Ebb and flow of assessment in music

In Scotland, assessment procedures tend to dominate the teaching and learning of music. Teachers are concerned that the recording and measuring of pupils' output against set criteria are achieved at the expense of engaging them in meaningful, creative experiences. The authors have proposed elsewhere (Byrne & Sheridan, 2000) that music educators should consider the use of Csikszentmihalyi's ‘flow’ model (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992) as a possible reflective tool for monitoring, regulating and assessing learning in music.