Introduction

This free course, Assessment in secondary music, explores assessment in music education. You will consider issues around the purposes of assessment in music, the forms that it takes, how you can ensure that these forms of assessment are appropriate and perceived as legitimate, and how young people can be fully involved in the assessment of their work, including making decisions about what is assessed and how it is assessed. Most of all, however, the course will have at its heart considerations of how music assessment can be musical.

The course identifies and explores some of the key issues and debates around assessment and music in secondary schools. Through coming to understand these issues and debates you will be able to reflect upon and develop your assessment practice. In particular, you will gain greater understanding of how assessment can support the development of young people’s musical understanding.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by its author, Gary Spruce:

Transcript

As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how it relates to your practice. Hopefully you will have opportunity to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and re-visited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes within the course – in order to do this, and to retrieve your responses, you will need to enrol on the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.