Transformational Music Teaching

Designed as a practical resource, this book examines transformational and inclusive approaches to the teaching of music at the postsecondary level based on first-person interviews with renowned musicians and their students. At the heart of the study are musical/artistic perspectives and pedagogical approaches from leading artists and the insights of their students on the impact of the teaching and mentoring process. Through case studies with renowned musicians and their protégés, the book identifies common themes in teaching and mentoring across classical and jazz performance. Each case study is a master class with the artist that offers insight into the evolution of the individual’s musical career, their approach to teaching, and specific strategies for navigating the complexities of the music business environment. With remarkable candor, artists and their protégés share how they navigated significant obstacles in their career journeys. Including overcoming performance anxiety, disability and injury, lack of financial support, difficulty obtaining an agent and recording contracts, country location and stereotypes based on gender and nationality. The book serves as an important resource for music educators by offering concrete approaches to mentoring talented students, while also sharing specific strategies for aspiring professional musicians seeking to forge a career in a highly competitive musical market.

Transformational Piano Teaching: Mentoring Students from All Walks of Life examines the concept of the piano teacher as someone who is more than just a teacher of a musical skill, but also someone who wields tremendous influence on the development of a young person's artistic and empathic potential, as well as their lifelong personal motivational framework. The specific attributes of today's students are explored, including family and peer influences from interpersonal relationships to social media. Additionally, students from specific circumstances are discussed, including those with special needs such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, ADHD, and Depression. Finally, motivation of a teacher's students is related to a teacher's own motivation in their work, as a cycle of positivity and achievement will be recommended as a way to keep an instructor's work fresh and exciting.

Designed as a practical resource, this book examines transformational and inclusive approaches to the teaching of music at the postsecondary level based on first-person interviews with renowned musicians and their students. At the heart of the study are musical/artistic perspectives and pedagogical approaches from leading artists and the insights of their students on the impact of the teaching and mentoring process. Through case studies with renowned musicians and their protégés, the book identifies common themes in teaching and mentoring across classical and jazz performance. Each case study is a master class with the artist that offers insight into the evolution of the individual’s musical career, their approach to teaching, and specific strategies for navigating the complexities of the music business environment. With remarkable candor, artists and their protégés share how they navigated significant obstacles in their career journeys. Including overcoming performance anxiety, disability and injury, lack of financial support, difficulty obtaining an agent and recording contracts, country location and stereotypes based on gender and nationality. The book serves as an important resource for music educators by offering concrete approaches to mentoring talented students, while also sharing specific strategies for aspiring professional musicians seeking to forge a career in a highly competitive musical market.

Music, Meaning and Transformation: meaningful music making for life, examines the musical experiences that students find meaningful and the ways in which teachers, parents and community music leaders might provide access to meaningful music education. This is particularly relevant today because school music often fails to provide sustainable access to music making for life, health and wellbeing beyond school. This book seeks to reframe the focus of music education within a pragmatist philosophy and provide a framework that is culturally and chronologically inclusive. The approach involves an intensely personal music teachers’ journey that privilege the voices of students and teachers of a music making community and sets these against rigorous long termed qualitative methodologies. Music education is shifting focus away from music as an object and process towards the meaning experienced by the student personally, socially and culturally. This is an important and fundamental issue for the development of philosophy for pre-service and practicing music teachers and community music project leaders. The focus now needs to be upon the 98% who could have music as a significant expressive force in their lives as a means of facilitating social inclusion, for mental health and well being and to have access to the sense of belonging that community music making can bring as a lifelong activity. The book aims to provide a comprehensive guide to music education that leads to a music education for all for life. This book emphasises the maker in context examining: the student as maker, the teacher as builder and designer and the school as village. The relationship between music making, education and health and well being has been and is the subject of many research projects and national and international reviews. Seldom though in these studies has there been any attempt to identify the qualities of successful and sustainable interactions with music making, the qualities of good teaching and good teaching practice. The focus of this book is to provide simple but effective tools for evaluating and testing the meaning evident in a music-making context, identify the modes of engagement and establish the unique expressive music making needs of twenty first century communities. For further information see http://savetodisc.net

"Brilliant... important reading for those who teach music, who write the curricular plans for teaching it, and who guide prospective teachers to the profession.... It is a must-read, for it awakens thoughts about why we teach and how." -- Patricia Shehan Campbell This quintet of essays examines the reasons why music education should be transformed, investigates the nature of education and musical transformation, and suggests alternative educational models and strategies. Estelle Jorgensen frames her argument for new approaches against the backdrop of historical musical and educational practice and draws on literature from various fields. Transforming Music Education is addressed to current and future music teachers, those who train them, and all who are interested in revolutionizing music education.

Preparing Musicians for Precarious Work: Transformational Approaches to Music Careers Education promotes career counselling-informed techniques that encourage and guide musicians to drive their careers in necessary new directions. In exposing the ‘dark side’ of precarious work in the arts sector, these approaches acknowledge the high levels of risk many musicians face and focus on the fundamental and urgent skills they need to navigate uncertainty and hardship. The author calls for a greater recognition of the psychological magnitude of managing such work, drawing upon training as a career counsellor and the lived experience of a career musician to advance transformative learning principles as pathways for artists, students, and educators alike. Representing a radical shift from the content-knowledge approach to career development, a counselling-informed method is fortified by a broad range of ideas from vocational psychology and narrative therapy, emphasising the importance of change readiness and flexible identities while identifying the need for a post-portfolio paradigm. Preparing Musicians for Precarious Work proposes a new model for musicians’ career learning – the CHOICE model – in a timely and practical guide for 21st-century musicians looking to future-proof their careers.

Compassionate Music Teaching provides a framework for music teaching in the 21st century by outlining qualities, skills, and approaches to meet the needs of a unique and increasingly diverse generation of students. The text focuses on how six qualities of compassion (trust, empathy, patience, inclusion, community, and authentic connection) have made an impact in human lives, and how these qualities might relate to the practices of caring and committed music teachers. This book bridges the worlds of research and practice, discussing cutting-edge topics while also offering practical strategies that can be used immediately in music studios and classrooms. Each chapter is addressed from multiple perspectives, including: research in music, education, psychology, sociology, and related fields; insights from various students and teachers across the United States; and an in-depth study of five music teachers who represent a broad range of genres, student ages, and pedagogical approaches. The book is dedicated to exploring those conditions that help students not only to learn, but also to grow, thrive, and freely express—and become compassionate musicians, teachers, performers, and people as well.

When the world is changing as rapidly as it is today, education has to mean more than just covering static content. Transformational Teaching in the Information Age explores how teachers can truly engage and inspire students to be independent, imaginative, and responsible learners who are prepared to handle the challenges of tomorrow.