, self-sufficient individual, adapted to the rapidly changing realities. Education should arouse cognitive interest, encourage individual creativity, and give a chance to see achievements and future prospects. Unlike the traditional paradigm, which focuses students on mastering a certain amount of knowledge and skills, the center of humanistic, learner-oriented educational paradigm is an individual, his or her potential as a basis for forming a creative, competitive, capable of self-development person [1].
The new paradigm of education highlights the learner-centered approach to shaping a future teacher, the essence of which is to focus on the personality of a teacher, the realization of his or her own value system in the professional activities. New scientific-pedagogical strategy is targeted to design personal development . Improving training involves developing new educational technologies aimed at implementing personal approach to education, which is possible only in one way - to make education a personality’s self-study area.
Learner-centered approach to education and training is a purposeful, planned, specially organized educational process aimed at development and self-development of students, their personal characteristics that contribute to revealing future specialist’s potential resource. In practice, unfortunately, the improvement of the learning process at teacher’s higher schools reduces to the development of new schemes of practical training cycle, new disciplines, which usually leads to additional extensive student workload. In most cases, no attention is paid to studying own personal power, developing their potential, and forming semantic field of future music teachers, in particular.
According to scientists, the preparation of teachers at universities can be qualitatively improved if: student’s personality, his or her activity, psychological mechanisms of learning and formation of intellectual and professional activities are put in the center of the didactic system; management of teaching and learning process is based on continuous diagnostic monitoring in terms of personal and professional development and continuous self-development of students and monitoring their progress; each student’s individually-typological characteristics, learning style and professional activity, subjective experience, the ability to interpersonal relationships and professionally significant qualities of future teachers are considered; and basic didactic, organizational, methodological, psychological and technological requirements are adhered in the pedagogical process built according to the new paradigm of education [1, p. 5-6].
Thereby, all the students at every stage of training are composed individual educational trajectory, which, unlike the curriculum, is flexible and takes into account dynamics of personal and professional development of future teachers. It includes the results of educational and psychological assessment of students’ professionally significant qualities which are registered in his or her psycho-pedagogical card.
During the learner-centered teaching teachers purposefully mobilize students’ activeness, stimulate training activities motivation, personal and professional growth taking into account the level of professional and personal training of each student. In practice, the integrated use of different forms of motivation, such as – the organization of educational space, success, estimation, example, moral and material incentives, etc. are optimal.[2]
The contents of learner-centered learning is based on matching invariant and variant core of an educational program allowing students, to some extent, control the contents of their training. Learner-centered training organization provides continuous management of educational process in order to enhance students’ cognitive activity and, at the same time, enable them to self-own training.
Monitoring of the educational process success according to learner-centered approach includes teacher’s evaluation of future professionals’ general and vocational training level, students’ self-assessment of their educational success and expert evaluation of the learning outcomes effectiveness. The major criteria for future teachers’ personal and professional training are personal qualities and individual style expression; effectiveness of interpersonal relationships; educational achievements and subjective experience; professionally significant characteristics of a graduate as a competent music teacher.
A curriculum emerging from the conceptual framework of learner-centered approach is based on acquiring competences, requires team-teaching and receives feed back from external partners. It values both tradition and change. It is reflective of the outside world. It reevaluates existing knowledge. Such a curriculum can be very individual, with different learning paths, and it can include portfolios, context-related assessment, and peer learning. Assessment and learning go hand in hand: what can be learned can be assessed, what can be assessed can be learned. Assessment in learner-centered approach should give students the confidence, enthusiasm and commitment to face new challenges.
New forms of learning must be mirrored in examinations. Learner-centered approach requires flexible curricula, individualized learning paths, and a continuing exploration of new technologies. If curricula and assessment are to be reshaped, the nature of teaching will have to change.
The most critical factor in high-quality teaching is high-quality learning. Teachers need to be lifelong learners in the first place.
The successful implementation of a learner-centered approach in the music department of university is highly dependent on teachers’ competences. Teachers are powerful role models for students; they model the musician’s future career by demonstrating a capacity to adapt to change and put this into practice both as a teacher and as a professional. Teachers can be pivotal in the transformative processes. Without this example, students are not likely to be motivated. Balancing between tradition and change in the curricula need not mean that music department have to get rid of master-apprentice schemes, but the “master” should invite and encourage curiosity, discovery, and the ability to question. Reflective practice and personal development for teachers is essential. Teachers are encouraged to become “enablers” rather than transmitters of knowledge.
A personal development plan should be central for students, leading to a relevant development of their portfolios, guided by teachers whose role is to be mentors. Self-management should be encouraged by asking basic questions such as «what do I want to contribute as a music teacher to the society» and «where do my strengths lie»? In short, questions of identity should be facilitated.
To illustrate our research, it is necessary to finish with some examples of practice in the framework of learner-centered approach in music education.
An artistic project for freshmen took place at the department of music education and choreography, Abai Kazakh National pedagogical university. The aim was to help first-year students take a first step in realizing a personal development plan by working collectively to create and perform a composition and then reflecting on its realization. Four different improvised compositions were prepared for two different contexts: a primary school and a nursing home for elderly people. The students were divided into four groups which were mixed by instruments and by principal study area. While composing their piece, the groups always had to bear in mind the audience for which they were going to perform and thus the context. After two weeks of preparation the performances took place. Every student kept a personal journal during the project for evaluation and self assessment. A majority of the students were positive about the idea of continuing to learn more about this kind of creative work. They also realized the great value of improvisation and composing for their development and growth as performing musicians. The results showed that this group of freshmen were already showing signs of becoming more informed, open minded and flexible musicians able to adapt not only to their immediate university environment, but also to the two contrasting contexts of a school and a nursing home for elderly people.
Application of individual approach to future music teachers’ training in practice showed its feasibility and effectiveness. First, students who are trained at universities in learner-centered teaching, show more humanistic orientation, personality and cognitive reflection, commitment to the development of creativity and search for individual style of teaching. Thus, learner- oriented educational technologies of future music teachers’ training include educational process management based on the diagnosis and self-diagnosis of students’ training levels; involve the use of variant forms of pedagogical influence aimed at creating students’ educational activity and updating their own activity as subjects of the educational process and subsequent self-education and self-development during professional activities.
Thus, learner-oriented educational strategy is focused on the nature of teacher training, and helps reveal the creative potential of future teachers. It contributes to students’ individual style of teaching activities by disclosing potential resources of the individual, focus on building students’ individual trajectories of education during training at universities and further postgraduate education. High-level pedagogical skills can only be achieved through constant and continuous personal and professional self-development and self-teaching throughout life.
Further research should be dealt with diagnosis of students’ professional training at pedagogical universities, algorithmic process of building their individual educational trajectories at different stages of education; gender aspect of future teachers’ professional development within implementation of learner-centered approach to learning. It is also important to clarify the criteria for future music teachers’ professional training, as well as the problem of detecting psychological defense mechanisms that prevent the disclosure of individual potential and teaching skills development.
- Markova K. Psihologiya professionalizma /A.K. Markova. - M. : Znanie, 1996. - 34 p.
- Yakimanskaya S. Lichnostno-orientirovannoe obuchenie v sovremennoy shkole / I.S. Yakimanskaya. - M., 1996. - 108 s.