Dr. Rebecca Berkley (Associate Professor in Music Education, University of Reading) is one of six recipients who won the 2022 British Educational Research Association’s Small Grants Fund (£4,810) for her research project, titled ‘Musicianship for Teachers: Teaching general primary teachers to teach classroom music’.

The project will offer free music teacher training to Key Stage 1 classroom teachers in central Reading primary schools. This project will emphasise the non-verbal, embodied nature of music pedagogical content knowing encouraging these teachers to work as musicians.

The project has three objectives: 1) to train whole teams of KS1 teachers in classroom musicianship skills so they can lead and direct practical music lessons with confidence; 2) to facilitate teachers to work together as a Reading KS1 Music Community of Practice; and 3) to track and measure the impact of the training on the teachers’ confidence, fluency and resilience as music teachers

The project will begin in December 2022 and end in July 2023.

Dr. Berkley commented: “I am delighted to receive this funding, and am very much looking forward to working with teachers in our partnership schools to help them gain confidence as music teachers. Music is such a good thing to include in the daily life of KS1 children, and I know that teachers would love to do more music, but feel they lack confidence to lead it. I really hope that this programme of professional training will help KS1 teachers to address this.

 

You can learn more about Dr. Berkley’s research interests here. She tweets at here.