Choral directors will always be assessed by the quality of their choral performances. The concepts presented in this article are designed to strengthen and improve choral performance. If choral directors can design an individualized assessment plan and implement some of these ideas during each grading period, grades will be more equitably…

Paulo Freire was an important figure in adult education whose pedagogy has been used in music education. In this act of praxis (reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it), I share an autoethnography of my teaching of a university-level small ensemble jazz class. The purpose of this autoethnography was to examine my teaching…

National research shows that students attending arts-rich schools have higher levels of motivation and better academic and social success. This report, the first in a series of three on the Creative Learning Initiative, is used to track the progress of our district's investment in the whole child through the arts and creative teaching at each…

The purpose of the study was to investigate undergraduate music education majors' confidence in teaching improvisation, according to the NAfME (1994) K-12 Achievement Standards. Specific research questions were: 1) How confident are music education majors in implementing the 11 improvisation achievement standards for grades K-12? 2) How confident…

Parents of gifted children play a powerful role in expanding their world and helping them discover what they love. When gifted children have impassioned, open-minded, and creative family members, they are free to discover what they love and who they are as people. For gifted learners, curiosity, passion, and interest are absolute essentials.…

Hundreds of educators contributed to writing and reviewing the new National Core Music Standards over two years of development. Thousands more will find their professional lives shaped by these standards over decades to come. Three individuals involved in standards development explain.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the characteristics of Korean rhythmic patterns and provide effective ways to teach Korean rhythms based on the theoretical and pedagogical approaches derived from 5,000 years of Korean musical tradition. First, we have provided the fundamental principles of Korean rhythms that represent the culture from…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the role aural imitation ability, jazz theory knowledge, and personal background variables play in the development of jazz improvisation achievement. Participants (N = 70) included 26 high school and 44 college instrumentalists with varying degrees of jazz improvisation experience. Data were…

Science and the arts might seem very different, but the processes that both fields use are very similar. The scientific method is a way to explore a problem, form and test a hypothesis, and answer questions. The creative process creates, interprets, and expresses art. Inquiry is at the heart of both of these methods. The purpose of this article is…

This article argues that an approach to jazz improvisation pedagogy based on negative dialectics may provide a viable solution to the threat of codification of the jazz language as a result of the academisation of improvisation studies at the post-secondary level. Some tentative means of incorporating such an approach into the design of university…

This paper is concerned with the craft and pedagogy of contemporary classical composition, starting with an examination of French pedagogy as I received it from Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger in the late 1950s. I discuss their different points of view (briefly the global approach to composition vs. what might be termed the molecular), the…

Young teachers often struggle with pacing and the ability to cover more than one or two songs and activities in a single 30-minute general music class. Included in this article are lesson activities that show it is not only possible to include many of the National Standards in a single lesson, but also possible to sing, play, and create in every…

In the most recent Ministry of Education work plan seminar (Ministry of Education, 2010), a clear signal was sent out that arts education, primarily music and visual art, would become one of the key areas of focus in pursuing the goal of holistic education of a primary school child in the Singapore school system. This article, as part of a larger…

There is a growing interest in alternative forms of pedagogy for students in K-12 settings. Free improvisation, a relatively new and unfamiliar genre, offers potential as an ensemble for teachers to provide in order to offer more egalitarian and creative music experiences for their students. The purpose of this multiple case study was to determine…

This paper aims to examine how specific aspects of Bakhtin's theoretical perspective might inform our understanding of improvisation. Moreover, it outlines the possible educational implications of such a perspective. Specifically, a sketch of a Bakhtinian conception of improvisation is proposed, a sketch which emphasizes the cultivation of an…