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.     

The Gentle Art of Criticism

Although much has been written about professional development in general education and music education literature, little has addressed the benefits of music-making as meaningful professional development for music teachers. For music teachers, music-making and meanings of music-making have been connected with teachers' identity, well-being, beliefs, and effectiveness, as well as being a powerful pedagogical tool and a way to develop presence in teaching. Presence in teaching is linked with self-awareness, attentiveness, and pedagogical knowledge. The purpose of this article is to explore the benefits of music-making for music teachers in order to convince policymakers of the value of music-making as a professional development activity for music teachers. This article explores theories from psychology and education that link engagement, well-being, and identity to lay the foundation for a justification of broadening professional development policies. Then, literature is presented that connects teachers' art-making experiences (past and present), identity, teaching, and student learning. The third section draws on my previous work to illustrate the intersections between teachers' music-making and teaching. Then, suggestions for implementing professional development programs with music-making components are made. Although there are many ways music-making could be included as professional development, I offer four suggestions: including music-making in departmental or district-wide meetings, granting professional development credit to music teachers who make music outside of the classroom, setting up in-classroom reflection opportunities/action research based on integrating music-making and music teaching, and initiating a collaborative teacher study group that includes chamber music collaboration.     

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.     

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     

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.     

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.     

Navigating Contradictory Communities of Practice in Learning to Teach for Social Justice

In this article, I explore the contradictions that four new teachers experienced as their commitments to social justice collide with urban school culture. Framed within Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's (1999) theory of situated learning and development concepts of identity, practice, and relationships illustrate how teachers' ideals are challenged as socializing features of two communities of practice—the universities and schools—intersect in new teachers' development. This research contributes empirical evidence of the application of critical multicultural teacher preparation into practice, a cultural representation of how educational inequities are reproduced or disrupted in the situated contexts of urban schools, an application of Lave and Wenger's theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation that incorporates formal and informal education across multiple activity settings, and a call for collaborative communities of practice that support teachers' situated learning in creating transformative practices.     

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.     

Spare-time Art Jobs

Music teaching and learning are socially situated activities. School-university partnerships have the potential to impact preservice teachers’ identities and level of socialization. Thus, a sociologically based belief system for establishing and maintaining school-university partnerships may provide cooperating teachers and university faculty members with purpose and direction for meeting the needs of stakeholders. This article explores the sociological and pedagogical implications of school-university partnerships and illustrates how these underpinnings function in two middle school band collaborations. Specifically, this article examines how partnerships can be viewed through three sociological perspectives, how sociological experiences might impact preservice teachers’ futures, and how policymaking endeavors could impact the strength and continuance of school-university partnerships. What we learn from existing collaborations and how stakeholders respond to this information has the potential to reshape music teaching and learning in our society.     

Paint and Paper Creations

This article investigates generalist kindergarten teachers’ academic music training based on data collected from students undertaking an undergraduate degree in preschool (kindergarten) education (students aged 4–6 years) in Greece. The study was carried out through a questionnaire survey that addressed students’ aspirations when entering the university and the real learning outcomes by the end of their studies. This article seeks to find relationships between students’ academic experiences and their level of confidence and enthusiasm to teach music in kindergarten. The findings suggest that higher education provides students with most of the learning outcomes that they anticipate. However, students lack adequate practical experiences in terms of observing lessons in real educational settings, which can significantly affect their confidence levels. Finally, the author explores some implications for higher education policy and teaching practice.     

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.     

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.     

Reflections on music teacher professional development: Teacher-generated policies and practices

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make policy recommendations based on the authors’ experiences with, and research about, reflective, differentiated, and teacher-generated music teacher professional development (PD). By doing so, we argue for a bottom-up process that capitalizes on our music teacher and music teacher educator expertise along with the research literature in music teacher PD. We explore music teachers’ PD needs considering four career stages to explain how knowledge generated at each level informs our understanding of differentiated PD. From preservice music teachers and music teacher candidates, to in-service and veteran teachers, our discussion explores meaningful and effective ways to engage in deep, reflective thinking about the music teaching and learning process. Accordingly, we provide specific policy recommendations for music teachers at each career stage so that they might take greater ownership of their own learning, growth, and development through local, reflective, self-initiated, and differentiated PD opportunities.     

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.     

Teaching music in the flat world: Reflections on the work of Darling-Hammond and Rothman

Authors and scholars published within Arts Education Policy Review have been diligent to investigate various topics surrounding music educator preparation, mentoring, retention, as well as avenues for continued professional development and growth. Linda Darling-Hammond and Robert Rothman, along with various chapter authors, address education reform on an international level within Teaching in the Flat World: Learning from High-Performing Systems (2015 Rothman, R., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Teaching quality initiatives in the United States. In L. Darling-Hammond & R. Rothman (Eds.), Teaching in the flat world: Learning from high-performing systems (pp. 6–27). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. [Google Scholar]). The purpose of this article is to examine the recommendations presented by Darling-Hammond, Rothman, and colleagues through the lens of music education research and policy review. Specific areas of focus include: (a) recruitment and rigor of teacher education programs, (b) alternative routes into the teaching profession, (c) teacher induction and new teacher support, (d) career advancement and professional development support, and (e) teacher evaluation.     

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.     

A Longitudinal Study of Decision Making in the Process of Acquiring a Dog

To prevent potential problems in the relationship between people and their dogs, it is important to engage in a thoughtful decision-making process with regard to acquiring a dog. To map the most important elements in the decision-making process, a social cognitive model was applied using seven psychological constructs: perceived advantages of having a dog; perceived disadvantages; the social norm; self-efficacy; optimism; expected commitment; and the intention to acquire a dog. People who were planning to acquire a dog within one year were asked to fill in an online questionnaire and another one 14 months later. The social cognitive constructs were operationalized in the baseline questionnaire, and in the follow-up participants were asked to report whether they had actually acquired a dog during the 14-month interval. The sample (n?=?588) largely consisted of females (88%) and those who had a high level of education (64%). The mean age of the participants was 40.9 years. The data showed significant relations among the decision-making variables, and significant differences between demographic variables related to these. In univariate longitudinal analyses, several social cognitive variables significantly predicted acquiring a dog in the 14-month period. When intention to acquire a dog was entered into the multivariate model, it remained the only predictor (OR = 2.16, p?<?0.001); the model explained 33% of the variance in acquiring a dog. It was possible to assess the main constructs that play a role in decision making regarding acquiring a dog: Most baseline measures were related to actual later behavior, also when taking into account all changes in other internal and external factors that may have taken place. Insight into the decision-making process makes it possible to intervene in it for the good of people, dogs, and their relationships.     

How to Etch on China

Abstract

Neoliberalism in government thought and action has taken a very specific route in England. Building on a policy research grounding, and subjecting governmental and ministerial utterances to careful consideration, this article discusses the ways in which the specifically English situation has evolved. It reports that government has been carefully manipulative in terms of meeting its objectives and of finding ways in which to privilege science, technology, engineering, and math subjects in the curriculum of schools, while at the same time downplaying the place and role of the arts. It describes how school performance measures, the English Baccalaureate and Progress 8, are utilized to achieve the desired ends. The means by which governmental policies find their outworkings in the day-to-day lived experiences of schools are discussed, and the pernicious effects of these policies on the operationalizing of arts curricula generally, and music education in particular, are instantiated and discussed.