The Teacher: Music Literacy Education in South African Secondary Schools
Understanding the people who make music education possible
Music curricula describe what learners should know. Policies determine what should be taught. Assessment frameworks specify what learners should demonstrate. Yet between the curriculum on paper and the musical understanding of a learner stands a person:
the music teacher.
A central strand of my research examines the experiences of music teachers and the ways in which they sustain music-literacy education within complex and often very different educational environments. My empirical research in this area began specifically in South African secondary schools, but the questions it raises have wider relevance for music education across Southern African contexts where access, resources, teacher preparation, musical traditions and educational opportunities may differ considerably.
The research asks not only:
What are music teachers expected to teach?
but also:
What do music teachers actually have to do to make meaningful musical learning possible?
The Music Literacy Conundrum
My doctoral research, Investigating the Music Literacy Conundrum in South African Secondary Schools, began with the recognition that the teaching and learning of music literacy cannot be explained by one single problem. There is no simple answer such as: the curriculum is inadequate; schools do not have enough resources; learners lack prior knowledge; teachers need more training; or insufficient time is available. All of these may play a role. But they interact.
The result is what I described as the Music Literacy Conundrum: a complex interaction between curriculum, teachers, learners, resources, management and educational environments. Music-literacy education therefore cannot be understood adequately by examining one component in isolation. A teacher may have an excellent curriculum but insufficient teaching time. Another may have limited physical resources but considerable community support. One teacher may work with learners who have received years of instrumental tuition. Another may need to establish foundational musical understanding before the prescribed secondary-school curriculum can meaningfully begin.
The same curriculum can therefore become a very different educational experience depending on where, by whom and with whom it is taught.
Listening to Teachers
Rather than beginning by asking what teachers were doing incorrectly, my research took a different approach. I wanted to understand how teachers continued to make music-literacy education work despite the complexity surrounding them.
The doctoral study therefore used qualitative narrative inquiry to explore the lived experiences of eight South African music-literacy teachers. Their stories mattered. Teachers carry into the classroom far more than curriculum knowledge. Their teaching is shaped by their own musical education, professional experiences, cultural contexts, institutional histories, beliefs about music, relationships with learners and accumulated knowledge about what works — and what does not.
Listening to their stories made it possible to move beyond descriptions of educational problems and to examine how teachers actually responded to those problems. A different picture began to emerge. The teachers were not simply implementing a curriculum.
They were continually interpreting, negotiating, adapting and rebuilding it.
Six Interconnected Areas
The research identified six broad areas that interact within the music-literacy landscape:
Teachers
Learners
Curriculum
Resources
Management
Environment
None operates independently. Resources influence what a teacher can offer. Management decisions influence time, staffing and programme sustainability. Learners enter the classroom with different musical histories and levels of preparation. Curriculum expectations influence sequencing and assessment. The educational environment shapes what is possible. And the teacher continually negotiates the relationships between all of these. This interconnectedness is important because attempts to improve music education can fail when they address only one part of the system.
Providing resources alone does not automatically solve a pedagogical problem. Changing a curriculum does not necessarily address differences in learner preparation. Teacher development cannot compensate indefinitely for structural limitations.
Effective music education therefore requires an understanding of the relationships between the different parts of the educational system.
When Resources Mean More Than Instruments
One outcome of this work was a deeper understanding of the concept of resources. Resources are often discussed primarily in terms of physical materials: instruments; classrooms; textbooks; technology; scores; and equipment. These are undoubtedly important. But teachers themselves can also become significant educational resources.
Their experience, creativity, professional knowledge, adaptability, networks and understanding of their learners can enable music programmes to continue in circumstances where the physical environment is less than ideal. This does not mean that teachers should be expected to compensate endlessly for systemic inequality.
Rather, it highlights how much educational knowledge is located within teachers themselves — knowledge that can easily remain invisible when research focuses only on curriculum documents, examination results or material provision.
Teacher Knowledge Is Lived Knowledge
One of the strongest themes emerging from the teachers' narratives was the importance of lived experience. Teachers draw on their own histories when they teach. Their experiences as learners influence the way they explain concepts. Their experiences as musicians influence what they consider important. Their previous successes and failures affect how they approach new learners. Their cultural and educational backgrounds shape how they understand musical knowledge.
Over time, teachers develop practical forms of knowledge that cannot always be captured fully in a syllabus. They begin to recognise when a learner needs another explanation. They know when the planned sequence needs to change. They discover ways to connect an unfamiliar concept to music a learner already understands. They learn where additional repetition is needed. They identify which resources work in their particular environment.
This does not diminish the importance of formal teacher education or curriculum knowledge. Instead, it demonstrates that professional expertise develops through the continuing interaction between knowledge, experience, context and reflection.
Teaching Across Different Musical Literacies
South African music education exists within an exceptionally rich musical environment. Learners may encounter Western art music, jazz, popular music, Indigenous African music, church music, community music-making and many other musical traditions — often simultaneously. Yet the forms of musical knowledge valued in formal education do not always correspond neatly with the knowledge learners already possess.
A learner may have highly developed aural abilities but limited experience reading staff notation. Another may perform fluently within a particular musical tradition without using the terminology expected by a formal curriculum. Another may have substantial written theory knowledge but struggle to connect it to actual sound. This creates an important role for the teacher.
The teacher often becomes a mediator between musical literacies. Rather than asking only whether learners possess musical knowledge, we need to ask:
What musical knowledge do they already possess?
How is that knowledge represented?
And how can it become a bridge towards new forms of musical understanding?
These questions later became increasingly important in the development of my work in Repertoire-Based Music Literacy Education.
From Curriculum Delivery to Teacher Agency
The doctoral study gradually shifted my attention from what teachers experienced to what teachers did in response to those experiences. This led to my growing research interest in teacher agency.
Teacher agency concerns the capacity of teachers to make purposeful professional decisions and to act within the circumstances in which they work. In music education, this may include: adapting teaching sequences; developing new resources; creating additional learning opportunities; building ensembles and music programmes; responding to gaps in learners' previous education; negotiating curriculum requirements; connecting different musical traditions; and finding alternative routes towards the same learning outcome.
These actions are often small and largely invisible. Yet collectively they may determine whether a music programme survives and whether learners gain meaningful access to musical learning.
What Teachers Make Possible
This has led to an important shift in my research.
Instead of asking only:
What do music teachers teach?
I have become increasingly interested in asking:
What do music teachers make possible?
A teacher may make it possible for a learner with little formal musical background to enter an examination pathway.
A teacher may:
- create an ensemble that gives learners their first opportunity to perform with others;
- develop materials because commercially available resources do not suit the learners in front of them;
- translate between different musical vocabularies;
- build a music programme within a school where none existed previously, or;
- find a way for learners to continue despite financial, institutional or logistical constraints.
These actions extend beyond straightforward curriculum delivery. They represent forms of educational agency, mediation and infrastructure-building.
Sustainability in Uneven Educational Contexts
Teacher agency becomes especially significant in contexts where educational opportunities are uneven. Music programmes can be particularly vulnerable because they often depend on specialist teachers, instruments, suitable teaching spaces, timetabling, institutional commitment and sufficient numbers of learners. When one of these elements changes, the programme itself may become unstable.
My developing research therefore considers the relationship between teacher agency and the sustainability of music education.
How do teachers maintain programmes when circumstances change?
How do they create continuity when learner preparation varies substantially?
How do they establish pathways into formal music learning?
What kinds of professional knowledge allow teachers to respond successfully to changing environments?
And where is the boundary between productive teacher agency and an educational system relying too heavily on individual teachers to overcome structural problems?
These questions are central to understanding sustainable music education.
The South African Study and the Wider Southern African Question
My doctoral empirical work focused specifically on South African secondary schools and the South African CAPS environment. Its findings should therefore be understood within that context.
However, many of the broader questions raised by the study have relevance beyond South Africa. Across Southern Africa, music education takes place within diverse systems, cultures and levels of formal provision. In some contexts, learners may have extensive community musical experience but little access to formal music-literacy education. In others, specialist music teachers or teaching resources may be scarce. Elsewhere, strong musical traditions may exist outside formal schooling while pathways towards examinations or tertiary study remain limited.
This opens an important wider research area:
How can formal music education recognise, connect with and extend musical knowledge that already exists within communities?
And:
What forms of support do teachers need in order to build sustainable bridges between informal, community-based and formal musical learning?
These questions increasingly connect my teacher research with my current work in access, music literacy and RBMLE.
From the Teacher to the Learner
The teachers in my doctoral study helped change the direction of my research. Their stories demonstrated that music literacy is not simply a set of concepts contained within a curriculum. It is something that has to be made learnable. And teachers continually make decisions about how that happens.
This led naturally to another question:
If teachers are continually adapting music-literacy education to make it meaningful for learners, what might a music-literacy curriculum look like if those connections were built into its design from the beginning?
That question forms an important bridge from my research on teachers towards my current work on learners and Repertoire-Based Music Literacy Education.
Selected Research
Doctoral Research
Investigating the Music Literacy Conundrum in South African Secondary Schools
A qualitative narrative inquiry into the lived experiences of eight South African music-literacy teachers and the interconnected variables affecting the teaching and learning of music literacy.
View doctoral thesis (University of Pretoria repository)
Published Research
'NAOUIEDCT' and 'RCSSEOEUR': harmonising complexity in the South African landscape of music literacy education in secondary schools
Published in the British Journal of Music Education, this work explores the resource-related, cultural and pedagogical complexities surrounding music-literacy education and considers the challenge as an interconnected rather than single-variable problem.
View in British Journal of Music Education
Continuing Research
Teacher Agency and Sustainable Music-Literacy Education
My continuing work examines how music teachers create access, mediate between musical literacies, develop resources and programme infrastructure, integrate different forms of musical learning and construct meaningful pathways into formal music education.
The Research Question That Continues
The teachers who participated in my doctoral research demonstrated that music education is sustained not simply by curricula, policies or resources, but by people continually interpreting and responding to the circumstances around them.
Their stories therefore left me with a question that continues to shape my research:
How can we design music-education systems that support teachers in making meaningful musical learning possible — without depending on exceptional individual effort simply to keep those systems functioning?
Understanding the teacher is an essential part of understanding music education.
Because between the curriculum and the learner lies not simply a process of delivery, but a professional act of interpretation, adaptation and human connection.
This page forms part of a broader research programme concerned with music literacy, teacher agency, and the lived experience of musicians, teachers and learners. To read about the full scope of this research, visit the Research page.