INCORPORATING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS INTO DUTCH SECONDARY SCHOOL MUSIC CURRICULUM

Abstract

Since each new incoming student would receive a laptop computer, the school directors of the Dutch secondary school where I work required that my fellow music teacher colleagues and I find and adapt curriculum for use by these new “laptop classes”. Feeling the need to incorporate such new pedagogy in a responsible and accountable educational framework I interpreted this top-down dictated requirement as my school’s manner of engaging in and adapting 21st Century Skills (21CS). Exhaustive inquiry found a single obscure very small lesson addressing 21st Century Skills from the perspective of a music teacher. Further inquiry via the Dutch National Institute for Curricular Development (SLO) revealed their own 2014 study of the 21CS which found many shortcomings in teachers, schools, and available commercial methods in awareness, implementation and assessment of 21CS. A result of this SLO study is their own recommendations for Dutch secondary schools in 21CS curriculum implementation. Addressing the question, “How can the SLO evaluations be used to build a 21CS music curriculum?” this thesis begins where the SLO study, "21st Century Skills in the Curriculum of Foundational Education" leaves off. In administering the findings and recommendations of the SLO from their study, this thesis uses literature, questionnaires, classroom observations, dialogues with teachers, testing of curricula, a 21CS curriculum building workshop and other 21CS research to offer perspectives and initial guidelines for music and art teachers who wish to incorporate 21CS into their lessons. The primary method of this research is to practically implement the specific SLO conclusions to remedy the shortcomings found in the SLO findings. As a design research project, the work is divided into two components, the paper and the product of the paper. The paper contains the study and its findings. The product is a Curricular Guide for Implementing the 21CS into Music Curriculum, which is meant to use the findings of the paper to help the Dutch music teacher to implement and assess 21CS into their departments and classrooms. Using this method, the study has been able to devise the Curricular Guide which serves to guide music and arts teachers toward incorporating the 21CS into their classrooms for use in helping student learning and achievement.