How can song supercharge learning?

Ever stop to wonder if we’re doing this right? Are students actually learning anything, or is it all in ‘one ear, out the other’? And, more importantly, are we making them the people they want to be?

If one person can tell us, it’s Craig Hammond, Professor of Education and Transformative Practice, who has a new book out about the educational journey, and asserts that when students are allowed to connect new knowledge to their own stories, the work is often extraordinary.

Music, Hope and Transformation through Higher Education (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) uses song to open people up to their learning but Craig argues, it could equally be film, literature, travel or other experiences that have a powerful push or pull on our lives.

“Your music, your films and your own unique cultural experiences aren’t distractions from learning. They’re often the way into it,” he says.

We explored Craig’s own story to understand his fascinating ideas.

Q. – It’s not often that music is a vehicle to talk about university. How did you come to mix the two?

“I was driving my usual commute down the M62, listening to a playlist and for some reason that morning, each song opened a memorial slip road beyond the humdrummery of the motorway. A flood of memories started to vividly come to mind - my childhood in Blackburn, joining the army, becoming a weaver, starting at university.

“I realised that music had always been the thing that carried me forward and gave me hope and belief that I might be able to succeed, despite early failures in my schooling.  Music gave me a sense that a different life might be possible – and I could succeed - before any evidence or reason existed.”

Q. – Give us some examples of songs connecting you to yourself.

“The first song from the playlist is Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’. This takes me back to gazing up at the sky from the school yard to watch distant jumbo jets; it re-emerges in my early twenties, when I was a shift-working weaver. On my free Mondays I’d catch the train to Manchester Airport, sit in ‘Terminal 1’ with a coffee and watch the aeroplanes. In the book, I call this version of myself “Mr Airport Man”. He was someone who badly wanted to fly to somewhere different, to escape and transform, but at that point he had no idea how to.

“Later in my journey, Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ became meaningful; the song takes me back to my first actual flight on a Jumbo Jet to Los Angeles to present at a conference. As we became airborne, I listened to the song and started to feel that I was finally becoming the person that ‘Mr Airport Man’ had longed for.”

Q. – Your thesis is that ordinary cultural experiences can become catalysts for personal change and transformation. Do you see this happening amongst your students?

“As a mature undergraduate, I went to see the film Trainspotting and there’s a well-known scene where Renton climbs into a disgusting public convenience and dives into the pristine turquoise of the clear blue sea; this all unfolds to Brian Eno’s ‘Deep Blue Day’. I recognised aspects of myself in this character and his experiences. I’d left a fairly bleak place behind and was diving into the mysterious deep blue-sea of higher education as a way out. The next day I skipped lectures to listen to Eno’s song on repeat. It had crystallised something about where I’d come from and where I was trying to go.

“I see this type of emotive and redemptive experience with my students. On some of my modules I invite students to bring their own lives into their academic work, often starting with something as simple as their favourite film. One wrote about a holiday in Ibiza where a particular song and its lyrics gave her the drive to push through some real obstacles and qualify as a teacher. When students are allowed to connect knowledge to their own stories, the work is often extraordinary. Many say it helped them rediscover why they came to university in the first place. Every year, reading their assignments takes my breath away.”

Q. – You talk in your book about education and self-knowledge as interlinked. Do you think students should think more about who they are before they choose a course or a career path?

“I don’t think anyone needs to have themselves figured out before they start. I left school with a GCE O-level in English and one in woodwork, and the rest of my exams were unclassified. Teachers had pretty much decided I was incapable of further academic study. Only in 2022 was I diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia, which explained a lot about why school made so little sense to me.

“There’s an old distinction in the word ‘education’. One root, “educare”, means to train or mould. The other, “educere”, means to lead out what’s already inside you. For me, the best of higher education recognises and enables the second. So rather than working out who you are first, I’d encourage students to choose something that genuinely sparks curiosity and to treat university as a place where self-knowledge can be authentically encountered and explored.”

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn

Charlie Parker, saxophonist

Q.- What is your advice to students to get the best out of their higher education?

“Always take the first step (no matter how daunting it seems)! Before my first Open University class in 1994, I nearly didn’t get on the train to go, because I didn’t feel that I was clever enough.

“Second, wander. Talk to people who are different from you. In my second year, a chance conversation with an anarchist introduced me to the work of the philosopher Ernst Bloch on hope; this changed the direction of my life completely. Spend time in the library and follow ideas down unexpected paths.

“Thirdly, bring yourself with you. Your background, your music, your films and your own unique cultural experiences aren’t distractions from learning. They’re often the way into it. And finally, listen to the people who believe in you. It was my wife who convinced me to do a PhD, and my supervisors who pushed me to submit a paper to that first conference in California. Sometimes other people can see your potential before you can.”

Q. – Music is part of who we are. Is it the same with knowledge?

“That’s really the argument of the book. A song becomes part of you when it attaches to your own memories and moments. Knowledge works the same way. A theory sitting in a textbook is just information. The moment it connects to something you’ve lived, it becomes yours.

“The philosopher Gaston Bachelard stated that “millers, who are wind thieves make good flour from storms.” It made me cry when I read this, because it described what education had done for me; it had enabled me to transform previous ‘storms’ and destructive experiences into something positive.

“That’s when knowledge stops being something that you’re tested on and becomes part of who you are. For me, universities are at their best when they make room for that.”

Craig Hammond is Professor of Education and Transformative Practice and a National Teaching Fellow.

His book Music, Hope and Transformation through Higher Education (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026) will be officially launched by LJMU’s Ethnography Club, in conjunction with the Liverpool Institute for Research in Education, on Wednesday 28th October, from 12.00–14.30 at the LJMU Student Life Building, Copperas Hill.