Back at the Centre for Social Action we met up with members
of Eduardo Mendez’s team. The Executive Director’s office develops curriculum
and music projects. We met with four members of management who are preparing a
strategy for developing higher education, and evaluation and assessment in El Sistema. Those we talked to included
the Head co-ordinator of projects undertaken by the Executive Director’s
office, a statistician and an economist. One of them also was a violinist in
the Simon Bolivar. They are part of work groups focusing on updating sequential
repertoire and creating new academies and conservatories. Ironically their goal
is the systemisation of El Sistema’s
programming. They intend to equip a new generation of researchers who will
continue to expand and develop the program.
Data Collection
The main objective of this project is to measure the impact
of the El Sistema program in
Venezuela. They started measuring in 2006/7 but a system wasn’t put in place to
organise the data. This has been a very expensive process, there is 39 years’
worth of programming to consider! There have been previous external data
collection and evaluations including one compiled by the Inter-American Development
Bank in 2007. They also mentioned research published in 2006 (by Jose Fuerte) and
also a cost-benefit analysis (a different report to the IDB analysis) showing
that the program gives $1.36 back for every $1 invested.
Their aims are:
1) To measure the social and individual impact of the
program on children, parents, teachers, and administrative staff through various
indicators including self-esteem, psychology, hygiene and health.
2) To record the socio-economic status of children’s
families.
The pilot process is expected to finish in 2015: the first
study will take place in 4 nucleos,
assessment tools and a schedule will be established, and then it will be reproduced
on a national level in 2018 with the aim that data collection will be continued.
They will be able to see the impact on the development of students after
consistent analysis. The data collection process will include questioning all
children of all ages and their parents (e.g. income and education background),
measuring cognitive skills and reasoning, causal impact, social and individual
impact. The research team will be in each nucleo
for two weeks collecting data of the current students.
The team mentioned some of the problems that they are
facing: Determining what should be the baselines that are they looking for, the
lack of internet access in many areas to digitally process data, and how to
differentiate the impact of El Sistema
from other social programs the students may participate in.
University Institute
of Music Studies
The evaluation process will also be designed to inform what
will be needed when students reach higher education, so the children selected
for the pilot assessment will be those who have experienced as many aspects of
the program as possible. The data will be used to create a curriculum to
support the existing programs. A higher education institute was created by Dr
Abreu in the ‘80s, but it is now that a huge development is under way to use
the institute to fill in the gaps in the program.
The team mentioned that other higher education providers in
Venezuela are not completely coherent with the philosophy of El Sistema programming. They do however
work with the Simon Bolivar Conservatory which is already well established in delivering
performance studies, but they wish to use the El Sistema institute to extend educational offerings to students. In
this way, they are not so concerned about providing more performance
opportunities, concerts, tours, master-classes, etc.
They did mention, however, that there has been some
controversy in taking students away from other universities, but there are few
universities in Venezuela that offer music studies in further education. Students
end up choosing other disciplines although this does have the outcome of graduates having the
opportunity to work in other areas and then return to El Sistema with a wider skills base. Providing more opportunities
for gaining a Higher Education qualification legitimises a musical career and the
music industry, and prevents the brain drain of students going abroad. By
having complimentary tracks in teaching and performance students are able to
take their own direction in their studies and career choice.
One aspect that appealed to me is the interdisciplinary
nature of the courses they wish to offer. They describe the pilot program of
music theory, history and composition courses as being holistic and integrated
and the curriculum design will aim to present everything as part of the same
learning. Perhaps they will link these studies with El Sistema favourites Tchaikovsky’s 4th and
Shostakovich’s 10th symphonies – the passion for the music is
already there having experienced it, and therefore the motivation to learn
about them from different angles.
Teacher Training
This is one crucial aspect of programming that doesn’t
formally exist yet in El Sistema. The
team is working on three strategies to rectify this.
1) Certify teachers who already work in the dynamic of El Sistema, who have been trained by
following the example of others in the nucleo
and by years of experience. It is hoped that these teachers will be more
motivated to continue teaching with the recognition of their skills. Given the
huge development of the program that is needed in the next few years under the
Simon Bolivar project, there is a huge demand for teachers and they require
certification. They have already tried to certify their teachers through other
institutions, but now the program needs to be able to certify their own
teachers in order to achieve the goals of the project.
2) Develop a teacher training program to compliment the experience
gained in the nucleo. This program
will address weaknesses and gaps such as assessment and evaluation, teaching methodologies
and knowledge, but will not necessarily be completely theoretical. They aim to
offer elective courses so students can pick and chose those that are relevant,
and to remove the preconception that everyone should teach how they themselves learnt,
by introducing new pedagogical methods. The courses will also try to cater for
all the musical interests that are reflected in the program, from orchestras
and choirs to symphonic rock bands and special needs programming. Their vision is
to attract international students to their Inter-American Teacher Training
Facility, where the quality of teacher training offered matches the level of performance
training that creates the professional musicians of the Simon Bolivar
Orchestra.
3) El Sistema has
pioneered methods of teaching music to Special Needs students. There is a need
for research into the teaching methodologies being used along with collecting
teacher and student profiles to assess the program. They intend to gather what
is already happening and make it accessible to others, with a view to
eventually establishing a national Teacher Training Centre specifically for
Special Needs.
Curriculum
development
Sequential repertoire documents were created for
standardising repertoire in 2010 which has been an important baseline for orchestras
and choirs in every nucleo. It is used
as a non-mandatory guideline, but the evolution of the program has surpassed
the repertoire standards, and expectations are changing constantly as many
students are playing repertoire from the next level up. They plan to update these
documents to reflect the reality of student progress, whilst not voiding
achievements of previous students. In addition they aim to analyse the progress
of the new generation of students to inform future curriculum developments.
We wondered whether the program might lose something of its
essence in this systemisation and institutionalisation. The team replied by
saying that as they have been brought up in El
Sistema, it would be hard for them to develop a different approach to music
education. These developments that will be based on research and evaluation of what students need will inevitably change our perconceptions of music education at the higher level.
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