Rethinking
Music Teacher Education Through Popular Music Education
Bryan
J. Powell, Bergen Community College
Scott Burstein, Little Kids Rock
The
use of popular music instruction in the American public school system has moved
out of the shadows towards being not only an accepted part of the curriculum
but a fait accompli. An ever-rising
body of academic work promotes the need for inclusion of popular music instruction
in pre-service music education programs (Jones, 2008; Mantie,
2013; Wang & Humphreys, 2009).
The National Core Arts Standards (NCAS, 2014) describe music choices
based on creativity and improvisation, as well as a focus on iconic notation
alongside standard notation.
Additionally, the NCCAS calls specifically for the inclusion of guitar
as an instrumental choice. The
College Music Society Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Major also pointed
to the need for an expansion of traditional music departments to give students
options in modern music career development, pointing often to the inclusion of
popular music from a compositional, improvisational, and a general broadening
of cultural understanding standpoint. (Task Force on the Undergraduate Music
Maker, 2014)
As
Popular Music becomes more prevalent in the classroom, there are many
difficulties that arise when trying to define and demarcate its boundaries, as
well as a clear lack of opportunities for studying techniques in pre-service
education programs in the United States.
With the growing number of popular music education programs in K-12
settings (Powell, Krikun, & Pignato,
2015), it becomes increasingly important to train both future and current music
educators in popular music pedagogies.
This presentation will examine the training mechanism of a large popular
music education non-profit that has trained over 2,000 public school teachers
in the United States to incorporate Modern Band into their music classes.
Modern
Band is a genre-based program that focuses on commercially relevant music of
the past fifty years, specializing on student-driven musical choices and a
relatively fixed instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, vocals, and
technology. Like itÕs counterpart
Ôjazz bandÕ, which entered the lexicon through stage band, ÔModern BandÕ is a
name that sums up the multitude of popular music styles and choices that are
typically grouped through instrumentation unfamiliar to the traditional streams
of music education: marching band, concert band, orchestra, choir, and jazz
band. By discussing many core values of Modern Band such as Music as Language,
approximation, affective filter, composition, and improvisation, the presenters
will show the practical application and impact in music teacher education.
The
presenters will address music teacher preparation and professional development
(ASPA # 3), professional development for both beginning and experienced
teachers (ASPAs #6 and #7) and teacher retention through reexamining current
music education curricula (ASPAs #12 and #1). This presentation will include
videos of K-12 Modern Bands in action, as well as narratives from pre-service,
beginning, and veteran teachers who have gone through the Modern Band training. Implications for the field of music
teacher education include examining best practices for popular music education,
as well as examining issues of agency, hospitality, and inclusivity in music
education classrooms.
References
Jones, P. (2008).
Preparing music teachers for change: Broadening instrument class offerings to
foster lifewide and lifelong musicing.
Visions of Research in Music Education,
12, 1–15.
Mantie, R. (2013). A
comparison of ''popular music pedagogy'' discourses. Journal of Research in Music Education.
61: 334
National Core Arts Standards (2014). Accessed from
nationalartsstandards.org
Powell, B., Krikun, A., and Pignato, J.
(2015). SomethingÕs happening here: Popular music education in the United
States. Accepted for publication in @IASPM
Journal
Task Force on the Undergraduate Music Maker (2014). Accessed from
http://www.music.org/index.php?option=com_newsfeeds&view=newsfeed&id=2:events&catid=46&Itemid=203
Wang,
J. C., & Humphreys, J. T. (2009). Multicultural and popular
music content in an American music teacher education program. International Journal of Music Education,
27, 19–36.