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.     

Inspired by the Clavilux

This article is a response to Shuler's 2001 article predicting the future of music education. The respondent assesses Shuler's predictions, finding that many have come true but critiquing Shuler's overall positive assessment. The respondent then goes on to make one prediction about the future of music education: that algorithms will increasingly be understood as deeply involved in music education. The article discusses three main points regarding algorithms: one, that music is increasingly involved in algorithmic processes; two, that while algorithms are hidden, they nevertheless have political consequences; and three, that users and algorithms are mutually entangled, with users often orienting their behavior toward algorithms and algorithms increasingly being customized based on a model of the user. From these three premises, the author goes on to discuss five implications music educators should consider in developing a balanced view of twenty-first-century music education: first, the shift from the authority of the teacher toward the algorithmic wisdom of the crowd; second, the rise of music as content; third, the opportunity to engage with the governing of algorithms; fourth, the need to understand the aesthetics of algorithms; and fifth, the need for resistance to algorithms. In concluding, the author calls for maintaining a balanced approach when employing technology—moving beyond approaches that mythologize cyberculture.     

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.     

Catalogue

The author presents reviews that identify success factors in music and arts education partnerships between cultural institutions and K-12 schools. She incorporates the evaluation of one Massachusetts partnership, Arts Can Teach (ACT), to examine the connection between partnerships and K-12 arts-program policy decisions. ACT is a collaborative effort among Boston's Wang Center for the Performing Arts, the Lynn Public Schools, and LynnArts, which matched music specialists and teachers in other disciplines with practicing artists for oneyear partnerships. Success factors of the ACT partnership are considered in terms of their similarity to success factors from the literature on music education partnerships. The author discusses implications for increasing and sustaining music and arts education programming and local arts education policy development.     

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.     

Modern Methods in Teaching Art

Academic programs use objective and standardized assessment criteria. Music education programs have avoided such objective assessments via the assertion of subjectivity and aesthetics in music learning. In this article, the author introduces the revised Bloom's taxonomy as a tool to translate music education outcomes into objective educational criteria. The author analyzes cognitive processes and knowledge domains that address more complex forms of musicianship using achievement standards from the nine national standards in music education as examples. The author also introduces four new knowledge domains to describe procedural and metacognitive knowledge that are integral to music learning. In addition, the new taxonomy elevates creativity as the most complex of the cognitive processes, which has positive implications for the field of music education.     

Radiation oncology in Canada: the increasing manpower crisis.

Cancer has been the second most common cause of death in Canada for decades, and its nonsurgical management has largely been carried out by radiation oncologists for many years. Most of these specialists are not Canadian medical graduates, and the supply of suitably trained radiation oncologists is steadily diminishing in relation to the increasing numbers of patients referred to regional cancer centres. Consequently, the workload of each radiation oncologist has steadily increased to a level well beyond that recommended internationally, and it is still increasing. Unless more Canadian graduates can be attracted into the field, and unless more staff positions can be created in virtually all Canadian regional cancer centres, the high quality of patient care, teaching and research offered by radiation oncologists will suffer irreparably and will probably never recover to its former internationally recognized level. In this paper the author recommends ways in which to increase the number of radiation oncologists, though to be effective they will require the collaboration of provincial governments, medical schools, provincial cancer foundations and the medical profession.     

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.     

Obstetrics and Gynecology: Considerations in Career Selection

Current training programs in obstetrics and gynecology are not producing an excess of specialists in view of future manpower needs. In addition to being specialists and consultants, obstetrician-gynecologists also function as providers of primary care for women. During the last decade, three formal sub-specialties of obstetrics and gynecology have evolved: gynecologic oncology, maternal-fetal medicine and reproductive endocrinology. These have improved patient care and have altered the structure of resident education. With more American medical school graduates entering this specialty, the quality of resident applicants has improved, creating intense competition for desirable training positions. Those inclined toward a career in obstetrics and gynecology can be assured that it will provide an increasingly favorable and challenging environment for professional activity in the future.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Designed to Sell

The purpose of this study was to construct a profile of K–12 music teachers in the United States and develop a model to predict their retention, turnover, and attrition. Responses to the Schools and Staffing Survey from 47,857 K–12 public and private school teachers, including 1,903 music teachers, were analyzed using comparative statistics, factor analysis, logistic regression, and structural equation modeling. Results indicated that music teachers were far more likely than other types of teachers to hold itinerant or part-time positions, and were less likely to receive support for working with special needs students. Music teachers changed teaching positions because of dissatisfaction with workplace conditions and for better teaching assignments. Music teachers left the teaching profession for better salary or benefits, and were generally more satisfied in their new field. Music teachers’ perceived level of administrative support had the most prominent influence on both music teacher satisfaction and retention.     

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.     

Do Women Prefer More Complex Music around Ovulation?

The evolutionary origins of music are much debated. One theory holds that the ability to produce complex musical sounds might reflect qualities that are relevant in mate choice contexts and hence, that music is functionally analogous to the sexually-selected acoustic displays of some animals. If so, women may be expected to show heightened preferences for more complex music when they are most fertile. Here, we used computer-generated musical pieces and ovulation predictor kits to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that women prefer more complex music in general; however, we found no evidence that their preference for more complex music increased around ovulation. Consequently, our findings are not consistent with the hypothesis that a heightened preference/bias in women for more complex music around ovulation could have played a role in the evolution of music. We go on to suggest future studies that could further investigate whether sexual selection played a role in the evolution of this universal aspect of human culture.     

Early Childhood Music Education in Australia: A Snapshot

Policy for early childhood music education (birth to eight years of age) in Australia covers a complex and diverse range of curriculum guidelines and legislation relating to the contexts of day care, preschool, and the early years of school. Australian models and policies vary from state to state and according to setting. Furthermore, early childhood education is constantly changing and evolving, responding to new practices, altered government priorities and funding, and community needs. In this article, the author aims to provide a snapshot of the situation by reviewing and analyzing educational policies, teacher training, and providers of early childhood music programs as well as suggesting some future directions.     

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.     

Music Education for Young Children in Scandinavia: Policy,Philosophy, or Wishful Thinking?

The author discusses current policies, philosophies, and educational practices of early childhood music education in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) and to what extent they meet the challenges of music education for young children. Nearly all children use day care provisions, and they are a governmental responsibility. The author reviews governmental policies regarding general pedagogical goals of day care and kindergarten in Scandinavia. During the last decade, teaching plans for preschool pedagogy were implemented and the author discusses to what extent the plans meet current challenges of music education. The author also discusses the challenges of teacher-training programs in light of current policies regarding music education in early childhood.     

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.     

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.