Music Education Ecopolitical Professionalism And Public Pedagogy

This book challenges the dominant expertise professionalism rationale for music education by responding to the call to develop ‘ecological awareness’ at a time when all professions have a moral obligation to place sustainable and interdependent life at the center. The book aims to expand music education’s professional horizons to acknowledge the responsibility of the music field to contribute to the demands of complex questions of sustainability and identify the ways in which sustainable music education may be strengthened through an activist relational ecological stance. It suggests a radical moral turn by asking: What if music education is recognised as part of the problem of sustaining unsustainability? and What if music teacher education was developed in and through dialogue with a futures perspective? These questions are interrogated through a critical analysis of the historical positioning of music in education and an interdisciplinary application of theories of ecology and professionalism.

Counterpoints: Music and Education--Estelle R. Jorgensen, editor

Both in concept and in practice, policy has permeated the deepest recesses of civil society and has had particular impact on the lives of those who are actively connected to the educational process. For music teachers in particular, policy can evoke images of a forbidden environment beyond one's day-to-day duties and responsibilities. Nothing, however, could be farther from the truth. In this book, author Patrick Schmidt offers a variety of ways for K-12 music educators to engage with, analyze, and develop effective policy. Schmidt first demystifies the notion of policy and the characterization that it is out-of-reach to teachers, before exemplifying how policy, both big-picture policy and policy as a daily encounter enacted at the local level, share many similarities and are indeed co-dependent fragments of the same process. The first provides extensive and detailed contextual information, offering a conceptual vision for how to consider policy in the fast-pace and high-adaptability reality of 21st-century music education environments. The second delivers a practical set of ideas, guidelines, and suggestions specific to music education for a closer and more active interaction with policy, directed at providing 'tools for action' in the daily working lives of music educators. This approach enourages those who are novice to policy as well as those who would like to further explore and participate in policy action to exercise informed influence within their field, community, and school, and ultimately have greater impact in pedagogical, curricular, administrative, and legislative decision-making.

This book addresses the need to rethink the concept and enactment of professionalism in music, and how such concepts underpin professional higher music education. There is an urgent imperative to enable the potential of professional musicians in our contemporary societies to be more fully realised, recognising both intense challenges that are currently threatening some traditional music practices, and significant scope for new practices to be imagined in response to deep veins of societal need. Professionalism encompasses the conduct, aims, values, responsibilities and ongoing development of a practising professional in the field. Professional higher music education engages both with providing future professionals with relevant education in particular craft skills, and with nurturing their visions for their work as artists in future societies. The major focus of the book is on performance traditions that have dominated professional higher education, notably western classical music.

This book examines how music education presents opportunities to shape democratic awareness through political, pedagogical, and humanistic perspectives. Focusing on democracy as a vital dimension in teaching music, the essays in this volume have particular relevance to teaching music as democratic practice in both public schooling and in teacher education. Although music educators have much to learn from others in the educational field, the actual teaching of music involves social and political dimensions unique to the arts. In addition, teaching music as democratic practice demands a pedagogical foundation not often examined in the general teacher education community. Essays include the teaching of the arts as a critical response to democratic participation; exploring democracy in the music classroom with such issues as safe spaces, sexual orientation, music of the Holocaust, improvisation, race and technology; and music teaching/music teacher education as a form of social justice. Engaging with current scholarship, the book not only probes the philosophical nature of music and democracy, but also presents ways of democratizing music curriculum and human interactions within the classroom. This volume offers the collective wisdom of international scholars, teachers, and teacher educators and will be essential reading for those who teach music as a vital force for change and social justice in both local and global contexts.

Music Schools in Changing Societies addresses the need to understand instrumental and vocal pedagogy beyond the individual sphere of teacher–student interactions and psychological phenomena, focusing instead on the wider sociocultural, spatial, and institutional contexts of music education. Viewing music education through the perspective of collaboration, the book focuses on the context of European music schools, which have developed a central role in publicly funded educational and cultural systems. The authors demonstrate that multilevel collaboration is a vital part of how music educators and the schools where they work can respond to wider societal concerns in ways that improve educational quality. Presenting examples of innovative practices and collaborative settings from twelve European countries, this book offers new and inspiring perspectives on how music schools can support the transformation towards collaborative professionalism in instrumental and vocal music education. With contributions from a wide range of researchers and professional educators, the book shows how a collaborative approach to music education can address major policy issues such as inclusion, democracy, and sustainability. Addressing current institutional and curricular challenges, Music Schools in Changing Societies presents a unique outlook on how music schools in contemporary societies can survive and thrive in times of change.

Based on topics that frame the debate about the future of professional music education, this book explores the issues that music teachers must confront in a rapidly shifting educational landscape. The book aims to challenge thought and change minds. It presents a star cast of internationally prominent thinkers in and beyond music education. These thinkers deliberately challenge many time-worn traditions in music education with regard to musicianship, culture and society, leadership, institutions, interdisciplinarity, research and theory, and curriculum. This is the first book to confront these issues in this way. This unique book has emerged from fifteen years of international dialog by The MayDay Group, an organization of more than 250 music educators from over 20 countries who meet yearly to confront issues in music teaching and learning.

This study draws on the literatures of the philosophy of music education and critical theory, critical pedagogy. It is argued that critical consciousness enables consideration of the political aspects of materiality, ideology, and power. A series of recommendations are made regarding extant work that could contribute to a music program that has developing critical consciousness as a goal.--Abstract.