Making Evaluation in Music Pedagogy a Co-operative Endeavour-A Proposal for Nigerian Basic Education

The major crux of this paper is making evaluation of music pedagogy a co-operative endeavour, which to a large extent is guided by the music curriculum in use. In the bid to address this issue, extensive literature review was carried out on evaluation in music pedagogy and it adopted the social interdependence theory as a suitable theory for making evaluation of music pedagogy a co-operative endeavour. The four key stakeholders that were identified to co-operate and synergize for the co-operative evaluation are the Teacher/Instructor, School Management, Pupil/Student/Learner, Community/Society and the Parents. This co-operative effort has to start from the inception of curriculum development in which every interest needs to be represented down to the implementation. In addition, this paper found out that Nigerian music education is mainly of Western orientation to the detriment of our indigenous musical culture. Similarly, there was a lack of proper synergy amongst the entities that play significant roles in evaluation of music in Nigerian basic school, and some of the teachers lack adequate musical knowledge for adequate musical instruction. Suggestions of areas of co-operation that will impact positively on music pedagogy were proffered and consequently proposed for Nigerian basic education.