Lettering Technique

Because teaching and learning are regulated by distinct ideas of education and school administration in each of the sixteen states in Germany, an analysis of arts and music education policy shows contradictory results. However, this article reveals that an underlying discourse on the role and importance of music education draws a more homogenous picture. Therefore, the article focuses on parents’ attitudes toward music education within the frame of mobility German society offers. It is shown that middle class parents especially value music as part of a strategy to secure children's future status. On a higher level again this leads to contradictions between verbalized positions on the aims of music education and factual decisions. These contradictions are framed by more general theories on policymaking in a global perspective.     

Art Comes to Life in a Steel Mill Town

In this article, the authors investigate how Korea's current educational policy's emphasis on artistic expression, and therefore music education, has been realized in the praxis of early childhood education. The authors view policy as discourses and texts that early childhood educators interpret and reinterpret within specific contexts. Policy rhetoric and practice fail to recognize the integration of musical conceptual development, expressive ability, creativity, and communication. The musical development of a child should be viewed as his or her right to nurture a musical self in a meaningful musical context.     

Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage

This article examines how the performance of a variety of Islamic music in transnational cultural circuits helps to promote the idea of a style of sacred music within the category of world music. Taking as an example the performance of the mawlawiyya, or "Whirling Dervish," music and dance by a Syrian–based ensemble, I show how the idea of an authentic local Syrian sacred music tradition requires its performance globally. I use the concept of the "world stage" to examine how musical performance practices that are represented as authentic local traditions obtain both their authenticity and their local specificity through their staging in global contexts. I further explore how such musical styles as sacred and Sufi emerge as naturalized categories in world music discourse, and how processes of differentiation and commodification reconfigure both the "local" and "global." [Keywords: world music, globalization, style, Syria, Islam]     

Craft Experiences

Music education exists within a web of policies. Those most often identified by music teachers and professional associations are the policies imposed on the profession by governmental and regulatory bodies. Advocacy efforts to change policy are mostly directed toward these bodies. However, the practice of music education is perhaps more influenced by subtle policies that affect teachers' values, expectations, and practices. In this article, Nye's concepts of "hard" and "soft" power are adapted and used as a paradigm for categorization and analysis of policy to illustrate this situation. Using this model reveals that while some hard policies specific to music education advocate a progressive music education, other hard policies may interfere with this agenda and soft policies seem to maintain the status quo. Recommendations are made for building the capacity of teachers to understand, study, and influence policy.     

Artist and Educator

Policy can be a useful tool for effecting change, but policy analysis, which shapes policy development, has been underused in music education research. This paper demonstrates how Bardach's (2000) Eightfold Path can be used to develop solutions to problems in music education. Some have argued that school music programs do not prepare students to engage musically in today's society. To develop alternative solutions and project their outcomes, I analyze several current and past efforts to redefine music education and secure its place in the curriculum. Several alternatives, which include revising the National Standards, developing a national curriculum, improving professional development, and reconceiving advocacy, are evaluated, and policy recommendations are made that will enable the profession to redefine music education to better serve today's students.     

Ninth National Annual Ceramic Art Exhibition at Syracuse Museum

This article addresses accountability issues that affect music education policy and implementation in the neoliberal education system. Using examples from education reform in Ontario, Canada, the author argues that two forms of accountability imbalances fostered by the neoliberal state—hierarchical answerability over communicative reason and top-down over bottom-up policymaking—allow the use of music curricula for political ends, to the detriment of curricular integrity and classroom delivery. The article also discusses how central governments that are responsible for developing standardized music curricula and allocating resources in an accountability vacuum may tacitly establish that "basic" subjects such as literacy, numeracy, and science are "more mandatory" than a mandated music curricula. The article concludes by recommending ways in which the centralized development of music education policy and resource allocation can be made more equitable both for those who encounter the curriculum at the local level and for the subject.     

Inclusive education policy in the Hong Kong primary music classroom

An education reform policy and inclusive education policy have been implemented in Hong Kong for over a decade. As more students with special educational needs have entered the mainstream education system under these policies, Hong Kong's primary music classrooms offer a site where three policies interact—the education reform policy entitled “Learning to Learn,” the policy of inclusive education, and the undeclared “policy” of making savings in the government budget. This article seeks to explore the results of the interaction of these three policies. A qualitative study was carried out to investigate the views of Hong Kong primary school music teachers on the policy of inclusion in relation to music teaching. Insufficient support in inclusive learning in “non-core” subjects, such as music, is evidenced.     

Revisioning and reinstating: Music education after the Great Recession

ABSTRACT

The Great Recession caused many school districts across the country to make numerous cuts in their annual budget models. As a result of these austerity measures, administrators often reduced arts education offerings. In the current study, we highlight how budget reductions in three districts negatively impacted music education curricula, and how education policy makers in each district developed unique frameworks to revision and reinstate music instruction in their schools. Themes from multiple stakeholder interviews revealed a process for those who seek new advocacy messages including hearing the voice for the arts/music, revisioning music curricula, and understanding agents of change. A key finding in the current investigation was the importance of all players accepting and understanding the different approaches to reinstating and revisioning music curricula. Suggestions for further investigation include varying the type of district selected for investigation and including teacher and community member voice in policy discussions and development.     

Uncommon commonalities: Cosmopolitan ethics as a framework for music education policy analysis

Contemporary American education policy rhetoric is problematic because its authors’ assertions, particularly those about the goals of education, frequently conflict with their implied moral and/or ethical commitments. This philosophical policy analysis uses Appiah's cosmopolitan principles to examine the ethical implications of current education and music education policy discourse and practice. While education policy rhetoric promoting the fulfillment of basic human needs through employment aligns with one aspect of the cosmopolitan principle of universal concern, policy makers’ assertions about unbridled economic competition contradicts cosmopolitans’ concern for all individuals. Contemporary education and music education policies that enable teachers to have freedom in selecting content and instructional practices reinforce the cosmopolitan principle of respect for legitimate difference, but discourse and action emphasizing standardization, including standardized outcomes, conflicts with the cosmopolitanism. Four recommendations are offered: use cosmopolitan ethics as a means of framing agreement or dissatisfaction with contemporary education policies; implement parts of the National Core Music Standards in ways that promote standards without standardization; advocate for the aspects of the Opportunity-To-Learn Standards for Music Instruction; consider how music educators’ day-to-day practices interface with the cosmopolitan ethics.     

Making Illuminated Parchments

The author describes how contemporary music education at the secondary level has fallen short of Dr. Charles Leonhard's vision for developing musical understanding and musical responsiveness in all students and cites several historical events as pivotal in promoting the profession's current path. The author then challenges this generalization by describing the professional practices of a forward-thinking high school band director who epitomizes Leonhard's ideal of a music teacher and serves as a model for professional dispositions. The author also offers social interaction theory as a promising foundation on which to assemble a music teacher education program capable of producing teachers with dispositions that serve the highest goals of the music education profession.     

A Novel Technic for High School Magazines

Inspired by ideas that Levi-Strauss (1955) presented in Tristes Tropiques, the author discusses music and early childhood in Brazil from educational, historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives. She begins with a short history of early childhood education in Brazil, including changes in educational policies, teacher preparation, and recent statistics. Next, a brief history of music teaching and learning is followed by a discussion of Brazilian children's current musical practices. In this section, the author discusses teacher training, curriculum, religion, wealth, local culture, and the role of the media. The author concludes with suggestions for the development of both early childhood music education policy and practice in Brazil.     

Music teachers' perceptions of high stakes teacher evaluation

Recent corporate education reform policies have replaced relatively informal systems of principal observations that had been familiar to many teachers for much of their professional careers with high-stakes teacher evaluation (HSTE) systems that now determine who is allowed to remain in the profession and who gets terminated. Many education scholars have found current teacher evaluation systems to be lacking in validity and reliability. This article examines the perspectives of music teachers working within HSTE systems through a policy lens, identifying the major challenges these systems pose for music educators and offering policy recommendations for improving the evaluation of music teachers.     

Frank Lloyd Wright

Expanding the common parlance of the music education field to include policy questions seems pressing today, given that, regardless of the growing impact and encompassing nature of educational policy, music education has struggled to systematically translate the considerations, arguments, and visions developed by practitioners, researchers, and community leaders into policy language. This article suggests that an approach based on a comparative cosmopolitanism framework can be a constructive force in decision making, facilitating fruitful and collaborative interactions within music education across regions and between areas of music development—from school to community, from the industry to the nonprofit.     

Hints for Beginning China Painters

The need for music educators to become more actively involved in policy issues, including analysis, design, implementation, and research, is critical to the future of music education. Bridging the gap between policy and practice requires a collaborative effort among music professionals. This article explores the inclusive use of policy studies in a music teacher education curriculum within a school-university partnership context. The process of creating a secondary instrumental music partnership is used to illustrate specific examples of how policy can be included in music teacher education programs. I demonstrate how the partnership created a curricular opportunity for preservice music teachers to investigate policy in an authentic context. Planning time, curricular scope and sequence, and the negative impacts of the curricular incorporation of policy on the self-efficacy of the preservice music teachers emerged as concerns for future consideration and review. Recommendations to address these concerns are included.     

Appropriating school music for economic goals: Exploring evidence of neo-social ideology in music advocacy

This article explores the extent to which recent policy-based advocacy for music in Australian schools has been guided by economic arguments. This exploration was driven by emerging commentary on the rise of neo-social education policy, which is said to have reframed equality and social justice in education as tools for economic agendas. To explore the presence of this neo-social ideology in school music advocacy, key Australian policy documents have been analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis. Results show that while current advocacy does champion social and subjective benefits, these benefits are ultimately justified in economistic terms. While caveats to these findings are discussed, the argument is made for new education policies that adequately value subjective wellbeing and social justice as goals in their own right.     

Music education and the well-rounded education provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act: A critical policy analysis

Critical approaches to policy analysis, although common in general education, are rare in arts education literature. By adopting critical approaches, researchers can produce scholarship that will be transformative for policies that impact arts education and for the profession as a whole. In this article, I present a framework that allows researchers to incorporate critical theory into policy analysis. This ideological work can expose sources of power and help reveal the ways in which the targets of policy are complicit in their own domination. Adopting this framework, I examine the well-rounded education provision of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 to better understand the policy's origins, its development, and the potential implications for music education.     

A Practical Plan for Public Works of Art Heckman Summer School at Woodstock

The 1957 launch of Sputnik and the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk shifted national education policy. Music educators promoted an “intrinsic value” of music philosophy following Sputnik and music advocacy through politics and public performances following A Nation at Risk. Examining the history of both the intrinsic value philosophy and advocacy reveals that music educators responded to Sputnik and A Nation at Risk by continuing to work within their existing language and practices rather than reacting to and transforming after either event. The political, social, and cultural contexts of these events may explain music educators’ responses.     

Policy actors' narrative constructions of migrants' integration in Malmö and Bologna

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people.     

Intersections between music education and music therapy: Education reform,arts education,exceptionality, and policy at the local level

In this article, a music teacher educator and a music therapy clinician and educator discuss special education policy and arts instruction at the district level. To illustrate the gulf between federal and local policies with regard to exceptional learners and arts instruction, we examine the intersections of music therapy and music education with regard to self-contained classes of students with moderate to severe disabilities. Our discussion focuses on provision of services and opportunity to learn, and results in specific policy suggestions, including: (a) increasing administrators' understanding of music therapy, adaptive music education, and music education, so that decisions regarding arts instruction can be better-informed and more child-centered, (b) treating music therapists as allied health professionals who do not need to be certified teachers to practice in schools, and (c) improving initial music teacher preparation and providing opportunities for professional development to increase awareness of necessary information and effective strategies to improve music teaching and learning for students with special needs.     

Serve and return: Communication foundations for early childhood music policy stakeholders

ABSTRACT

Serve-and-return interactions between a young child and caregiver are cited as integral to healthy child development and language development. In this article, the authors assert that serve-and-return interactions offer a relevant model for policy development in early childhood music education. They share contemporary evidence that music learning and development begins in the womb, continues during infancy, and needs to be prioritized in preschool and early elementary years. Next, they trace the policy landscape for early childhood education and music education in the United States since 2008. Although the landscape has remained stark, the authors offer recent glimmers of possibilities and conclude with actionable steps for improving early childhood music education policies.