The True Meaning of Design

Recently, state and federal legislators have emphasized teacher quality in their efforts to improve public education. Many reformers believe that merit pay may prove invaluable in attracting highly qualified educators to the workforce and retaining them, as well as in improving students’ test scores. While merit pay's ability to recruit and retain great teachers is as yet unproven, recent studies have found little evidence that merit pay improves students’ test scores. The following article seeks to inform merit pay policies by offering insight from research in educational psychology and outlining possible implications for music education.     

A View of Current Evaluative Practices in Instrumental Music Teacher Education

The purpose of this study was to examine how instrumental music educator skills are being evaluated in current undergraduate programs. While accrediting organizations mandate certain elements of these programs, they provide limited guidance on what evaluative approaches should be used. Instrumental music teacher educators in the College Music Society (n = 303) supplied data about their respective programs through an online survey. Participants reported using written and verbal feedback, self-evaluation, and rubrics most frequently. Similar evaluation processes used across program courses or experiences, such as rubrics and ePortfolios, were described by 35 percent of the music teacher educators. Most programs culminated in a semester-long student teaching period, during which preservice teachers were observed and evaluated by university supervisors three to four times. Weak correlations were indicated between some evaluative practices and music teacher educators’ expectations for program graduates’ music educator skills. Implications for music teacher education programs and suggestions for establishing evaluation policies are discussed.     

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.     

Alleviating praxis shock: Induction policy and programming for urban music educators

An integral part of a teacher learning continuum ranging from preservice education to professional development for experienced educators, new teacher induction holds particular potential to effect change in urban education. Accordingly, this article offers recommendations for induction-related policy and programming capable of supporting beginning music educators' professional growth in urban settings. Four programmatic components well-suited to addressing urban music teachers' distinctive learning needs are discussed: professional development tailored to urban settings, collaborative communities of practice, mentoring, and school-university partnerships.     

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.     

Exploring the global decline of music education

This article seeks to explain the disjuncture between the decline of music education in schools and the importance music has in popular youth culture and in creativity within the new knowledge economy. The data discussed in this article have been derived from analyses of major documents on curriculum reform as well as e-mail responses from music educators around the world. This analysis reveals that these music educators agree with the perception of a demise in music education around the world, as well as the significance of the disjuncture alluded to. The four major reasons found for the decline in music education are: (1) the model of curriculum supported in educational reforms; (2) an emphasis on standardized evaluation; (3) less resources available; and (4) a wrong approach on music advocacy.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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     

Integrating Art and Aesthetics

Educational quality is a central issue in higher education and music teacher education. In this article, the author discusses problems concerning the development of and research into quality in music teacher education in Western societies' contemporary socio-cultural dynamics. He begins with a presentation of the concept of educational quality, its importance for music teacher education, and traditional designs for this inquiry. Thereafter, he discusses the promotion of educational quality as an external, political initiative, as a meeting between a traditionally modern project and a condition of late modernity, as well as focusing on particularly illustrative areas. The author details challenges inherent in the development of and research into educational quality as a late modern project and presents recommendations and strategies.     

Masks

Predicting the future is a challenging task for music education, requiring both retrospection, analysis of current events, and foresight. This article examines several predictions from 2001 and challenges music educators to consider factors that may influence the future of teaching music in society.     

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.     

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.     

Book Design and Illustration

In the years between the world wars, music education in Germany prospered, because successful policy made constructive cooperation among relevant institutions and representatives possible. The situation today is very different. Many music educators and researchers are not aware that policies affect them; nor do they see themselves as active participants in policymaking. This article discusses the conflicting forces in society and in the education system that are responsible for this: the precarious relationship of youth music culture and music education; the continuing decline of music education in the schools, which is concealed by media-supported events; the seeming irrelevance of music education content and methods to students; a lack of consensus in society about the core content of music education; and the ineffectiveness of the argument for the educational benefits of music education in policymaking. As a result of these forces, Germany lacks both theories and research on music education policy. This article argues that music is a diverse practice that manifests itself as many different practices in various contexts. Thus, the center of music education policy must be the people dealing with music and their varied musical practices, rather than musical works and their dissemination. As a consequence, music education policy needs to be shaped in ways appropriate to the diversity of musical practices and the various contexts of music education.     

Making a Design Hold Together

The author examines early childhood music education in Taiwan through Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. Factors in the microsystem level that influenced the musical development of children included adult perception of children, child-adult interactions, Taiwanese family structure, and the existing early childhood education system. The quality of child-parent-teacher relationships in mesosystem, the second level, had a noticeable impact on children's musical development. Exosystem, the next level, illustrated how insufficient early childhood teacher training in music influenced children's musical growth. The outermost level illustrated the educational policies and how the current practice affected Taiwanese children's music learning. The author gives recommendations to improve current practice of educational policies based on problems raised and discussed in the different levels.     

Social capital and music teacher professional development: Principle,policy, and practice

Teacher professional development (PD) is often extended as a driver of good teaching and effective schools. In recent years, teacher PD has increasingly focused on developing teacher social capital by placing teachers within professional communities to collectively solve instructional problems. Using Bourdieu's and Coleman's conceptions of social capital as a theoretical and practical lens, this article explores how a social capital frame could generate more effective PD policy in music education. Areas examined also include the specific ways in which social capital becomes a lever for teacher growth and school improvement and the social dimensions of music teacher PD. The article concludes with principles of social capital-advancing PD policy, examples of principle-aligned PD policies, implications for research and advocacy, and an accounting of challenges and opportunities for the future. The author argues that centralizing social capital development as an aim of PD represents a new frontier in music teacher learning.     

Buttons of Wood

As a result of Race to the Top, states across the country vied for school improvement grants in order to advance educational reforms including effective professional development and teacher collaboration within their school districts. Requirements of the grant included the development of teacher evaluation systems and a professional development model to support teacher growth and efficacy. Grant recipients unanimously chose to incorporate some type of professional learning community (PLC) and selected models that emphasized increasing and sustaining teacher collaboration in all disciplines. PLCs offer an opportunity for music educators to receive pedagogy specifically tailored to their discipline. Music teachers and arts supervisors should consider incorporating online PLCs into their programs not only to address professional development, but also to address teacher isolation and attrition and student achievement and, ultimately, to enact fundamental changes in their districts.     

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.     

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.