Using Educational Neuroscience to inform Secondary Choral Strategies (You May Already Be Using Them!)

I remember sitting in a professional development session at my local school, when the speaker told us “You are preparing students for jobs that haven’t been created yet.” While my brain said, “that makes sense”, my heart said, “what a huge responsibility…how is this even possible? Furthermore, how does this transfer to the choir room?” It is true, we are living in a time of extraordinary global change, but there is a silver lining: we are still teaching humans, who according to the Human Genome Project, are 99.9% equivalent (Olsen, 1993). When considering student diversity, that statistic seems unbelievable. But what if we took a step back from the complexities of teaching that weigh us down (music theory and sight singing strategies), and approached our students at the biological level…honing in on the 99.9%, instead of stressing over the 00.1%? Theories in Educational Neuroscience (EN) may provide some strategies that seem too simple, yet resonate with how the brain functions at a cellular level. Educational Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field which contains biological, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions (Kaygısız, Ç., 2022). The biological component happens at the cellular level when electrochemical activity takes place within the brain’s cortical regions (Byrne et al, 2014). The cognitive dimension pertains to the psychology and mental response due to the perception, separation, and storage of stimuli (Albright et al, 2000; Posner and DiGirolamo, 2000). Lastly, the behavioral aspect focuses on the creation, testing, and implementation of educational procedures (Berridge, 2014, Cummings & Mega 2013).

Situation: It is not uncommon to over plan. Working from bell to bell is never an issue in a goal-oriented rehearsal. There is the warm-up, sight-reading time, and then we must work on the literature and re-work the literature again (music rehearsals were Formative in nature before the word was even invented, right?) With such a brisk rehearsal pace utilizing an enhanced learning environment, it is important to consider the cognitive load, or mental exertion on our students. Sometimes they just “check out” because the work is just too demanding. In fact, some research indicates that sight reading alone is a major source of cognitive load (Campman, 2020).

Indeed, we are living in a world filled with record breaking change, but one that is also filled with discovery, including the arena of voice science. While demanding datasets on student achievement and diversity seem to trump modern educational conversations, let’s not forget that our raw product is human, and we can capitalize on 99.9% of that.

References Ahmed, A., Devi, R.G. and Priya, A.J., 2021. Effect of box breathing technique on lung function test. Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International, 33(58A), pp.25-31.