Published in the September 2021 edition of the Wisconsin School Musician. (Link for WMEA members with login).
After years of teaching music in New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Michigan, I came to the University of Wisconsin-Superior after being asked one question. As I sat with a group of music majors at the school, having prepared myself for whatever interview questions or comments would come, I was touched by the first question that a student asked me: “How are you?” Rather than being compelled to articulate external sources of knowledge, this preservice music teacher’s question invited me to share internal thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The question was a powerful reminder that music teaching and learning is “not about content or terminology—it is about people.”[1]
Prioritizing students over content can be a very liberating endeavor that encourages narrative driven music teaching and learning. When students’ ideas and experiences serve as the starting points for scaffolding, then teachers can begin to teach responsively, basing their work on the voices of students in their classrooms, rather than the distant objectives of a pre-determined curriculum document. This was especially salient to me when I taught elementary music in Memphis, when a question on the relevance of music in my students’ lives led to them writing and performing a musical on the 1968 sanitation workers strike that included protest signs from the past like “I am a man,” and protest signs from the present like, “Black Lives Matter.” In other words, students synthesized their present experiences with past events, deriving new meanings and insights that enriched the learning environment. The same can be said for higher education, and while contexts may vary, one idea remains consistent: The most meaningful music teaching and learning happens through sharing stories with one another.
In the aftermath of COVID-19, it is important for music teachers and learners to continue engaging in meta-cognitive discussions built upon solid foundations of knowledge, including the experiences that students bring in from outside of the classroom. “How” and “why” questions in music teaching and learning can be especially meaningful for facilitating experience-based conversations. Some examples may include:
- How can music be described?
- Why is music important?
- How does music connect to our lives?
- How can music be used to get to know one another?
The visual in this article provides some of the variations of musical inquiry that might take place within a process-based, student-centered curriculum that also considers the national/state standards for music education.[2] Consider, for example, the Wisconsin music standard, “Connect,” which states, “Students will relate prior knowledge and personal experience with music to cultural and historical context.”[3] When we consider the standard using a question-based curriculum, we can draw upon student experiences to scaffold into deeper levels of inquiry. In other words, if we start by asking how we can use music to get to know one another, we can consider deeper questions pertaining to this standard:
- How does music at school compare and contrast with music at home?
- How can narrative be used to influence musical concepts?
- How do individuals from alike and different backgrounds make music together?
- Why is music a cultural practice?
- How does community impact a music making experience?
- How has music been used to shape society?
- How have musicians expressed themselves in ways that have deviated from socialized norms?
- How have cultural norms shaped the ways that individuals and communities engage with music?
- How are beliefs concerning music used to convey and/or solicit emotions?
When we engage students in answering questions like the ones above, our students’ experiences outside of class become part of our curriculum inside the classroom. Moreover, if we can encourage students in higher education to speak about their experiences and ask new questions, we open opportunities for new voices in developing policies in music teacher education.
As music teacher education programs across the state (and indeed, across the United States) navigate new licensing policies and move away from external models of teaching and learning like the edTPA,[4] it is important to remember that student voices are key to designing alternative assessments in higher education that are truly by music educators and for music educators. As Brophy explains, “Music is a complex, multidimensional human experience. The assessment of music learning must reflect those characteristics.”[5] Thus, while I believe that developing new assessments of music teacher readiness will be challenging, I see no one better equipped to facilitate inquiry-based assessments than the local music teacher educators across the state within their respective communities of music teaching and learning. By doing so, we may begin to imagine a world of music education built on principles of empathy, compassion, and belonging instead of content, objectives, and high stakes. By doing so, we can reduce the amount of time that we spend on questions like, “How are you going to pass,” and instead, spend more time asking questions like, “How are you?”
References
[1] Potter, D. (2020). Music teacher education and edTPA: A case study. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. (UMI No. 28024538)
[2] In 2019, I was asked to develop this document for Shelby County Schools in Tennessee.
[3] Wisconsin Department of Education. (2017). Wisconsin standards for music: General music strand and performance music strand. Retrieved July 15, 2021.
[4] Wisconsin Department of Education. (2020). Wisconsin edTPA. Retrieved July 15, 2021.
[5] Brophy, T. (2019). Assessment in music education: The state of the art. In T. Brophy (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of evaluation policy and practice in music education, (Vol. 2, pp. 903–931). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.