Seminar in Music Education - Dr. Kaiser
Discussion and Brainstorming
"What are the greatest challenges in music education today?"
- Music as aesthetic expression vs. utility
- Advocacy (who decides?)
- Budget
- Focus (distracted time)
- Relevance, standards and goals
- Meaningfulness/Connections/Transfer(Behaviorists)
- Future: leadership and visioning
- Incorporating technology: flexibility and adaptability
- Accountability (testing)
- Demographics and diversity
- Defining and identifying music as an art form
- Professional cooperation for Advocacy
1 comment:
I'm not a member of Dr. Kaiser's class (Hi, Dr. Kaiser!), but this post got me thinking (as I'm preparing to teach a Choral Methods course this fall)....
As a profession, I think that we are still struggling with getting beyond the concert-preparation (basically like test-prep, in some ways, if not done well) and holding ourselves accountable for using the Standards as our guide.
I also have observed that there are still a number of us who don't engage in much professional development, though I think this is gradually getting better. (This is just from observation in the area where I live.)
My personal challenges include:
- helping students become 21st century thinkers and keeping up with all of the new possibilities (podcasting! being skype-pals with a choir across the world! class blogs!) but not being distracted from the main purpose of music education.
- Relevance/Advocacy, which seem to go hand-in-hand at the moment.
- Demonstrating to other educators that I am as invested in children's thinking skills as teachers of other disciplines.
And just the nitty-gritty:
- Coming into a choral program where concerts were held every 9 weeks instead of once a semester (though I believe I have convinced my principal that the latter is best for the kids).
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