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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Public Policy and Music Education in Norway and Finland

This article applies the Toulmin argument model of rhetorical analysis—which features identification and dissection of the components of prominent enthymemes—to scrutinize concepts within both educational policy documents and relevant music education literature from Norway and Finland across the past decade. Our analysis examines how understandings of “music education” are formulated through the cosmopolitan rhetoric of public policy, enabling rigorous assessment of relationships between the prospective limitations of these formulations and the actual concerns of music teachers evident in professional periodicals since the start of the twenty-first century.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Do You Really Want to Know? Elementary Music Programs and Potential in Utah

This is the first of two articles reporting the results of a study by the author regarding the status of elementary music education in the state of Utah. This article focuses on how elementary music programs are structured (regular instruction with a music specialist, truncated programs, delegated programs, no formal music instruction, no music instruction). Factors that shape those structures are also addressed. While over 90 percent of elementary schools in the United States provide regular music instruction taught by certified music specialists to over 90 percent of their student populations, less than 10 percent of Utah's elementary population receives such instruction. Nearly half of the elementary students in the state receive no designated music instruction other than that provided by their regular elementary classroom teachers. The influence of budget constraints, school funding policies, No Child Left Behind, other accountability measures, high-stakes testing, urban/rural populations, and demographics are highlighted. Policy considerations are discussed.     

Understand – then Criticize

In this article we propose a policy intended to alleviate the typical problems of student internships and improve the usefulness and relevancy of any partnership. We extend previous ideas about professional development schools or partnerships to eliminate the disconnect between K–12 schools and universities and add a component of multiple constituent mentoring necessary for effective music teacher and music teacher educator training. A partnership with multiple mentors—K–12 students, K–12 teachers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and university music education faculty—can provide the most benefits to the greatest number of people. The policy presented in this article will likely require the implementation of philosophical and curricular changes, but these efforts would be well worth the investment of time and resources.     

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     

Perceptions…

Strong school-university partnerships yield effective music teachers. However, music teacher preparation curriculum has undergone little reform over the years, resulting in a homogeneous P–12 curriculum. Encouraging preservice music teachers to consider cultural and pedagogical differences holds promise for changing music teacher preparation and preservice music teachers’ views regarding content and contextually relevant practice. In this article, an international collaborative course is presented as one model to help preservice teachers confront previously held attitudes regarding music education, develop flexible cultural competency, and become more open to curricular innovation. Recommendations for policy that would enact an international partnership agenda for music teacher preparation to meet these aims are provided.     

The Cultural Politics of the Texas Educational Reform Agenda: Examining Who Gets What, When, and How

This critical policy examination of the economistic discourses that control Texas's accountability reforms explores how over the last three decades Texas business elite utilized the policy process, power relationships, and educational value conflicts that promote accountability as the paradigm for education reform. Attention on "who gets what, when, and how" finds the balance of educational values is distorted on behalf of the business-power elites and undermines the democratic authority of accountability reforms.     

Do You Really Want to Know? Elementary Music Personnel and Potential in Utah

This is the second of two articles reporting the results of a study by the author regarding the status of elementary music education in the state of Utah. This article focuses on the qualifications of Utah's elementary music teachers (music certified, elementary classroom certified, artists-in-residence, volunteers, and paraprofessionals) and the conditions under which they teach. Interactions among teacher qualifications and teaching status are explored. Paraprofessionals play a significant role in Utah's elementary music programs. While over 90 percent of elementary schools in the United States provide regular music instruction taught by certified music specialists, less than 10 percent of Utah's elementary population receives such instruction. Nearly half of the elementary students in the state receive no designated music instruction beyond that provided by their regular elementary classroom teacher. The influence of school funding, No Child Left Behind and other accountability measures, high-stakes testing, urban/rural populations, and leadership are highlighted. Policy considerations are discussed.     

Liberts’ Wet-in-Wet Painting

This article describes important global and local initiatives that have one common goal: to give access to and equal opportunities for arts/music education to all children and adolescents. The article also discusses the lack of information available to global leaders in arts education—without a worldwide picture of arts education practices, it is difficult to design local or global policies. The case of Brazil is presented, showing a timeline of advocacy campaigns and the success of establishing a law that assures compulsory music education in schools, as well as the challenges of regulating the profession and the need to rethink our pedagogical paradigm in a contemporary world. Regardless of local or international perspective, the establishment of policy needs to be based on research data and include dialogue between policymakers and arts teachers.     

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.     

Accountability and the academy: producing knowledge about the human dimensions of climate change

Calls for accountability and ‘impactful’ research are fundamentally reshaping the academy, giving rise to a large, critical scholarship on neoliberal regimes of accountability and their pernicious effects. But these calls also animate other institutional forms and practices that have received less critical attention. These include new forms of science that promise accountability through interdisciplinarity, collaborating with stakeholders, and addressing real‐world problems. This article considers one example of such accountable science: human dimensions of climate change field research. This research endeavour has produced surprising results, including the uncritical adoption of controversial Euro‐American ideas about traditional Others. In exploring how this has come about, the article considers how theoretical and disciplinary diversity are managed within this arena, and the organizing logics that enable climate sciences and scientists to work together. We ultimately argue that accountable science – like other neoliberal modes of accountability – can produce outcomes for which no one can be held to account.     

Music teacher stress in the era of accountability

While there is an established body of literature on teacher stress and on the factors that may make music teaching uniquely stressful, there has been little or no research on how the recent era of accountability influences music teacher stress. In this article, I review the literature on music teacher stress and on how accountability reforms may impact this experience of stress. I then detail the findings of an interview-based multiple case study I performed with instrumental music teachers in Michigan. I present the findings through a model of an earthquake (the accountability reforms) and its main shocks/aftershocks (the particular stressors caused or influenced by the reforms). “Main shocks” of the accountability “earthquake” included stress over changes to teacher evaluation, changes to teacher tenure, and the need for the teachers’ schools to improve their test-score-based school ratings. “Aftershocks” included intensification from increased workload, a general atmosphere of building-level stress, uncertainty, and a recasting of the significance of large group performance festivals. Finally, stress from the main shocks and aftershocks combined with “normal” job stressors to increase the cumulative experience of stress. Implications for teachers and researchers are offered.     

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.