The role of dialogue in a collaborative project of music visualization supported by a numeric tool

Abstract

Music listening can be enhanced by visual arts, but the way to integrate both disciplines needs careful planning and specific teaching techniques in order to make the listening experience a source of creativity and shared understanding. As new technology for visualization of music is now easily available for students, we wanted to investigate how to use an online tool during music listening in school by integrating visual arts. Following previous work, we choose a special focus on the teacher-learner dialogue to.

For this purpose, a teaching sequence had been planned and analyzed with Lesson study method by three teachers in collaboration of three educational researchers. Three classes (students from 11 to 17 years old) during four up to eight lessons. According to their musical expertise, pupils created their own videos on a piece of classical music. The videos of the first lesson and the final presentation of the students had been transcribed. The thematic analysis had been conducted in order to identify elements of transdisciplinary links between the two art forms and teachers’ techniques to get shared understanding.

The results pointed out towards the necessity of preparing teachers with the skills for guiding classroom dialogues. According to this study, giving pupils the possibility for the use of new technology for arts creation, they learned to cross cultural boundaries and make distinctions between art forms. Teachers’ role was essential in giving space to learners’ dialogues and reorient the learners’ focus on music learning. This study encourages us to focus on the pedagogical aspects of using new technology in order to link music and other arts.