The activities on the left are examples of good practice. They provide effective learning opportunities for pupils to value diversity and challenge racism. They focus on helping pupils understand and appreciate aspects of cultural difference, context and change, while challenging and extending their perceptions of themselves and other people.

What is the potential in the music curriculum for valuing diversity and challenging racism?

The national curriculum programme of study and the QCA/DFES schemes of work for music provide starting points for valuing diversity and challenging racism in the classroom. The national curriculum statutory inclusion statement sets out schools' responsibilities for meeting the needs of all pupils and provides examples of how this can be achieved.

The national curriculum for music places considerable emphasis on ensuring that all pupils experience, and develop understanding and appreciation of, a wide range of live and recorded music from different times and cultures.

Work with specialists from different musical traditions led to the formulation of three areas of knowledge and understanding that need to be taught if all pupils are to appreciate all kinds of music. These three areas relate to:

• understanding how music is constructed;
• understanding how music is produced;
• understanding how music is influenced by its context.

These three areas underpin the Listening and applying knowledge and understanding section of the programme of study for music. Contextual understanding is the key to helping pupils value diversity, and is described as follows:

Key stage 1

Pupils develop and apply knowledge and understanding of how music is used for different purposes.

Key stage 2

Pupils develop and apply knowledge and understanding of how time and place can influence the way music is created, performed and heard (eg the effect of occasion and venue).

Key stage 3

Pupils develop and apply knowledge and understanding of how different contextual influences affect the way music is created, performed and heard (eg the effect of intention, use, venue, occasion, the development of resources, the impact of ICT, the cultural environment and the contribution of individuals).

What are the implications for teaching and learning?

The national curriculum statutory inclusion statement describes schools' responsibility to provide a curriculum that meets the specific needs of individuals and groups of pupils. The statement sets out three principles that are essential to developing an inclusive curriculum:

• setting suitasable learning challenges;
• responding to pupils' diverse learning needs;
• overcoming potential barriers to learning and assessment for individuals and groups of pupils.

The statement also provides examples of how this responsibility can be met.

Effective teaching in music can make a significant contribution to pupils' ability to value diversity and challenge racism, through providing opportunities for pupils to:

• engage with a variety of music, exploring values and feelings;
• make (and respond to) music with others, recognising and valuing different views and contributions;
  develop understanding of how and why music is created and used, and how it can reflect and influence the feelings and values of those involved;
• deepen and broaden their understanding and appreciation of music, from that which is familiar to that which is unfamiliar, developing their understanding of their own preferences and the preferences of others;
• help others appreciate diversity through sharing their own interests, expertise and experiences.

Above all, music provides the opportunity for pupils to recognise that they can enhance the quality of their lives and the lives of others through making music and sharing diverse musical experiences.

Principles to inform teaching and learning

Ensure all work includes investigation of all three areas of knowledge: how music is constructed, produced and influenced by its context

To investigate the three areas of knowledge, teachers will need to ask questions such as:

• What components and structures are used in the music?
• How was the music produced? How was it used?
• Why were these components and structures used? Why was the music produced and used in this way? Why may this music have evolved? Why is it still used?

While teachers are most confident with the 'what' and increasingly confident with the 'how' questions, the 'why' questions still present a challenge. This is significant since it may be that the 'why' questions provide the most effective way to develop understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity.

While the 'what' and the 'how' questions can be answered through practical work, progression in depth of understanding of the 'why' questions may well require discussion and the encouragement of individual investigation.

There is a need to identify the types of questions that should be asked when exploring music from any time or culture. Considerable benefit could be gained from making links across subjects. For example, investigations into music written for special events could be linked to work in history that explores the conditions that led to (and followed) those events. The literacy hour could be used to pose 'why' questions, using music as the stimulus for language development, and for using higher levels of questioning, as required for literacy.

In particular, links should be made across the arts so that the different values and codes of behaviour in a particular culture can be explored. This will help to develop essential understanding of how the arts are used in all societies both to reflect and influence the way people think, feel and act.

Encourage direct involvement in a variety of musical experiences with music from different cultures

Wherever possible, pupils should be introduced to different music through live performances. The aim should be to provide as authentic an experience as possible, so that pupils can see and hear music in its most appropriate setting. This may not always be possible - certain venues, for example jazz clubs, are unsuitable for younger children. Where this is the case, pupils should be given as much information as possible so that they can begin to understand how the music reflects the context in which it is created, performed and received.

Older pupils will be able to consider the issues about taking music out of its intended context and using it in other situations (eg classical music being used to provide background music for advertisements).

The community could provide excellent opportunities for live experiences. Alternatively, secondary teachers could consider developing exchanges with other schools, where each teacher provides specialist input on specific musical genres and traditions to a number of different schools.

Take account of, and value, all musical experiences and interests

Evidence suggests that we may be musically conditioned by the way sounds are organised in the music we hear most when we are very young, both before birth and in the first few years of life. This may explain why we tend to enjoy familiar music, as we are able to ‘make sense’ of the way sounds are used.

We may need, therefore, to make a distinction between how we help pupils respond to familiar music and how we help them respond to unfamiliar music. They may only be able to engage with and make sense of familiar music. It could be that their only possible response to unfamiliar music is that of appreciation, achieved through identifying and giving some value to the way the sounds are used, and through recognising how the music is produced and used, and why this music is important to others. This makes it essential that all pupils are given both familiar and unfamiliar musical experiences.

Pupils should be given help to recognise how and why they respond differently to different music. Pupils and teachers should make comparisons between familiar and unfamiliar music, to identify the features that appear most strange and to discuss why they seem strange. A danger to avoid is exploring music as ‘musical tourists’, where what is unfamiliar is seen as exotic and inferior to that which is familiar. A distinction needs to be made between putting unfamiliar music into a familiar context, and trying to understand unfamiliar music within its unfamiliar context. For example, distinguishing between listening to Aboriginal music in the classroom and seeing the music performed as intended, with information given about the beliefs, values, environment and codes of behaviour of the culture.

Above all, the teacher needs to be a positive role model who is genuinely interested in all kinds of music and is able to present their own preferences in an open way. They should be able to set aside their own values and look for the value others get from music of their preference. This is far more than just sharing different interests and experiences; it must include recognition and respect for different views. This approach can be challenging, especially during adolescence when the peer culture often selects music that is anti-establishment.

It is essential that, when discussing music that is familiar to the pupil, this music is respected and valued by the teacher and not compared unfavourably to other music. Each type of music needs to be recognised in its own right.

Teaching music in a global context
Teaching pupils about music from different cultures and developing contextual understanding can help them understand and appreciate:

• cultural difference
  There is a wide range of different kinds of music, and this diversity is caused by the cultural context that affects how and why music is created, performed and received.
• cultural identity
  It is shared values, interests, experiences and codes of behaviour that give us a sense of belonging and identity, and these influences are reflected in the types of music we choose to listen to and enjoy.
• cultural complexity
  People in Britain live in a variety of different cultural contexts and can have different cultural identities, eg the family, friends, the school, the region, the country and the world. Music can reflect different identities and demonstrate cultural interaction and fusion.
• cultural change
  All of us contribute to the cultural contexts in which we live, and each individual can change these contexts for good or ill. For example:

- a pupil could make the school more exciting for others by performing in assembly;
- a pupil can change the way other class members respond to them by giving more (or less) value to other people’s contributions.

For many pupils, music is one of the strongest influences on, and reflections of, the different cultures in which they live. Music, therefore, provides a real and powerful means of developing cultural understanding and appreciation of diversity.