Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Designed for in-service and pre-service teachers who would like to acquire the skills that will allow them to teach music competently and creatively. They will learn basic conducting techniques, design their own curriculums and have an opportunity to prepare and teach their own lesson plans. Previous musical experience is welcome, but not required.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course explores the dynamics, complexities and nuances of creative music pedagogy – across a range of student demographics, from young children to adult-learners – and covering topics and practices as diverse and varied as ensemble/band leadership and conducting, cross-cultural and anti-racist approaches to music theory and ear-training, creative approaches to teaching improvisation, composition, songwriting, electronic music production, and popular music education.

Building off of inclusive and critical approaches to music education, the course emphasizes and explores ways of cultivating participatory cultures and communities of musicking, from which we can, as much as possible “let music teach”. The defining mark of this educational approach involves an emphasis on active music-making through co-participation in a shared musical taskscape (Ingold, 2017). Engaging with Biesta’s (2017) account of arts education, we explore how creative music pedagogy is neither primarily aimed at processing musical information/symbols, nor chiefly about enabling self-expression or creativity – but rather, of cultivating “sustainable” practices of being in dialogue with musicking.

This class is hands-on and involves group music playing and participation in a wide range of musical activities and rituals.  Students will play, in-class, a range of percussion, stringed and wind instruments, and be involved in embodied musicking generally (singing, dancing, movement, sound-making, etc.,). Through leading class ensembles and designing music and sound-based learning experiences and resources, students have opportunities to develop and refine their own personalized approaches to music pedagogy and curriculum.

Previous musical experience is welcome, but not required. Reach out to the instructor if you have questions about the course.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

• Amplify your understandings of music pedagogy considering diverse musicking traditions, discourses, and social locations;
• Understand the relations between sound, music, place, and lived experiences and how such relations can come to inform music teaching and curriculum design;
• Facilitate and design creative and inventive musical learning experiences and curricula;
• Refine basic conducting and ensemble leadership skills;
• Explore (cross-cultural) approaches to teaching music theory;
• Reflect on the impact of musicking and musical experiences in our daily lives;
• Analyze musical curriculum in relation to a range of historical and social issues;
• Explore educational, sociological and historical perspectives in music education.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: