Addressing dimensions of “The Great Moral Wrong”: How inequity in music education is polarizing the academic potential of Australian students

The intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of music education incorporate academic, social, emotional, and behavioral spheres. To deny students access to music education essentially locks them out of such benefits, limiting their potential. Music education programs have declined significantly in Australia in the last few decades and access to such programs serves as a reminder of the widening gap of inequality in the Australian school system. The reasons for the decline in music education, both at a preservice and inservice level, and the political landscape which has influenced and undermined the concept of a level playing field in public education are interrelated. Through extensive data analysis, a picture of how and why music education serves as an example of wider issues of access and equity in Australian schools will be demonstrated.     

Merit Pay and the Music Teacher

Current proponents of education reform are at present seeking to fundamentally change the system of teacher compensation by eliminating the traditional single salary schedule and instituting a merit pay system that directly links teacher pay to student achievement. To date, the scholarly literature in music education has been silent on the subject of teacher compensation reform. This article reviews the political arguments and empirical evidence on teacher merit pay while considering these reforms’ potential deleterious effects on music educators. After examining the potential pitfalls of a merit pay system for music educators, I propose one possible framework for evaluating music teachers in a merit pay system.     

Five Minute Dog Feeder

In this article, the author explores music education counterforces, examining whether and how (a) federal and state education policies can better address the in-service needs of special area teachers, particularly music teachers, in the school setting; and (b) policy organizations in the music education profession (i.e., The National Association for Music Education, the National Association of Schools of Music, the College Music Society, the Society for Music Teacher Education, and the Music Education Research Council) might also address the inherent tensions between music education and schooling.     

Degas the Master without Emotion

This article provides a brief review of generally accepted ideas about creativity, followed by examples of music teachers teaching creatively and teaching their students to be more creative. Implications for teacher education and policy recommendations for music education are discussed     

Slide Transparencies

Abstract

Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini. How College Affects Students. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. 792 pages. $75 hardback; $39.95 paperback.     

Notes

Abstract

Marvin Cetron and Owen Davies: American Renaissance: Our Life at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. 400 pages. $19.95 hardback.

Richard Grenier: Capturing the Culture: Film, Art, and Politics. Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991. 392 pages. $24.95 hardback.

Thomas P. Hughes: American Genesis: A Century of Innovation and Technological Enthusiasm. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990. 529 pages. $10.95 paperback.

Anson Rabinbach: The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. New York: Basic Books, 1990. 402 pages. $34.95 hardback.

Jeremy Rifkin: Time Wars.: New York: Touchstone Books, Simon &; Schuster, 1989. 302 pp. $9.95 paperback.     

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.     

The Impact of a Funded Research Program on Music Education Policy

Sounds of Learning: The Impact of Music Education is a research program designed to allow researchers to examine the roles of music education in the lives of school-aged children to expand the understanding of music's role in a quality education. The NAMM Foundation, the sponsoring organization, has provided more than $1,000,000 to fund research on the impact of music education on student achievement and success in school; all aspects of a child's growth and development; the uses and functions of music in daily life; and home, school, and community environments. Quality research about the role and impact of music education conducted by experienced researchers who publish in rigorous, peer-reviewed, scientific research journals plays a vital role in moving a public policy agenda forward to achieve expanded access to music education for all children. The goal is that this research will inform policy debates and development to achieve policies that support opportunities for every child to experience the power and benefits of learning music.     

Ideas on Loan for Printmaking

The purpose of this article is to examine the fundamentals of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and its impact on music educators. Topics include: (a) zero reject, (b) non-discriminatory evaluations, (c) free appropriate public education, (d) least restrictive environment, (e) procedural due process, (f) parental involvement, and (g) response to intervention (RTI). Detailed explanations of policy are provided along with strategies for implication in the music classroom.     

Paradigms and Politics: Shaping Health Care Access for Sickle Cell Patients Through the Discursive Regimes of Biomedicine

The emergence of two different sickle cell disease and disease/treatment paradigms in two clinics, Children's Hospital West (CHW) and Children's Hospital East (CHE), demonstrates how physicians can influence institutional regimes of truth to improve patient access. Physicians at both clinics, far from simply acquiescing to dominant biomedical paradigms, recognize that their paradigms are in part rhetorical strategies designed to subvert problematic staff biases and perceptions, and to encourage a particular "self-efficacy" ethic in the patients. This paper positions physicians as struggling within the discursive regimes of biomedicine to create an institutional space where the disease and the sickle cell patient matter, and where patients comply with the performative rules of that space. This paper explores how physicians, patients, and institutions collaborate in the construction of sickle cell disease in such a way that biomedicine becomes a plural, as opposed to a singular and oppressive, discursive regime.     

Looking Toward the Future

Changes in education policy—particularly at the federal and state levels—during the current era of ideologically and profit-driven “education reform” threaten balanced education in general and music/arts education in particular. Emerging answers to a number of pivotal questions will determine the future of the arts, arts education, and public education in general. Music educators and other advocates of quality arts education must not only adapt their curricula and instructional practices to reach students in a twenty-first century context, but also develop effective communications systems and organize coalitions powerful enough to influence policymakers and thereby shape policies supportive of quality music/arts education. Recent advocacy efforts by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) provide examples of how supporters of arts education might accomplish these goals.     

A Plan to Coordinate the Culture of the Three Americas

Music education has always required advocacy to solidify its place in the school curriculum. Music teachers are increasingly called on to justify their existence and importance in the schools, and yet, are often unprepared to advocate on their own behalf without the use of advocacy materials that are created on the basis of questionable research, questionable interpretations of valid research, or materials that demean the profession. This practical advocacy crisis is created by the lack of a solid philosophical basis for music education advocacy, the profusion of questionable advocacy materials available, and the lack of lobbying at the federal and state levels for meaningful laws that give arts education true core status. In the article, the author discusses suggestions for improving advocacy methods and materials.     

Contemplating a Constructivist Stance for Active Learning within Music Education

This article examines constructivist philosophies for learning with an emphasis on student-centered environments in education and the active involvement of students in learning as they relate new understanding to what they already know and refine previous skills in terms of newly acquired proficiencies. Active learning is explored from a constructivist perspective in which students adopt an analytic approach to questioning and problem solving. Through these processes, students extend their current understanding and emerge as independent musicians, actively engaged in their work as singers, players, composers, improvisers, and listeners. This approach is contrasted with student involvement in hands-on activities in which the focus is on the actions needed to fulfill a given task and limited awareness is devoted to the thinking required to complete the work. I examine the implications of this approach for educational practice and call on policymakers to re-envision music education with attention to engaged learning as perceived within constructivist ways of knowing.     

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.