JMTE 6 (1) pp.

29–42 Intellect Limited 2013

Journal of Music, Technology & Education

Volume 6 Number 1
© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jmte.6.1.29_1

Martin Fautley
Birmingham City University

The potential of audio

and video for formative
assessment purposes in
music education in the lower
secondary school in England:
Issues arising from a small-
scale study of trainee music
teachers

Abstract Keywords
This small-scale study charts the underuse by music teachers in England of audio- and recording
video-recording technologies. It finds that despite their now highly affordable price, use audio
of such technologies is not well embedded into secondary school music teachers’ day- video
to-day classroom practices. The use of such technologies offers considerable potential assessment
for formative assessment purposes, including cognitive redistribution, and it is recom- classroom
mended that adoption of recording technologies offer significant advances in formative music
assessment practices and in developmental learning opportunities for pupils.

29
Martin Fautley

1. Each country in the Vignette

United Kingdom has
its own National One trainee secondary-school music teacher observed teaching a group was
Curriculum orders; this asked by her tutor (me) why she had not audio recorded pupil composing work
research took place in
England. she had been doing with some Key Stage 3 (KS3) classes. The work observed
was of a good standard, and the pupils keen. The Head of Music was party
to this conversation, ‘It’s difficult to record their work, but not impossible’,
he said. The trainee teacher agreed that she would record in the class’s next
lesson the following week. I said I would come and observe. As I arrived,
men in white coats were wheeling large drums of cable across the playground.
These, it transpired, were from technical support and they would be recording
the lesson. Microphones had been set up in the classroom, and a communi-
cations system established so that the person in the recording room, on the
other side of the school, could talk to the teacher. The lesson was undertaken
as if in a recording studio, with takes and retakes until the technicians were
happy. They, not the teacher, were in control of the lesson. This vignette sets
a worrying scene. I had envisaged something small-scale and local, record-
ing being done in the classroom, and the pupils being involved in listening
to playback of the music, and discussing it. Clearly this is not what the music
department at the school was used to doing with any regularity.

This article
This article is based on a small-scale study involving trainee music teachers in
England. It investigates the use of audio and video recording by the trainees,
then goes on to extrapolate issues regarding the utilization of audio and video
recording. Although this is a routine part of teaching and learning in many
schools, it seems to be the case that this is not widespread, nor is it embedded
into the everyday practice of some teachers. This article builds on a qualitative
study of trainee music teachers’ experiences. There was no attempt made at
generalizability or of maximum sampling. Nonetheless, there was sufficient
data generated by this research to provoke both description of findings, and
use these to extrapolate further into a consideration of the issues involved in
video and audio recording of pupil work for formative assessment purposes,
hence the current piece of work.

Background to the research

Music education in the lower secondary school in England is a statutory
requirement for all pupils. In the United Kingdom1 this stage of educa-
tion is for pupils between 11 and 14 years of age, and is referred to as Key
Stage 3 (KS3). The programme of study for music is published in the National
Curriculum (NC) (QCA 2007). It requires all pupils to undertake music activi-
ties that involve composing, performing and listening to music. Assessment of
the attainment of pupils is outlined in the NC, and takes the form of outcome
statements, known as NC levels. These level statements are not separated into
differing components for performing, composing and listening, instead they
exemplify the ‘integration of practice’ (QCA 2007: 180) that the NC promotes.
By the end of the Key Stage the intention is that the average pupil should
have reached level 5 in attainment, the level statement for which reads:

Pupils identify and explore musical devices and how music reflects time,
place and culture. They perform significant parts from memory and from
notations, with awareness of their own contribution such as leading

30
 The potential of audio and video for formative assessment …

others, taking a solo part or providing rhythmic support. They improvise

melodic and rhythmic material within given structures, use a variety of
notations, and compose music for different occasions using appropriate
musical devices. They analyse and compare musical features. They eval-
uate how venue, occasion and purpose affect the way music is created,
performed and heard. They refine and improve their work.
(QCA 2007: 186)

As it can be seen from this statement, attainment is not specified in terms of

skills, concepts and understandings, and this has given rise to a number of
concerns regarding the use of assessment, and the ways in which the NC-level
statements can be applied to pupil work (Philpott 2007; Fautley 2009a, 2009b,
2010; Sainsbury and Sizmur 1998). Indeed, the whole area of assessment in
music education in England is a matter of ongoing concern (Fautley and Savage
2011; Savage and Fautley 2011, Fowler 2008; Harris and Paterson 2002).

Context
The place of video and audio recording of learner work in music is well
established internationally, whether as part of portfolio assessment practices
(Chuang 2007) or as part of their music learning (Savage 2007). M. Salavuo
(2008) has written about how pupil work can be included in an e-portfolio for
accreditation purposes, whilst W. I. Bauer and R. E. Dunn (2003) and V. Lind
(2007) have written about their use in music teacher education.
Formative assessment in music is understood differently in different
national contexts (Murphy 2007; Murphy and Espeland 2007). In the United
Kingdom, understandings of formative assessment tend to build on the work
of P. Black and D. Wiliam (inter alia Black et al. 2004; Black and Wiliam 1998),
and of the Assessment Reform Group (1999, 2002, 2006, 2009). Aspects of
formative assessment are often referred to as assessment for learning (AfL);
for music teachers this can be defined thus:

AfL is often informal, involves conversations, not tests, is predicated on

helping pupils improve, and is integrally bound up with your normal
day-to-day work as a music teacher.
(Fautley 2009a: 63)

It is important to note that in this usage assessment does not equate to testing,
formative assessment involves the teacher having learning conversations with
pupils, talking with them about their work and making decisions, often in the
moment, about what it is that could be done do to develop the work and take
it on to the next stage.

Official views of audio and video recording

In England the official inspectorate of schools, Ofsted, has been critical of the
ways in which audio and video recording are underused by music teachers. In
two major reports (Ofsted 2009, 2012), they catalogue a series of issues:

Across all the schools visited, audio recording was not used enough as
a means of ongoing assessment but tended to be used only at the end
of a unit of work.
(Ofsted 2009: 18)

31
Martin Fautley

Even though audio recording is straightforward, it was rarely an integral

part of a teacher’s tool kit. It is as if art or English could be taught with-
out looking at the pupils’ artwork or reading what they had written.
(Ofsted 2009: 41)

Assessment in secondary schools was frequently over-complicated and

did not focus enough on the musical quality of students’ work. In both
primary and secondary schools, insufficient use was made of audio
recording and teachers’ listening skills to assess and improve pupils’
work.
(Ofsted 2012: 6)

However, too many schools did not exploit the use of audio and video
recordings in the classroom to listen to and assess students’ work more
accurately. A well-ordered catalogue of recordings over time, supported
by commentaries and scores, provides a very effective and compelling
way to demonstrate students’ musical progress.
(Ofsted 2012: 38)

These are damning indictments of teachers’ lack of use of video and audio
recordings of the work of their pupils, and it was against this background that
the research phase of this current piece of work was undertaken.

Participants
This small-scale study involved seven trainee music teachers (five female, two
male) on a secondary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) route in
the English Midlands. The PGCE is a one-year full-time course for intending
school teachers, which is undertaken after a first degree has been obtained.
Trainees spend about two-thirds of the year in secondary schools, with the
remainder of the time being University based.

Methods
The trainees undertaking this research were a self-selecting cohort from all of
the music trainees on this University course, all of whom were on placement
at the time in secondary schools. We know that there are problems associated
with self-selecting groups of participants:

Self-selection bias is the problem that very often results when survey
respondents are allowed to decide entirely for themselves whether or
not they want to participate in a survey. To the extent that respondents’
propensity for participating in the study is correlated with the substan-
tive topic the researchers are trying to study, there will be self-selection
bias in the resulting data. In most instances, self-selection will lead to
biased data, as the respondents who choose to participate will not well
represent the entire target population.
(Olsen n. d. )

Although self-selection bias is an issue, for the purposes of this study the self-
selecting respondents all had experience of video or audio recording in school,
which was deemed apposite for the purpose of investigation.

32
 The potential of audio and video for formative assessment …

The research began with a preliminary online survey, asking for details of
trainees who had been using audio and/or video recording in the classroom.
Seven students responded that they had been using video and audio record-
ing in their first school placement (‘school 1’ in the parlance of the course).
These trainees were then asked to be participants, all agreed.
The online survey consisted of free-text responses to seven questions.

1. Can you briefly describe what you did?

2. What difference do you feel the video recording made, compared with not
using it?
3. Did the pupils watch a playback of the recorded video?
4. Did they have any comments about the use of recorded video?
5. What would you say the assessment information the video recording
revealed were?
6. Would you say the assessment you did using video was primarily form-
ative, primarily summative, or the formative use of summative assess-
ment?
7. Would you want to use video recording for assessment purposes in
school 2? (and why?)
8. What would you say to a music teacher who had not as yet used video
recording for assessment purposes, but was keen to try it?

Data obtained from these responses were coded using a modified form of a
grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin 1990; Glaser and Strauss 1967),
where repeated coding takes place until saturation occurs. In the process of
doing this, it also became clear that there was value in treating the rich text
descriptions from participants as ethnomethodological responses. This is
because, as H. Garfinkel observed:

… studies seek to treat practical activities, practical circumstances,

and practical sociological reasoning as topics of empirical study, and
by paying to the most commonplace activities of daily life the atten-
tion usually accorded extraordinary events, seek to learn about them as
phenomena in their own right.
(1967: 1)

And the phenomenon in question, audio and video recording, can be seen to
be part of what normally might be expected in a school music department. To
this end the source material provided by the respondents gives a lived expe-
rience standpoint of the ways in which recordings are undertaken in music
departments.
Subsequent to the online responses and analyses thereof, two follow-up
focus-group meetings were held with the participants. These were held
purposefully, with J. Kitzinger’s comments in mind:

This means that instead of the researcher asking each person to respond
to a question in turn, people are encouraged to talk to one another: asking
questions, exchanging anecdotes and commenting on each others’ expe-
riences and points of view. The method is particularly useful for exploring
people’s knowledge and experiences and can be used to examine not only
what people think but how they think and why they think that way.
(1995: 299)

33
Martin Fautley

There were no fixed questions in the focus groups; they were simply designed to
encourage trainees to talk to each other. Due to timetabling constraints, they
were held in breaks between taught sessions in University, and so only lasted
for twenty minutes each. The focus groups served to emphasize the topics
that were then written about by participants in the free-text responses. To
this end they also acted as bounding activities, and, as their name suggests,
focused the participants’ attention on to the key topics of the research, and
enabled participants to expand on the topics they had described in their free-
text responses.
In accordance with ethical protocols, all respondents have been
anonymized and no schools or teachers have been named.

Results
The vignette that opens this article describes one trainee teacher’s use of audio
recording and the complexity which this entailed. The way that the trainee
viewed recording was as a polished record of the finished product. Amongst
the participants in this research, this was the most common use of audio or
video recording, with it taking its place as a record of a final performance.
Only one of the seven respondents mentioned using it for work in progress
performances, the other six used it for end of unit purposes only. This is inter-
esting, as the developmental possibilities of terminal task assessment can then
only be transferred obliquely into subsequent work, rather than directly into
the task in hand. Reasons for this will now be explored.

Formative vs summative purposes

There is considerable pressure on teachers in England to provide regular
summative assessment grades for pupil attainment. This monitoring of grades
and results has become known as the ‘performativity agenda’. We know from
the work of S. J. Ball (inter alia 2003) that performativity can have a nega-
tive impact on the work of teachers, whilst R. Turner-Bisset observes that the
‘performativity discourse in this country is effectively hijacking the creativ-
ity discourse’ (2007: 201). It is possible that for these reasons recording of
pupil work at its final stage has come to be seen as necessary for account-
ability reasons, rather than for pedagogic ones. For example, this trainee’s
responses:

During the obligatory ‘assessment lesson’ at the end of the unit, video
recording was used to individually film each student performing a set
piece of music on a keyboard.
Question: Did the pupils watch a playback of the recorded video?
Response: No, pupils did not get to see the recorded material.
(Respondent L)

Another question was asked about the purpose of the recording, to which the
response was:

It provided a documented visual/audio example of a student’s piece of

work.
(Respondent L)

34
 The potential of audio and video for formative assessment …

The important thing here is the documentation of the work, proof, as it were,
that something assessable exists. What was not done was to share the recording
with the pupils. The trainee was asked about this, and said that there had not
been time to share playback of the video material with the class concerned.
This use of recording is a clear example of a summative purpose. The
recording exists to facilitate assessment by the teaching staff. As the respond-
ent explained:

It … afforded me the opportunity to watch the student’s performance

again, multiple times, to ensure a more accurate assessment was made
of the individual, not to just rely on audio or teachers’ written notes
when formulating a grade.
(Respondent L)

The recording was used to provide assessment data that enabled an assess-
ment grade to be afforded to the individual pupils concerned. It did not help
the pupils’ learning other to provide the grade, which the teaching staff in the
school felt to be a ‘more accurate assessment … of the individual’.
This use of recording was common across respondents, in that it was used
only in a summative fashion. What was slightly unusual about this instance is
that it was not shared with the pupils, which was, apparently, normal practice
in the school. In other schools, playing back the audio or video recording was
much more commonplace.
Formative assessment of pupils learning in music, done properly, should
involve the pupils in making judgements about their work, and these should
involve both teacher and pupil reflecting on what is being done, and what the
next steps might be. As W. Harlen and M. James observe:

Assessment for this purpose is part of teaching; learning with under-

standing depends on it. To use information about present achievements
in this way means that the progression in ideas and skills must be in the
teacher’s mind – and as far as possible in the pupils’ – so that the next
appropriate steps can be considered.
(1997: 370–71)

This view of formative assessment could be seen in some of the responses,

although only two mentioned it directly. Here is another respondent:

… pupils watched playback of the recorded video in order to further

develop their performance. [They also] watched playback of a differ-
ent group of pupils performing in order to develop ideas for their own
performance.
(Respondent E)

This is one aspect of formative assessment in action. The pupils are watching
playback of a video, and then the trainee teacher explained that she involved
the pupils in a discussion of their work, and ways in which they could take
their performing work forwards.
Another trainee described a slightly different use of video playback:

The pupils had the assessment criteria on the board during the perform-
ance and when they were watching the videos they had the assessment

35
Martin Fautley

criteria printed on their self assessment sheets. The recording supported

them to recognise effective ways to improve their work as well as learn
from each other. Watching the performance they were able to feel a real
sense of pride as well as communicate about specifics related to the Unit
of work.
(Respondent A)

This time self-assessment is being employed, an important component of AfL,

with the pupils involved in making judgements about their own work based
on the video materials they had been watching.

Video and audio: Differences and similarities

For one of the respondents, audio recording was normal in the school, he
introduced video recording of pupil work for the first time with some of KS3
classes. He felt that they would need more time to get used to this:

Seemed very embarrassed about the use of video recording compared

to audio. Didn’t appear to listen as carefully when video was being
shown.
(Respondent S)

He also observed that because this was novel for the pupils, he felt that some
of the pupils felt under pressure because of it:

The school rarely uses video recording and I feel it puts an uneasy pres-
sure on students when they are being filmed.
(Respondent S)

But the trainee also explained afterwards that he would want to persist with
it, and allow for the embarrassment factor in the early stages of so doing. This
seemed a common theme with those trainees placed in schools where video
recording was common, and that after a while it became another tool avail-
able to teachers and pupils, and was regarded as a normal activity.
A common issue that arose in focus-group discussion between many
trainee teacher users of both audio and video was the way they felt that the use
of recordings allowed pupils to ‘step back’ from the immediacy of involvement
with musical activity, be it composing or performing. This, the trainees felt,
introduced a neutralizing element to critique and comment. Instead of being
involved in an immediate post-performing appraisal of work, the  distancing
allowed by recording allowed for the learner musicians to become cognisant
of the overall effect of the music, rather than having to concentrate on the
individual’s own particular contribution. This was felt to be a strong reason for
utilizing recordings, and all those who had done so were keen to continue.

Technology issues
Whilst undertaking focus-group discussions for this study, many trainees
spoke of reluctance on the part of host schools to engage with recording.
Many schools seemed to assume that the technology required was prohibi-
tively expensive or overly complex. The trainee teachers, many of whom
can be classed in M. Prensky’s (2001) terms as ‘digital natives’ were keen to
dispel this myth. One trainee found microphones for sale in a local ‘Pound

36
 The potential of audio and video for formative assessment …

Shop’, which plugged into classroom PCs running the freeware programme
‘Audacity’. This meant that for a minimal outlay recordings could be effected
for very little cost indeed. A. Baxter (2007) has described the use of mobile
phones for similar purposes; P. Kirkman (2009) discusses how this can be
done in relation to the NC, and a number of trainees found it convenient to
use their own phones for this purpose.
With regard to video materials, again some trainees were able to utilize
mobile phones for this purpose, whilst others were in schools who had
invested in varieties of the popular low-cost ‘flip’ cameras for this purpose.
Still others found old handheld video cameras were available in the schools
and used those. For other trainees webcams were used, and again these have
plummeted in price, and are now affordable even to schools with very limited
budgets, examples being found for under £10. Film-editing software is often
available bundled as a part of both Windows and Apple operating systems,
which was used for playback of these recordings.
K. Swanwick (2008) writes of the ‘good enough’ music teacher, and it is
important to note here that the types of recordings being utilized also fall
into a ‘good enough’ category. They are not meant to be broadcast quality,
nor are they intended to be a polished archive of excellence, they are in the
moment work-in-progress records of classroom music-making. Their function
is the immediate, to help with the next stage of pupil learning, to be viewed,
discussed and developmental learning drawn out from them.

Discussion – extrapolating assessment principles for

classroom recording
All of the trainee teachers involved in this research described classroom
lessons that involved practical music-making using a variety of sound sources.
None of them were working solely using ICT as sound-generating and
sound-manipulating sources, all of them used a mixture of classroom percus-
sion instruments, guitars and electronic keyboards. For this reason this research
is particularly apposite. Using ICT the playback function is a linear part of the
composing and/or performing process, indeed, no music could be said to result
without so doing. Using a mixture of acoustic and electronic sound sources
means that no such one-to-one mapping between sound sources and playback
existed. Instead, as it has done historically, their music existed transiently, in
real-time, and was perceived aurally. In common with many lower secondary
school general music classes, staff notation was not in widespread use.
The potential for audio and/or video recording at every stage of classroom
music-making for AfL purposes is significant. As composers-in-sound, as
opposed to composers-in-notation, lower secondary school pupils perforce
need to carry mental model of the details of their music within their heads.
Certainly graphic scores can be used, but the connection between accurate
representation of sound and repeatability can be an issue for these novice
composers and performers. Audio recording solves these issues at a stroke. By
recording work in progress performances, pupils are able to keep an accurate
and up to date record of the work they have been engaged with. This can be
particularly useful for composing work, where a unit of work will be spread
over a number of weeks. Recording work in progress, and then listening to
recordings as a starter activity in the next lesson is a logical way for this to be
shared with the pupils, and can be used as the basis for in-depth questioning
to develop whole class learning, drawing on the class’s own work.

37
Martin Fautley

Audio and video recording is also appropriate for demonstrating the

results that are required by the teacher in a learning task. This aspect of form-
ative assessment was described by one of the early writers on the topic:

The essential conditions for improvement are that the student comes to
hold a concept of quality roughly similar to that held by the teacher ….
(Sadler 1989: 121)

Here the work of previous classes using classroom instruments can be used
as demonstration materials for what can be expected. It has been observed
that there can be differences between young peoples’ perceptions of what
school music is when compared with real-world music (Lamont et al. 2003;
MacDonald et al. 2002), using audio and video recordings is a clear way of
demonstrating ‘what I’m looking for’ in terms of pupil outcomes. For novices
the cognitive leap required in, say, a project on ‘scary music’ from listening
to ‘Night on a bare mountain’ and the music from ‘Psycho’, then having to
reproduce their own music using classroom percussion can be too great for
some. The teacher has already made this leap in her own mind, sharing exam-
ples from recordings instantiates this for the pupils.
We know that for many pupils music is perceived as a lateral event unfold-
ing over time, and tends not to be amenable to ready dissection. Recorded
materials do not have this inhibition. Playing back a key selected segment
allows the teacher and pupils, or the pupils working alone, to focus on a small
section of a piece without having to rework the whole thing. This seemingly
straightforward aspect of musical pedagogy needs to be introduced to pupils
who have trouble making this dissection for themselves, and, again, is useful
as a technique which can then be transferably employed elsewhere.
Video recording has an obvious affordance in that it enables visual
elements of performing and composing to become amenable to discussion. As
one trainee teacher observed: ‘Having visual data as well as auditory was vital
for this unit as it was based on drumming’ (Respondent R). There are many
obvious aspects of skill acquisition with which video analysis can help novice
learners. In focus-group discussions the trainee teachers also talked of what
could be labelled as ‘intentionality’; it became clear for them from watching
playback materials what levels of engagement and inter-group communica-
tion could be noted from classroom performances. These could then be used
to facilitate careful interventions by the teacher in order to address issues
identified.
The notion of neutrality was discussed in a previous section; devel-
oping from this idea it becomes possible to conceptualize this as a form of
cognitive redistribution. When engaged in a performance or a composing
task the novice musicians in question need to engage in significant cogni-
tive engagement with the task in hand. This significant engagement is one
reason that group work is employed at this stage of teaching and learning, it
allows for both situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991) where the learning
is contained in the doing of the task, and distributed cognition (Cole 1996;
Cole and Engeström 1993; Salomon 1993) where the processes of composing
and/or performing are cognitively distributed between members of the group.
Using audio or video recording of work means that cognitive redistribution
can take place, as the pupils involved in the music-making have been cogni-
tively speaking ‘freed up’ by now being able to concentrate solely on listening
and evaluating their performance, rather than having to try to do this at the

38
 The potential of audio and video for formative assessment …

same time as being involved in its production. This cognitive redistribution

affords the pupils the opportunity to fully engage with the auditory aspects of
their piece, rather than having to cognitively multi-task in order to be able to
do this. This allows for much more in-depth analytical listening and discus-
sion to take place as a result.
So, amongst the many affordances that audio and video recording serves
for formative assessment purposes these can be highlighted as being of signif-
icance:

It allows for accurate recording of musical events as sounds

It enables real-time and altered time (fast-forward, etc.) playback of
these musical events
It renders the performing/composing situation amenable to structured
intervention
It enables cognitive redistribution
It allows participants to occupy a neutral stance with regard to their own
contributions.

Conclusions
The underuse of audio and video recording by classroom music teachers
seems anomalous when the affordances it offers are considered. Although
beyond the scope of this study, it would be worthwhile for music teachers to
discuss with colleagues to see if exemplars of good practice can be found in
other aspects of school life. This small-scale study, and the findings that have
arisen from it, show that the formative assessment can be greatly enhanced by
its utilization, and it is to be hoped that in England future Ofsted inspection
evidence will find that it has become more well embedded into music teacher
practices, and that internationally lessons can be learned regarding the way in
which recording technology represents a step forward in cognitive redistribu-
tion of the group composing and performing processes.

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Suggested citation
Fautley, M. (2013), ‘The potential of audio and video for formative assessment
purposes in music education in the lower secondary school in England:
Issues arising from a small-scale study of trainee music teachers’, Journal of
Music, Technology & Education 6: 1, pp. 29–42, doi: 10.1386/jmte.6.1.29_1

Contributor details
Martin Fautley is a professor of education, and director of the Centre for
Research in Education at Birmingham City University. After many years as
a secondary school music teacher, he now works with B.A., PGCE, Masters

41
Martin Fautley

and Doctoral students, and undertakes research. He is widely published in the

areas of creativity and assessment. His book, Assessment in Music Education is
published by Oxford University Press.
Contact: Director, Centre for Research in Education, Birmingham City
University, Attwood Building, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU, UK.
E-mail: martin.fautley@bcu.ac.uk

Martin Fautley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that
was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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