An Orientation to Musical Pedagogy : Becoming a Musician-Educator

Novice music educators often experience conflict between their roles as teachers and their roles as musicians. The broad purpose of this text is to assist pre-service music teachers as they begin the transition from students to professional educators and musicians by challenging what they think they know about those two distinct yet complementary roles. Rather than perpetuating existing practice, these future educators are encouraged to build their own new vision for music curriculum and education by examining the "big concepts" of teaching and musicianship based on several research-based ideas: (1) There's no such thing as talent, (2) effective teachers have specialized knowledge about their subject, students, pedagogy, and instructional context, and (3) musicianship is not magic. More important, through deliberate thought and action, pre-service music teachers can learn the concepts and practices of expert teachers and musicians and incorporate them into the music classroom. Attention is given to how students learn and to designing and delivering engaging classroom instruction. "Novice music teachers and music education students struggle to form an identity that synthesizes 'musician' with 'music teacher, ' and to separate themselves from their prior experiences to think critically about music-making and music instruction. Throughout this text, readers are encouraged to both reject and reflect upon their prior experience and are provided with new frameworks of understanding about both music-making and music instruction, as they form a new personal philosophy of musicianship and pedagogy. Ultimately, the purpose of this text is to provide foundational knowledge for subsequent learning as students become both musician and music pedagogue." --Publsiher's description. Cover An Orientation To Musical Pedagogy Copyright Contents Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Transitioning from Student to Teacher 3. What Is Talent? 4. Subject Matter of Music 5. Music as Subject Matter 6. How Students Learn 7. How Students Acquire Musical Understanding 8. Meaningful Curriculum 9. Designing Meaningful Instruction 10. Delivering Engaging Instruction 11. Instructional Context 12. From Student to Teacher Revisited 13. Coda References Index This book provides foundational knowledge about the music teaching and learning process that future teachers can use in a proactive act of becoming a musician and educator