Search

Feedback plays an essential role in music education, helping individuals learn to consider creative works from multiple perspectives. In this article, we explore the Critical Response Process, a four-step process for engaging with artistic works in progress. Founded on the principle that both artists and responders play active roles in feedback, this process is designed to promote discovery and help students learn how to engage in a responsive feedback dialogue with others. In addition to outlining the process, we also offer narratives from our own practice, examples of how the process might be implemented in various settings, and ideas for adaptations.

The purpose of this study was to consider how the experiences of nine preservice music educators who participated in the development of Project B impacted their understandings of and participation in policy. Project B is an after-school program that seeks to provide music education classes for children at several metropolitan elementary schools as part of an arts partnership program. Drawing from the four dispositions of policy consciousness, I considered how preservice educators grappled with their complex roles as policy actors within this setting. In particular, I focused on the dispositions cultivated by these preservice teachers as they developed this program, as well as the ways in which participating in the creation of this program impacted how they engaged as policy actors and leaders as inservice music educators. Participants' experiences offer implications related to the importance of participating in contextualized policy-oriented experiences for preservice music educators.

The purpose of this study was to examine the intersections of experiential learning and critical reflection within the unique context of the Accademia Europea dell'Opera (AEDO), a music performance summer program specializing in opera. Researchers explored the development and implementation of a responsive model of reflection and considered the impact this model had on helping music students shift between multiple spaces of musical performance and skill development. Data were analyzed through a communities of practice framework, and findings drawn from the analysis are explored through the following themes: the complexities of building a new community, synergy between intrapersonal and interpersonal engagement, and participants' processes of reflecting and learning together.

Formal music performance studies within university settings strive to prepare the next generation of performers and pedagogues for musical engagement beyond university. Yet literature suggests that these spaces of study do not always lead to a sense of readiness for potential professional worlds, due in part to a lack of opportunities for guided, in-depth, critical reflection that helps students connect theory and practice. This article articulates findings from a study that sought to consider the impact of deliberate opportunities for reflection in The Accademia Europea dell'Opera (AEDO), a university-affiliated summer opera intensive experiential learning program. Utilizing a communities of musical practice framework, researchers worked collaboratively to help participants engage in guided critical reflection as they developed high-level musical skills through rehearsals and performances. This article specifically considers the ways in which a 'broker' helped participants develop practices of reflection and personal agency both within and beyond this context.

This paper reports on a small-scale study in an elementary school in Southern Ontario, Canada. The study investigated relationships between students' perceptions and practices of gender in popular music education with particular attention given to communication, instruments and technology and development of freedoms and constraints. The findings present a more opaque picture than previous research, suggesting that students frequently transgress binary gendered patterns of practice and perception in this particular field. Gender monoglossia and heteroglossia provide a useful explanatory framework for analysis, indicating that further application of these concepts to issues in popular music education might be most fruitful.

This article explores the ways in which a musical learning project acted as a space for critical artistic and relational engagements in two middle school (ages 11-14) music programs. Drawing from work on cultural production and border crossing pedagogies, this project invited students to create soundscape compositions that explored the question 'how do I hear my world?,' engage in ongoing dialogue, and critically reflect on the interconnectedness between how they saw themselves, their classmates, and the world. Data amassed from interviews, focus groups, and observations, suggest that both students and educators utilized this project to help them conceptualize social and symbolic borders as porous and crossable in the music classroom. Findings also indicate that understanding border crossing, cultural production, and composition as ongoing processes might help music educators design critical project-based learning opportunities that seek to bring young people into dialogue with others and the world.

AbstractLegislation in the United States has increasingly led to limitations on what and how educators are able to teach in the classroom. These measures, often deemed divisive concept laws, can lead to a host of challenges for music educators, impacting student/teacher relationships, repertoire selection, pedagogical practices, and student and teacher safety and mental health, among other concerns. Furthermore, constriction of content can frame the music educator as a deliverer of curriculum wherein the educator may feel stripped of their professional agency. The purpose of this study was to explore how, if at all, music educators from four states considering or actively enacting divisive concept laws achieved agency in their unique contexts. Data included semi-structured interviews with eight music educators. Findings suggest that stakeholders responded to policies in varying ways, the language of policies played a significant role in how policies were understood and enacted, and participants found divisive concept laws as particularly challenging in the midst of broader deprofessionalization of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades have seen a growing de-professionalization of teaching. Combating this educational climate requires music teacher education programs to prioritize both critical pedagogical practices and policy knowhow in order to reestablish a focus on relational engagements and the navigation of the complex tensions lived daily in schools. In this article, we utilize the frameworks of border crossing and policy ethnography to explore the experiences of one music educator acting as a policy practitioner. We focus on the ways she utilized a project in her general music classes as a space for pedagogical risk-taking and policy practice, challenging taken-for-granted norms both within her own music classroom as well as within the larger school setting. We use her experiences to formulate an argument that considers how critical pedagogical practice and policy knowhow might be seen as interdependent partners in music teacher education, both equally important when advancing a forward-looking agenda of professionalization in music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music education scholarship has long called for a more critical, socially just approach to teacher preparation. These include curricular opportunities to work with students from diverse contexts in practicum settings, social-justice-oriented readings and professional development, and guided reflection opportunities. However, scholars also note that practicing educators often revert to "traditional" methods of teaching once they enter the field, suggesting a disconnect between music teacher education and practice. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the experiences of three recent alumni of one music teacher education program, paying particular attention to the ways in which these teachers engage or do not engage in socially just practices in their music classrooms. In particular, we focused on how their experiences as music education students impacted their practices as they relate to social justice. We also examined possible barriers that may make socially just engagements challenging. Findings suggest that engaging in both theoretical and contextually applied approaches to critical pedagogy is particularly important. Findings also suggest that practicing educators may face challenges including navigating accountability measures and finding a balance between meeting the needs of students in the classroom while simultaneously challenging oppressive structures. This project has the potential to inform how we can best incorporate a more inclusive and critical pedagogy in ways that are practical for teachers as they enter their first year of teaching and may also result in resources to support critical pedagogy and social justice in music classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the lens of border crossing to consider the ways in which middle school music students and their teachers engaged with dark and politicized funds of knowledge. Through the development of music composition projects, students and educators shared, challenged, and problematized issues of race, immigration, and urban identity as they grappled with the complexities inherent in their knowledges and experiences. This article explores how these projects served as catalysts for dialogue that challenged unidirectional understandings of knowledge, encouraged dispositional reflection, and amplified the need for dynamic pedagogical practices that seek to connect learning practice with in-the-world experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]