A Historical Overview of Music Teacher Education in the United States

Author(s):  
Phillip M. Hash

This chapter examines the history of music teacher education in the United States from its humble beginnings in the 19th century through the varied preservice and advanced programs offered today. The chapter describes the evolution of the field over the past 200 years and speculates on the future of the profession through a historical lens. Most music teachers of the 18th and early 19th centuries received little formal preparation in either music or pedagogy and earned most of their living in a trade. Around 1830, music teacher education began on an institutional basis in singing conventions, teacher institutes, and private academies. State normal schools and some conservatories extended this work in the mid-19th century by offering instruction in pedagogy and “public school music.” Colleges and universities followed suit around 1900 and, two decades later, began awarding undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education. These programs expanded a great deal through World War II and continued to develop in response to changing needs, values, and priorities of society. Today, initial preparation is highly accessible through public and private colleges and universities throughout the country. The same is true of graduate-level instruction, which will likely become more prevalent as institutions continue to develop fully online master’s and doctoral programs.

The Oxford Handbook of Preservice Music Teacher Education in the United States aims to work from within the profession of music teacher education to push the boundaries of P-12 music education. In this book, we will provide all of those working in music teacher education—music education faculty and administrators, music researchers, graduate students, department of education faculty and administrators, and state-level certification agencies—with research and promising practices for all areas of traditional preservice music teacher preparation. We define the areas of music teacher education as encompassing the more traditional structures, such as band, jazz band, marching band, orchestra, choir, musical theater, and elementary and secondary general music, as well as less common or newer areas: alternative string ensembles, guitar and song-writing, vernacular and popular music, early childhood music, and adult learners


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Stevens Prendergast ◽  
Brittany Nixon May

Many music teacher education programmes in the United States are increasingly offering classes that fall within the scope of modern band. A number of policies impact music teacher education curricula in the United States. These include both hard policies, such as teacher certification and NASM accreditation requirements, as well as soft policies, such as institutional traditions. In this multiple case study, the researchers interviewed three music teacher educators from different universities to examine their individual experiences incorporating modern band into their music education curricula and identify any policy issues that arose as they proposed and instituted curricular changes. The themes identified with regard to implementing modern band into the music teacher education curriculum included time, support, curricular positioning, equity and access. Notably, the participants did not cite any specific policy issues as barriers to implementing modern band into music education coursework.


1995 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kent Gregory

This study's purpose was to investigate the extent and nature of collaboration for music teacher education between K—12 schools and higher education institutions across the United States. A survey was used to gather data from a stratified random sample (n = 204) of the 813 higher education institutions offering music education degrees. The findings indicated that 96.77% of colleges/universities collaborate with K—12 schools in some form, but the degree of collaboration varies widely. Higher education music faculty respondents reported a broad range of benefits to students, faculty, the higher education institution, and the K—12 schools. Communication, shared decision-making, funding sources, faculty rewards, trends, and reasons for collaboration were examined. An analysis of variance revealed significant relationships between the degree of collaboration and (a) the number of music education majors, (b) the institution's size, and (c) graduate study in music education.


Author(s):  
Deborah Bradley

This chapter addresses the need for curricular change in higher education from a social justice perspective grounded in an antiracism discursive framework and focuses on music teacher education in large public and private university settings. After a brief discussion of the antiracism framework, I look at some of the historical and current impediments to change unique to music teacher education through a discussion of how those impediments may be reflective of a culture of whiteness in post-secondary institutions. Racial assumptions underlie classical music studies in higher education; those assumptions manifest themselves in our behaviors, educational processes, and educational products. The chapter concludes with several examples of program revisions in music education that have begun to address the types of changes necessary for developing pedagogies of social justice for music teacher education—to move music studies in higher education out of “the shadows of Mozart” and into the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Robert H. Woody ◽  
Mark C. Adams

This chapter discusses the innate differences between vernacular music-making cultures and those oriented in Western classical traditions, and suggests students in traditional school music education programs in the United States are not typically afforded opportunities to learn skills used in vernacular and popular music-making cultures. The chapter emphasizes a need to diversify music-making experiences in schools and describes how vernacular musicianship may benefit students’ musical development. It suggests that, in order for substantive change to occur in music education in the United States, teachers will need to advance beyond simply considering how to integrate popular music into their traditional large ensembles—and how preservice music teacher education programs may be the key to help better prepare teachers to be more versatile and philosophically open to teaching a more musically diverse experience in their future classrooms.


Author(s):  
Colleen Conway ◽  
Shannan Hibbard

This chapter situates the study of music teacher education within the larger body of music education and teacher education research. It problematizes the terms teacher training, teacher education, and best practice and introduces the concept of teaching as an “impossible profession.” Goals of teacher education, including reflective practice and adaptive expertise, are discussed. The chapter outlines the challenges that music teacher educators face as they try to prepare preservice teachers for the realities of P-12 school-based music education while instilling in these new colleagues a disposition toward change. It concludes with narratives that examine teachers’ descriptions of classroom relationships throughout the lens of presence in teaching as a way to remind teacher educators of the importance of their work to push the boundaries of music teacher education in order to serve the profession at large.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Mara E. Culp ◽  
Karen Salvador

Music educators must meet the needs of students with diverse characteristics, including but not limited to cultural backgrounds, musical abilities and interests, and physical, behavioral, social, and cognitive functioning. Music education programs may not systematically prepare preservice teachers or potential music teacher educators for this reality. The purpose of this study was to examine how music teacher education programs prepare undergraduate and graduate students to structure inclusive and responsive experiences for diverse learners. We replicated and expanded Salvador’s study by including graduate student preparation, incorporating additional facets of human diversity, and contacting all institutions accredited by National Association of Schools of Music to prepare music educators. According to our respondents, integrated instruction focused on diverse learners was more commonly part of undergraduate coursework than graduate coursework. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis to describe course offerings and content integration.


Author(s):  
John H. Perkins

American power at the end of World War II was paramount. The usual image of this might, however, is formed more by the array of military and industrial components of American culture than by something as seemingly mundane as wheat breeding. Nuclear-tipped missiles, airplane and tank factories, engineering prowess, and motivated soldiers are more generally assumed to be the components of military strength, not scientists patiently crossing one strain of wheat with another and searching through the progeny for a better variety. In the direct exercise of military power, of course, the weapon systems and soldiers are the most important elements of power. Armies, however, exist only on the foundation of food supplies that are adequate for both the military personnel and their civilian support force. American strategists in both world wars were acutely aware of the role of agriculture in the projection of military might, and they considerably amplified agriculture’s importance in the aftermath of World War II. Specifically, through a variety of public and private initiatives, wheat breeding and other lines of agricultural science became an integral part of postwar American strategic planning. Put somewhat differently, after 1945, wheat breeding by American scientists became more than just an exercise in the modernization of agriculture. Old motivations for seeking new varieties did not disappear, but new motivations arose to justify expenditures. In addition, American scientists came to do their work not only in the United States for American farmers but overseas for foreign governments. Wheat breeding acquired ideological dimensions more elaborate than simply “the promo tion of progress.” Instead, wheat breeding and other agricultural science became part of the “battle for freedom.” In the process, many countries moved to new relationships with each other and with their own natural resource base. How did wheat breeding get caught up with strategic and national security considerations? It is necessary to follow a somewhat convoluted trail to answer this question, and the story can begin with the status of the United States after the collapse of Germany and Japan in 1945.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Miettinen ◽  
Claudia Gluschankof ◽  
Sidsel Karlsen ◽  
Heidi Westerlund

Societies worldwide are becoming more aware of the educational challenges that come with increased cultural diversity derived from ethnic, linguistic, religious, socioeconomic and educational differences and their intersections. In many countries, teacher education programmes are expected to prepare teachers for this reality and develop their intercultural competences. This instrumental case study is based on a project that aims to initiate mobilizing networks between two music teacher programmes to explore intercultural music teacher education. In this study, we map the intercultural competences that are required of music teacher educators and that are provided in the music education programmes at two higher music education institutions in Israel and Finland. The data consists of 11 focus group interviews with music teacher educators at the Levinsky College of Education in Tel Aviv and the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, conducted by a multinational research team. The data was analysed abductively, using content analysis as a method. While the interviewed teacher educators could articulate many aspects of their own intercultural competences or the lack of them, the findings indicate that in musical diversity and teaching students from different musical backgrounds the teacher educators found it difficult to explain what kinds of intercultural competences their respective programmes provided for the students. Based on the findings, there is a need for a more holistic understanding of intercultural competences in music teacher education as well as how our institutions produce power. There is also a need for the teacher educators in the programmes to collaborate and discuss among each other in order to create “knowledge communities” and to move towards addressing intercultural issues.


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