No clear rituals or rites of passage mark a music teacher's shift from "beginning"
to "experienced." Yet we know that a teacher's capacity to learn in and from
experience is essential to this development. In this series of articles, we have
taken Sharon Feiman-Nemser's central tasks of learning to teach (see Figure 1)
to address how each phase of a music teacher's learning may be seen as part of
a continuous path of growth, rather than as separate stages. Continuing
professional development, involving sustained attention to one's own learning
across the span of a career, depends upon setting goals for enhancing teaching
skills, deepening understanding of subject matter and student diversity,
strengthening vital commitments and values, and especially, seeking productive
avenues for change. Renewal in teaching is a generative, principled, and
reflective process that is most powerful when the impetus for change is in
harmony with one's evolving philosophy and the particularities of one's teaching
setting.
Figure 1
Professional development is often viewed as a set of activities, workshops, or
institutes rather than as a personalized process of teacher-driven intentions or
initiatives. In an inquiry-driven view, teachers develop their own agendas for
personal and collegial pursuits. A lifelong orientation to growth draws wisely from
available professional development activities that fit well with individuals' own
desires for advancement and their particular interests and desires for learning.
Extend and deepen subject matter knowledge for teaching
As a subject area, music offers such breadth and dynamic range to explore. To
stay abreast of music is to be constantly in motion, and always on the lookout
for something interesting around the bend. As the critic Alex Ross writes: "music
is always migrating from its point of origin to its destiny in someone's fleeting
moment of experiencelast night's concert, tomorrow's solitary jog" (2007, p.
xii). Teachers extend their knowledge of subject matter by honing their skills,
and even redefining their notions of musicianship to become more well-rounded,
culturally responsive, and versatile. Choosing music for curricular study involves
continually refreshing one's knowledge of performers, works, styles, and
repertoires.
One life-long curricular challenge for music teachers deals with deepening their
understanding of those "core and enduring ideas" (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005)
that make music so personal and socially vital. Alan P. Merriam's (1964) classic
text on the functions of music provides a powerful basis for choosing repertoire
and creating music learning problems that are not only generative but responsive
to the continuous reframing and expansion of scholarship in music. These
musical functions include: communication; emotional expression; symbolic
representation; aesthetic satisfaction; entertainment; physical response;
encouraging conformity to social norms; validating social institutions and
religious rituals; contributing to the continuity and stability of culture; and
contributing to the integration of society.
As many music teachers realize, students contribute rich breadth to the
curriculum by sharing their musical interests and preferences as well. Developing
the pedagogical expertise to teach many forms of musical engagement keeps
music teachers on the cutting edge, whether it be through performing, creating,
listening, or connecting music to other forms of experience. Many teachers, for
example, have found it musically liberating to work on improvisation and
composition, exploring their own creative thinking in order to support students'
imaginative work. Experienced teachers find that opportunities to teach new
coursessurveys, digital media, chamber ensembles, world music offerings
stretch their horizons through learning new material and musical practices.
Complementary areas of study also expand music teachers' knowledge, such as
learning more about issues of social justice, cultural practices, historical eras
and styles, and the panoramic realms of inspiration that prompt the creation of
innovative works and performances. For example, music teachers may turn to
the study of the "sister arts" of visual art, sculpture, dance, theater, media
studies, and literature when the works they have selected for the classroom
warrant a cross-disciplinary approach to instruction. Preparing a work that
commemorates an historical event or figure may lead music teachers to explore
the historical associations that will lend resonance to its study. Often in this
study of parallel disciplines, one's musical understanding is extended and
deepened.
In essence, extending and deepening the musical concepts and process involved
in performing, listening and creating along with understanding the cross-cultural
and social aspects of musical functions required for teaching music is a matter
of growing into and utilizing adaptive expertise within both music and teaching
(Hammerness et al., 2005; National Research Council, 2000).
Extend and refine repertoire in curriculum, instruction, and assessment
Repertoire most often refers to the carefully chosen musical works selected for
student study and performance. Repertoire, however, can also be applied to
teaching in considering the range of curricular examples, instructional strategies,
assessment techniques, and forms of engagement to use as building blocks of
musical experience, what Shulman (1987) calls pedagogical content knowledge.
Experienced teachers are always adding to this repertoire by attending
conferences, trading ideas with colleagues, reading journals, and searching for
new sources of inspiration. However, experienced teachers also derive
considerable satisfaction from creating their own new programs and initiatives.
Rogers (1985) spoke of opportunities for teachers to create, invent, and
improvise as one of the primary avenues for intellectual growth and
development.
The creative nature of teaching can also be fostered by drawing on musical
ways of understanding. Jorgensen writes: "thinking about instruction as an
artistic undertaking enables us to bring values from the worlds of the arts to
bear on our teaching" (2008, p. 212). Consider the ways that teachers go about
structuring a new course, for example. How will the course be structuredwhat
will be its shape and form? What will be the main themes of the course? Its pace
and rhythm? How will various voices and points of view be encouraged and
integrated like counterpoint? When will culminating moments be important to
draw various themes together? The artistry of teaching as teachers comes into
focus as teachers orchestrate the interplay of musical content with students'
myriad ways of experiencing that content.
Another critical avenue for professional development lies in refinement through
critical analysis. We can all imagine times in our teaching when, for some reason,
what we teach, how we teach, and the evidence of students' learning have not
been in alignment. Experienced teachers seek the integrity that comes when
these realms are in complementary balance with one another. At best,
curriculum, instruction, and assessment are strongly intertwined and
interdependent, like the three strands of a well-formed braid. Expertise in
teaching comes from attending to the alignment of content, instruction, and
assessment.
Strengthen skills and dispositions to study and improve teaching
Reform-minded music teachers are committed to continual improvement
(Thiessen & Barrett, 2002). They take advantage of formal and informal avenues
for professional development. A particularly potent form is through formal study
beyond the baccalaureate degree. Graduate study can serve as a particularly
transformative catalyst for teachers' growth. Rigorous and comprehensive
programs that deepen scholarly understanding of teaching in tandem with
vibrant applications of ideas and concepts to the classroom offer teachers a
chance to step aside from the daily demands of the classroom to inform,
enlighten, challenge, and renew their commitments to meaningful change.
Teacher study groupswhether self initiated or formed by taskcan strengthen
teacher learning especially if a collaborative culture and trusting environment
has been fostered (Natale-Abramo & Campbell, 2012), and group members'
collective knowledge is honored and respected (Stanley, 2011). Other
professional development activities yield benefits when they exhibit the kinds of
relevant, practice-based, well-informed, sustainable, collegial, and meaningful
criteria that are aligned with teachers' interests and needs.
Complementary to formalized study lies the need for teachers to be self-starters
of their own professional development. Contemporary research that focuses on
the teacher as the center of study and development has born fruit in its
capacity to strengthen teaching, renew commitments, and build dispositions of
inquiry and reflection. Using self-study (Samaras & Freese, 2006) as a guide,
music teachers, for example, can explore why they do something, or why it
works well, or target a specific practice they believe to be in need of
improvement for analysis and reflection, or they can invite critical friends into
their classrooms to provide feedback on how they perform a task or interact
with students. In a similar vein, music teachers can use classroom action
research to analyze both personal practices and institutional factors that shape
music teaching and learning so that they can specifically develop action plans to
address barriers or impediments to improvement (Feldman, Paugh, & Mills, 2004).
When teachers use introspection, and articulate a critical understanding of how
their beliefs and practices affect and are affected by their current situations
they are engaging in some of the basic processes of both practitioner
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992) and narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2010).
Expand responsibilities and develop leadership skills
The competence and confidence of experienced music teachers is noticed by
others, frequently resulting in invitations to serve as mentors, to facilitate
curriculum revision and professional learning communities, and to serve in
appointed/elected positions in professional societies and associations. One key
area that experienced teachers often show leadership in is serving as
cooperating teachers for student teachers. In these situations, building
structures for creating a "community of learners" marked by a shared agenda
between the university and school can be a powerful means for continuing
development. When experienced music teachers see themselves as co-learners
in the student teaching mentoring process, their own inquiry skills into the
teaching-learning process is often expanded and refined, along with their ability
to think critically (Campbell & Brummett, 2007). Over time, music teachers are
also often called upon to lead efforts for the revision and restructuring of the
curriculum. They play multiple roles in these efforts, finding valid ways to adapt
general curriculum schemes to the music classroom, creating new programs and
courses "from scratch," critically evaluating available options, and conducting
action research by interrogating curricular practices and outcomes (Barrett,
2009).
Music teachers exhibit qualities and dispositions that are associated with
leadership, such as the capacity to "combine resolute moral purpose with
impressive empathy" (Fullan, 2011). They act with passion and determination to
orchestrate change by drawing people together around promising new ideas and
initiatives and working through conflict toward compromise. These same
dispositions often lead to appointments on task forces, committees, and
professional societies. Each opportunity offers a chance to contribute to a larger
purpose, but also affords the satisfactions of broadening perspectives through
interacting with other like-minded individuals. Through professional service,
teachers make valuable contributions to the profession while also deriving new
insights and avenues for their own professional growth.
The professional growth of music teachers can be viewed as a continuum of
learning in which new ideas and practices are introduced, developed, refined,
revisited, and transformed over time. At all points along the continuum, the
teacher acts as an intentional agent of his/her own professional growth,
maximizing the opportunities that arise, and creating new avenues for change
and improvement of music education.
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Copyright 2013 NYSSMA, Permission to Reprint Granted by Thomas N. Gellert, NYSSMA Editor