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Evolving
Roles/Evolving Partners in Reform:
The Music-in-Education National Consortium
The Music-In-Education National Consortium is proposing a dialogue to contribute to a reform agenda for the arts in schools. The Consortium is interested in collaboratives between schools, higher education institutions, and arts organizations to research and develop rich and systemic music curriculum that is integral to all students’ school experience. We are curious about how music-in-education extends the reach of what has been traditionally termed music education. This initiative is guided by ten principles.
MIENC members include:
- New England Conservatory Music-In-Education program
- Georgia State University School of Music and its Center for Community Collaborations in Atlanta
- New York City Mannes College of Music and the Metropolitan Opera Guild
- Kenan Institute for the Arts at the North Carolina School for the Arts, Durham North Caroline
Our Beliefs:
Music teachers in public schools are isolated. Their physical spaces in schools are often in literally in separate wings and annexes; their professional development/inservice programs, as opposed to the professional development programs for other faculty members, are not typically interdisciplinary. Music teachers often organize their curriculum around performances and these performances often follow the dictates of major holidays, further isolating them from other curriculum. Music specialists are isolated from arts education agendas in general and have little or no consistent pedagogical relationships with musical or cultural institutions that provide services to schools in the community. The prevailing practice of skill building in a music discipline or instrument as separate from what else is going on in the school is a challenge for research and reform for music-in-education. Isolation has made these professionals vulnerable.
Music-in-education refers to a context for learning that focuses on education – of children, of researchers, of university interns, and of arts partners. It represents a broader context for looking at music learning. MIE encompasses the teaching of skills but extends learning well beyond skills of performance to incorporate authentic relationships among music learning, academic learning, and social development built on a rich foundation of musical artistry and knowledge.
Music-in-education is evolving as music educators, researchers, musicians, classroom teachers collectively bring their expertise to bear in schools and communities. We are investigating ways in which universities and conservatories prepare these specialists and performance artists. There is a need to commit to research that explores how and what children are learning from music programming in their schools. What are we teaching? How do we know if it’s good? What is it that the arts, specifically music, can do better than other disciplines? What, in short, does music have to contribute to the reform agenda and the lives of children?
Collaboration ensures that what is discovered will be communicable because it is discovered in the context of a group. Collaboration, then, becomes essential for the development of professional knowledge “because collaborations force their participants to make their knowledge public and understood by colleagues” (p. 30, Hiebert, Gallimore,and Stigler, 2002). In that spirit, this National Consortium has begun its work.
The Music- in- Education discussion began under the auspices of a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) to the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC). Previous to the formation of the Consortium, the project focused on the work of NEC and the Conservatory Lab School in Boston. In 1999, Larry Scripp, as Chair of the Music Education Department at New England Conservatory, invited colleagues to their first Music-in-Education Conference at New England Conservatory. Music educators, university professors, and representatives from arts organizations met to deliberate on roles for higher education, cultural institutions and public schools in providing quality, long-term, and culturally rich music education for all students.
The Consortium was first organized to include three cities, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York, in additional to Boston to investigate common questions across four contexts for three years. A fifth partner in North Carolina was added this year and the Music-in-Education National Consortium was formed .
The Music- in -Education National Consortium (MIENC)is exploring a fundamental question: What are the evolving roles of music and musicians in public school communities? In this era of educational scrutiny, currently articulated at the federal level in the No Child Left Behind legislation, music teachers, music researchers, and arts administrators are beginning to commit to a dialogue that legitimates their place at the table of school reform. The MIENC challenges and critiques the status quo of music education in this country, while welcoming the collaboration that could effect change.