The Experience of Autonomy. Opening Up New Horizons by Musically Creative Designing

Students are Exploring and Finding Individual Ways to Create and to Present their Ideas on Musical Expression.

The object of the project was to enable students to form and to reinforce their own ideas by an individualised approach to the topic. Thereby, it should become more attractive for students to try and express themselves in a musically creative way and as a result to find out how to achieve the best way and what kind of assistance the individual needs in this process.

Learning from one another was encouraged within peer groups, a form which is made little use of in the school context.

The promotion of students’ individual creative potential was achieved in several ways:

  • by using individualised methods to better meet the different needs of students;
  • by attendance, counselling and increased use of strength-oriented feedback which helped students to develop their own standards instead of relying on external performance assessments;
  • by encouraging students to experiment to find out their personal learning pathway by developing a sequence of many small learning steps.
  • Informal learning was achieved on the basis of two principles: consistent contact with students while offering the possibility of further questions, giving feedback and making suggestions;
  • by working in a freely chosen peer group which made use of friendships as a social resource;
  • by offering different forms of presentation as a scope for creativity the diverse possibilities of creative expression should be seen and used;
  • by drawing attention to signals which could be regarded as an indication of self-motivation and self-responsibility;

This project has been completed.