A Midlakes music teacher is gaining national attention for research that challenges how classrooms think about learning.
Chris McAfee, the Middle School Band Director at Midlakes, recently published a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Educational Thought. The work explores how students move between formal and informal learning experiences.
McAfee joined Midlakes in September 2025 after teaching at Ogdensburg Free Academy and Norwood-Norfolk High School. He also coaches track and field.
A collaboration rooted in graduate work
McAfee collaborated on the research with Columbia University professor Dr. Drew Coles. The paper grew out of McAfee’s master’s work, which he completed through Columbia University in December.
“It’s exciting,” McAfee said. “With Dr. Coles, we collaborated as part of my Masters work, and it blossomed from a student-teacher connection to being truly collaborative.”
Their paper, titled Quantum Degrees of Formality in Learning Facilitation: Interrogating the Space Between Formal and Informal Learning, appears in Volume 58, Number 2 of the journal.
Rethinking how learning happens
The research looks at learning through a lens inspired by quantum mechanics. It questions the strict divide between formal instruction and informal learning.
McAfee described a common classroom moment to explain the idea. A student notices a teacher’s gesture causes music to get louder. Later, the teacher helps the student connect that experience to the concept of a crescendo.
“In this lesson, we can see knowledge suspended in the student’s experience which the teacher is successfully able to make concrete and reinforce for the rest of the classroom,” McAfee said.
Learning as a spectrum
McAfee said learning rarely fits into neat categories. Students constantly absorb information through observation, interaction, and experience.
“We are allowing students to use their outside experiences, what they notice in the classroom, what they gain by being in the room and turning that into concrete learning that they can use in everyday life,” he said.
The research also challenges the idea that informal learning alone leads to mastery, especially in music.
“The way popular musicians learn — listening, discovering, engaging — it offers weight to say you don’t need to apply formal training to be musically educated,” McAfee said. “But that really devalues a lot of the training that did happen.”
From theory to the classroom
McAfee said most educators already use this approach without realizing it. He has seen it across multiple districts, including Midlakes.
“Educators are engaged with [students] and allow them to have a hand in their learning,” he said. “You make sure you are working with the students and find out what is working for them.”
Rather than a rigid system, McAfee described the research as a way of thinking that evolves with a curriculum over time.
“Students are constantly learning, seeing, discovering, collaborating, constructing and even deconstructing their learning,” he said.
Sharing the research
McAfee presented the research at the International Society for Sociology in Music Education’s conference in Wayne, New Jersey. He has also presented at New York State School Music Association professional development sessions.
“In learning, a student’s knowledge can manifest as many different things,” McAfee said. “And it is not until we bring that into our curricular structure that it becomes anchored as knowledge within their learning.”
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