EDWIN GORDON APPROACH
Now I had my plan and most of the recordings done I sat down to do some research into the Music Education Method I am representing. Lots pointed to Orff and Suzuki but after further research, I ended up with the Edwin Gordon Approach. Basically, his philosophy is based on two categories of learning; Discrimination and Inference. Discrimination occurs when a teacher teaches the basic building blocks for what they need - in my case scales, note position, rhythms etc and then the student takes those building blocks and applies them to projects like the songs.
The Edwin Gordon Philosophy (not the full approach) was exactly how I was taught and how I currently teach my private students. Obviously, I am not using the exact method down to the word, but the idea of giving students the tools to develop further and then assisting them in that development by providing videos or other resources will help them learn through experimentation and problem-solving. As I mentioned earlier this is how I was taught, I had an amazing teacher who taught me the basics of the steel pan before he left and after that had my formal training via AMEB and Vocal to help build my skills, but as a steel pan player I only had approximately 1 years worths of lessons before I was on my own and taught myself.
I believe that the self-teaching route is really efficient in teaching students to create and apply music in their everyday lives. We see this throughout all of my current music subjects at the Conservatorium and especially within Khun and Hein where a lot of their projects are based around self-choice and student exploration. Along with developing a love for music, students are developing problem-solving skills, independence and picking up tricks and techniques that we as their teachers might not have seen before. Their unique perspective on how they learn an instrument is a breath of fresh air and can really help us as teachers learn too.
So overall having 3 mini-tutorials and 3 30-minute lessons as a crash course into the steel pan and then providing resources for them to learn and arrange songs (my website) follows the Edwin Gordon Approach and focuses on student development via self-learning and exploration.
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