About

Background

Firstly, welcome to Teach Me Through Music, an online space for educators to share and connect through Interdisciplinary Learning Projects.

I am a music specialist, educator and academic based in Aberdeen, with over 13 years teaching experience. I am continually looking for ways to develop my own teaching, to suit all the learners in my classroom and I love having opportunities to share good practice with other educators as you can learn so much from others with different specialisms and approaches. Over the last 8 years, I conducted my own PhD research, analysing the use of music as a tool for engagement within interdisciplinary projects, as part of the Curriculum for Excellence.

The Curriculum for Excellence has its own individual subject guidance, benchmarks, experiences and outcomes which we aim to deliver through our work in the classroom. However, the interdisciplinary learning approach, combining many school subjects or areas of learning into one topic or project is not so clear.

Through my PhD research, I had the opportunity to test out the CfE Expressive Arts Experiences & Outcomes documentation in my own classroom practice. As part of my own “Teaching Through” approach, I have demonstrated a way of translating both the Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes and also the Education Scotland IDL documentation into practice. I provide one example of delivering IDL in the CfE classroom.

I have created this online space for myself and other educators to share interdisciplinary learning projects. Music can be a very powerful educational tool and utilising music as a tool for engagement within a project or topic can create other ways for young people to relate to or understand what they are learning. To teach through music.

Whilst I have analysed music, the “Teaching Through” framework I have created, is applicable to a wide range of subject areas to show how IDL can be embedded within the CfE. The framework is not subject specific and educators can draw on their own subject specialisms to suit their teaching and learning approaches.

Dr Claire-Gillian McIntosh