J.M.T.E.: Journal of Music Teacher Education

J.M.T.E.
JOURNAL OF MUSIC TEACHER EDUCATION

Spring 2005 Volume 14, Number 2
Society for Music Teacher Education Executive Committee

Chairperson
David Teachout
University of North Carolina–Greensboro
Eastern Representative Southwestern Representative
Susan Conkling Robin Stein
Eastman School of Music Texas State University–San Marcos
North Central Representative Southern Representative
Linda Thompson Janet Robbins
University of Minnesota West Virginia University
Northwest Representative Western Representative
Tina Bull Jeffrey E. Bush
Oregon State University Arizona State University
Member-at-Large Chair-Elect
Sara Bidner Don Ester
Southeastern Louisiana University Ball State University
Journal of Music Teacher Education Editorial Committee

William Fredrickson, Editor
University of Missouri–Kansas City
Barbara Brinson Mitchell Robinson
State University of New York–Fredonia Michigan State University
Alan Gumm Kimberly Walls

Central Michigan University Auburn University
Alice Hammel Cecilia Wang

James Madison University University of Kentucky
Debra Hedden Molly Weaver

University of Kansas West Virginia University
MENC Staff
MENC Executive Director Deputy Executive Director
John J. Mahlmann Michael Blakeslee
Director, Music Educators Journal and Publications Associate Editor

Frances Ponick Teresa K. Preston
The Journal of Music Teacher Education (ISSN 1057-0837) is published twice yearly by MENC: The National Association
for Music Education, 1806 Robert Fulton Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4348.
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J.M.T.E.
JOURNAL OF MUSIC TEACHER EDUCATION
Spring 2005 Volume 14, Number 2
CONTENTS
Special Issue: The Future of Music Education

Introduction
David Circle
3
From the Chair

A Call for Action in Music Teacher Education
David Teachout
5
What to Do about Music Teacher Education: Our Profession at a Crossroads

Jeffrey Kimpton
8
What Partnerships Must We Create, Build, or Reenergize in K–12 Higher and Professional Education for Music
Teacher Education in the Future?
Janet Robbins and Robin Stein
22
Where Will the Supply of New Teachers Come From, Where Shall We Recruit, and Who Will Teach These
Prospective Teachers?
William E. Fredrickson and J. Bryan Burton
30
What Is the Role of MENC, NASM, or Other State or National Professional Organizations in Providing Leadership
and Support for New Research and Models?
Don P. Ester and David J. Brinkman
37
Editor’s Commentary
Assumptions
William E. Fredrickson
44
An Analysis of Certification Practices for Music Education in the Fifty States

Michele L. Henry
47
The Effects of Field Experience on Music Education Majors’ Perceptions of Music Instruction for Secondary
Students with Special Needs
Kimberly VanWeelden and Jennifer Whipple
62
Announcements
70
Special Issue: The Future of Music Teacher Education
Introduction
David Circle
President, MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Music education can be discussed, dissected, and scrutinized from many different
perspectives. A person’s perspective is normally determined by the facet of music education in
which that person is engaged. The challenge for all of us who profess to be music educators is to
perceive the totality of music education. Our challenge, also, is to collaborate with other music
educators, regardless of their perspective or point of view, and to work continually to improve all
facets of music education.
Music teacher education at the university level is a major key in our collective efforts to bring
about this improvement. To use the standard chain analogy, music teacher education is one of the
vital links in the quality of music education in our K–12 classrooms as well as in the quantity of
music educators being produced for those classrooms.
There is interdependency in this musical life cycle as students progress from Pre-K through
college to become music educators. If there is a weak link at any stage of this cycle, the entire
system suffers. It is incumbent upon every music educator to be cognizant of this
interdependency and to be dedicated to working collaboratively with other music educators for
the improvement of the quality of instruction regardless of the music specialty or instructional
level.
An examination of the challenges faced in music teacher education and suggestions for
addressing those challenges are in this special issue of JMTE. From the perspective of a K–12
school district music coordinator and MENC president, here are a few more.
Rather than training band directors, choir directors, orchestra directors, and general music
teachers, make a paradigm shift and educate students to think of themselves as music educators.
The tools to be successful band, choir, orchestra, and general music teachers must continue to be
taught because those are the classes students will be teaching when they graduate. However, if
we provide these tools from a broader philosophical base, these new teachers may be more likely
to teach musical skills, concepts, and knowledge to students through band, choir, orchestra, and
general music classes.
Most students graduating from teacher education programs do not have all the skills and
knowledge needed to be successful teachers for their entire careers. Staff-development programs
and relevant in-services are needed. University music faculty should take the initiative and work
cooperatively with school districts to provide these experiences. Attending state conventions and
workshops once or twice a year is not adequate.
In order for university music education faculty to remain current and to keep their teaching
JMTE, Spring 2005, 3

relevant, programs should be developed that allow these professors to periodically go back into
K–12 classrooms to actually teach for a semester. Collaborative programs similar to visiting
professorships or teacher exchange programs could be developed with neighboring school
districts. Observing student teachers provides music education professors a glimpse of what is
happening in K–12 classrooms, but that exposure can be vicarious and not as realistic as being
“the teacher” day in and day out.
As MENC president, I applaud the work being done and the contributions being made by our
university music education colleagues. We have always had challenges in music education and
always will. We can meet those challenges and turn them into accomplishments by joining
together and having a unified focus. In 2007 MENC will celebrate its centennial. Much has been
accomplished in our first 100 years. Change is inevitable as we focus on the future of music
education. To quote a favorite maxim: “If not now, when? If not us, who?”

From the Chair
A Call for Action in Music Teacher Education
David Teachout
Chair, Society of Music Teacher Education
In spring 2003, when it was announced that Jeff Kimpton (president of Interlochen Center for
the Arts and formerly the director of the University of Minnesota School of Music) would
present a keynote speech at the SMTE preconference session of the 2004 MENC National
Biennial Conference in Minneapolis, I contacted him to see what he had in mind for the session.
Having worked with Jeff for a number of years, I knew two things: the presentation would be
lively, and he would want to ask his audience to do more than simply sit and listen. His idea was
to end the initial presentation with three provocative questions and ask the audience to form
breakout groups to discuss possible answers/solutions to each question before reassembling to
share ideas. His intention was to give “legs” to the ideas discussed, promoting continued
thinking and action well after the final applause died down and the hall cleared.
This special issue is presented in an effort to sustain the work and broaden the audience
beyond those who attended the SMTE preconference session on that Wednesday afternoon. It
contains Jeff’s presentation and three articles, each a synopsis of the discussion work that was
accomplished in the breakout groups. I thank my fellow executive board members, Robin Stein,
Janet Robbins, Bryan Burton, Don Ester, and David Brinkman, and JMTE editor William
Fredrickson, for monitoring the work accomplished in the breakout groups and for authoring the
three articles that encapsulate that work. I also thank those who participated in each of the
breakout groups for providing important contributions with their ideas and discussion. Finally, I
thank David Circle, president of MENC, for providing his perspective in an introduction to this
special issue.
As I read through the content of these pieces and look around to notice the mercurial but ever-
present forces exerting pressure on the music teacher education profession, I see a profession
being asked to reinvent itself in order to maintain relevance. In his introduction, David Circle
calls for us as music teacher educators to facilitate a change in how future music teachers think
of themselves, away from simply being band directors, choir directors, orchestra directors, and
general music teachers and toward being music educators.
The implications of this worthy perspective change are enormous. Let us assume that all
future music educators make such a role-identification shift. Rather than simply having had fond
memories of the choir trip or felt the sense of accomplish from successfully tackling the 2nd
clarinet part to a Holst Suite, their students would finish a K–12 education with a level of
musical expertise and sense of relevance connecting what was learned in music class to the many
cultural opportunities that surround their lives. The potential impact is one in which their

students would learn about and incorporate mature musical understandings and creative activities
to enhance the aesthetic quality of their daily lives to the same degree they presently incorporate
understandings of math, reading, and science to function productively in society. And, perhaps,
the value of music education might be more fully recognized and supported by the decision
makers and policy makers.
The challenges associated with such a worthy shift are also enormous. First of all, we would
need to reconsider how we approach music teacher development. If, as many have reiterated, the
definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then we cannot
continue to train music teachers using methodologies of the past and expect new outcomes. We
would need to examine every step of the current teacher-development process carefully and
objectively and be willing to consider new methodologies that better facilitate the professional
identity of “music educator” among our undergraduates. Assuming that we can successfully
accomplish such a complex undertaking, our newly minted teachers then face the daunting task
of surviving in a professional culture that currently provides few rewards to the successful
“music educator,” but many to the successful “band director,” “choir director,” “orchestra
director,” or “general music teacher.” Yes, the challenges are enormous, but the opportunity to
move the profession forward in such a profoundly positive manner is exciting and keenly
enticing to more than just a few of us music teacher educators.
We must be careful to recognize, however, that the profession as a whole is facing challenges
that are more ominous than the facilitation of a paradigm shift in teacher thinking. These are
defining challenges because how we meet them will determine the future of music teacher
education and, consequently, of K–12 music education. Most critical are the factors contributing
to the music teacher shortage. In his address, Jeff Kimpton systematically identifies elements of
a “fractured ecosystem” that have contributed to the shortage and describes the consequences of
continuing to do business as usual. Jeff warns, “we’re always going to have music education, but
probably not in the way that we have defined it in the programs and standards book” (p. 10). He
finishes by asking three questions: (a) What partnerships must we create, build, or reenergize in
K–12, higher, and professional education for music teacher education in the future? (b) Where
will the supply of new teachers come from? and (c) What is the role of MENC, NASM, or other
state or national professional organizations in providing leadership and support for new research
and models? The careful work and thoughtful responses to these questions by members of the
breakout groups are provided in the three articles that follow and represent an important and
laudable start to a much-needed critical examination of the options before us. This work,
however, must continue.
In the effort to provide the “legs” that were intended, SMTE is holding its first Symposium on
Music Teacher Education, titled Music Teacher Education: Rethinking, Researching,
Revitalizing. This event will be held on the campus of the University of North Carolina at

Greensboro (UNCG) on Septbember 15–17, 2005, and is cosponsored by MENC, The College
Music Society, the UNCG School of Music, and the Music Research Institute at the UNCG
School of Music. The purpose of this symposium is to explore current critical issues in music
teacher education and to construct plans of prospective action and research in the effort to
advance coordinated and sustained work on these issues. The first of several opportunities to
continue further the needed work will be at the SMTE preconference session during the MENC
biennial conference in Salt Lake City in 2006. There is additional information about the
Symposium at the back of this issue.
It is my sincere hope that this special issue and the events planned for the future will provide
an ongoing forum to which all members of the music teacher education profession will be
compelled to contribute ideas, research, and models of effective practice that might eventually
give rise to successful solutions.

What To Do About Music Teacher Education:
Our Profession at a Crossroads
By Jeffrey Kimpton
Jeffrey Kimpton is president of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Interlochen, Michigan,
and the former director of the School of Music and professor of music education at the
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. The following is the text of a presentation to a meeting of
the Society for Music Teacher Education, Music Educators National Conference, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, April 2004.
I am a product of the “golden age” of music education, the system that prepared so many of
us in the 1960s and 1970s. I have taught hundreds of students, been responsible for music
education programs that involved thousands more, and developed extensive curriculum and
assessment tools to measure them. I led hundreds of teachers in rural, suburban, and urban
districts; I have trained and provided professional development for thousands more. I have hired
professors and administrated a major research university school of music where nearly half of
our students were in music education. I have watched and chronicled the role and place of music
and the arts in hundreds of cities and towns across this country. My experiences in rural,
suburban, and urban school systems, and nationally in nearly every state in the union, have given
me a very unique national vantage point from which to talk candidly and honestly with you
about the crossroads we stand before today in this profession.
You’ll forgive me then if I seem somewhat impatient. I have been talking and presenting
about teacher education at Music Educators National Conference (MENC) gatherings since
1984. Twenty years. Let me tell you why I am impatient. From 1984–1987, I sat on the Task
Force on Music Teacher Education, impaneled in 1984 by MENC president Paul Lehman to look
at the issues in music teacher preparation in the aftermath of the report A Nation at Risk. MENC
suggested one meeting together and phone conferences; we sought a more systemic and
comprehensive view of our profession. We obtained a grant of $50,000 from Yamaha
Corporation to take two years and travel across the country to look at the state of music teaching.
We clearly heard the heartbeat of music educators of all types and kinds. We interviewed
education reformers and college deans, education commissioners, and state supervisors of music.
We talked with future music educators deep into their college preparation and with those career
educators who were icons in the profession and had spent their entire life teaching and leading.
We talked with those educators who had burned out and left the profession—some after just two
or three years, others after 15 and 20 years.
Our report, Partnership and Process, published by MENC in 1987, indicated several things,
but it first and foremost said that the way in which we were preparing music educators was
inconsistent with the challenges being presented to music educators in actual practice and was

clearly out of step with the deep issues found in K–12 education at that time. We forecast
significant teacher shortages unless new partnerships were forged within and between the music
disciplines that provided a new core of musical and academic experiences to better prepare
teachers. We recommended a new design for teacher education programs, including significant
changes in how we recruit new teachers into the profession, changes in the way in which
teachers are prepared to be successful in teaching, and a major restructuring of the professional
development opportunities and partnerships that help retain music educators. And we predicted
that only if the profession was prepared to make significant new systemic changes in these areas
would we then find a core of exemplary teachers willing to become music teacher
educators—the teachers of teachers—for the next century.
After three years of talking and listening “in the trenches” we could see the future before us.
On the one hand the prospect of a teacher shortage—in both numbers and quality—was
frightening. But it was also exciting because so many that we talked with saw the opportunities
to reshape music teacher education in ways that made sense and viewed MENC as the
responsible catalyst that could inspire a new generation of music teachers—and those who teach
them.
When we submitted the draft to MENC, we were stunned by the reaction. The National
Executive Board of MENC was concerned that the report would “inflame” the National
Association of Schools of Music (NASM) because of the bold suggestion that the 65/35 split of
academic and musical course work was inappropriate for music education majors. MENC was
even more concerned that we might upset the theorists and musicologists and the applied
faculties with our suggestions of new interdisciplinary programs of preparation that taught
improvisation, arranging, composition, jazz history, and the study of musicology in a
sociopolitical context. Regrettably, we did not find advocates for our work.
What has happened during the ensuing 16 years since this report was issued? Well, the fact
that the Society for Music Teacher Education had to push for this session is indicative of the fact
that we’re still waiting for leadership from, and standing in, this organization (MENC), as well
as recognition that there is a need for new models, sponsored research or networks of colleges
and districts, teachers and professors and students doing innovative work. I find it ironic that, at
a time when music teacher educators and their professional organization need to be united in
purpose and intent, there is a teacher mentoring session going on opposite this session.
Our colleagues at NASM are also very concerned and have mounted a sustained effort to
make the issue of music education a continuing dialogue at their annual conventions. I thank
them for this well-intentioned but tardy action. Their motivation is real; with more than 50% of
the students in the nation’s nearly 700 NASM-accredited music schools being music education
majors, the decline in teachers and programs threatens the stability of schools of music too. Yet
when one of the deans of this country’s most prestigious music schools suggested to the faculty

of that school that there needed to be an increase in the number of music education majors and
that curriculum and financial aid needed to reflect the need for more music teachers, that dean
was met with stiff opposition by the faculty. The answer at that school: increase the licensure
track for alternative certification.
If what I am going to say today isn’t the reality of how things are in your university or
program, then let’s hear from you, because we all need to share new models. But from my
national perspective, that’s not what I am seeing. If you will be offended today by my candor, I
apologize. As a music educator, I am offended by the inability of our profession to tackle this
issue. I am not being disrespectful; I am being deeply respectful of this profession in which I was
raised, one that I have expended a lifetime working to change and improve. I hope that the
questions that I raise today and the solutions that we will discuss this afternoon will generate
new thinking, new models, new research, and a new boldness for our own actions as music
educators and music teacher educators.
Music education is at a crossroads, and the time we have to make the decision about which
road to take is growing shorter with each year that we wait. The future viability of the musical
academy and the vitality of music study in K–12 education is at stake in this country. Schools of
music in this country initially grew because they were the primary source of music teachers for
this country. I don’t believe that music in higher education will survive—at least in the number
and quality that exist today—if the responsibility for preparing future teachers is abdicated by
schools and departments of music in the future.
This issue has deep historical roots, and the patterns have been evident for quite some time.
They include the shifting place of music in the American educational curriculum, the push of
American popular culture, changes in the place and time in which we provide educational
experiences, the relentless change in the role of technology and media in learning, the fortunes of
teacher employment, salaries, and student access at the mercy of decades of seesawing state and
local budgets.
And yet, American society—and American musical society—in 2004 is vibrant, alive,
mercurial, reacting to huge pressures of economy, wealth, science, technology and media, race,
class, culture, and ethnicity—an artistic and musical culture and educational system redefining
itself in constant reaction to this complex society in these very complex times. The challenge of
providing the next generation of music educators has been made infinitely more complex by the
changing environment of education and society. Let’s understand something from the outset:
we’re always going to have music education but probably not in the way that we have defined it
in the programs and standards book. There will be more after-school programs, community
education programs, programs sponsored by symphonies and operas and in for-profit and
nonprofit music academies and music businesses. Music education may not come in minutes per
week bites and with certified teachers in traditional school classrooms. Take a look at the

McPhail Center for the Arts here in Minneapolis, where 6,000 students—of all ages—come
every week for lessons, ensembles, classes, and enrichment, taught by a talented and dedicated
cadre of teachers, many of whom have degrees in music education, and many more who do not,
but who are very fine music educators! What these trends tell me is that the confluence of
policies and programs in music, K–12 education, higher education, and professional
organizations that have contributed to this situation are being bypassed on a more frequent basis.
This trend will continue. We can choose to be a part of it, or ignore it.
How Big Is the Problem?

The numbers are staggering and should be of great concern. Even though American schools
of music have experienced an increase of more than 12,000 music majors in the past decade, and
music education enrollments are up, which is good news, performance enrollments have
skyrocketed. In 2000, we produced about 3,600 newly certified music education undergraduates
for about 9,000 vacancies (Hickey, 2002). This is about a thousand more degreed graduates than
were produced a decade ago. In 2001, we produced 3,897 new undergraduates in music
education for about 11,000 vacancies (Lindemann, 2002). We increased the number of graduates
by nearly 300, but the number of vacancies increased by 2,000. That disparity will increase as
the huge number of boomer teachers enter early retirement age. However, these numbers are
misleading, because they assume that every one of those new graduates wants to teach. What it
doesn’t tell us is the number of new teachers who choose not to teach after their student-teaching
experience. Recent figures from The American Association for Employment in Education
(AAEE) report that only about 60% of those earning degrees in education actually take a
teaching job—which means that 40% of new teachers never set foot in a classroom.
Furthermore, of those who do choose to teach, 30 to 50% will remain in teaching for less than
five years, even less in urban schools (AAEE, 2001). Even if the actual numbers for music
teachers are somewhat above these averages, the trends are of great concern. Any profession that
retains only three in ten new professionals cannot survive as we know it.
What is the cause of this phenomenon of never actualizing your degree, or dropping out so
early in the experience? Some of this has to do with the program of preparation, which I will
discuss later on in this presentation, but much of it has to do with location. Many students,
especially those without urban experience, do not want to teach “other people’s children”—those
in urban areas or suburban areas with high levels of diversity. Vacancies are highest in urban and
rural districts. Few want to teach in tough neighborhoods with students who didn’t come from
communities like theirs, and if they do, it is for a short time. And, no one wants to teach in a
district that is more than an hour from a major metropolitan area. Everyone wants the same jobs,
in affluent and stable medium-sized towns, small cities or affluent suburban districts with
motivated students and good budgets, close to their friends and Pottery Barn. I will wager that

this is where most of our music education students come from in the first place. When beginning
teachers can’t get one of those jobs, they choose not to teach. Even if we doubled current
enrollments in music education in this country, something I do not think the current system is
capable of producing, and even if every music teacher chose to teach, we would still face a
shortage of at least 30%.
I think it is time to admit that the long-vaunted ecosystem of music teacher preparation—the
relationship between K–12 schools, schools of music, and professional music organizations that
has historically nurtured the growth of music teaching in this country—is fractured. We are just
now beginning to realize the fragility of that ecosystem, a delicate balance and interrelationship
between recruiting, preparing, and retaining teachers that has been a key source of strength for
this profession. Without a new generation of music educators, professional musical preparation
in this country is at risk. No private system will ever be able to produce the numbers of future
musicians who want to become teachers or teacher educators or performers that we require in
this country. The dimensions of this problem defy our normal solutions. Advocating for more
teachers and tinkering with a system of music education designed for a different time, a different
society, and a different kind of education system is unrealistic. We cannot expect the same
systems that got us here in the first place to devise the solutions that will solve the problem. The
sheer size and diversity of this country, the change in the cultural context in which these
institutions exist, and the very carefully defined roles that each institution in the music
profession now plays make it difficult for us to look systematically at—let alone act on—the
issues causing this crisis.
What has happened? The parts of the ecosystem on which we have traditionally
depended—K–12 music educators, state education agencies, schools of music, and professional
music and education organizations—have fragmented into independent organizations and
institutions with very different and often incompatible agendas. The institutions themselves have
become more important than the discipline they serve. Each of these parts of the ecosystem
address the issue of finding, preparing, and retaining music educators as separate issues—or not
at all—rather than as the sum of the parts of the ecosystem.
Teachers and Preparation

An increasing number of K–12 music educators, particularly those who are new, view their
work as a temporal profession, a job they hold for an indeterminate period of time among a
series of career opportunities. That view is supported by the number of new graduates in music
education who choose never to teach, the high dropout rates in the initial years of teaching, and
the numbers of music teachers electing early retirement options. Recent research (Bergee,
Coffman, Demorest, Humphreys, & Thornton, 2001) indicates that music teachers themselves
are the greatest single reason why young music students in middle and high school choose to

enter the music education profession. That fact points to the interrelationship of the ecosystem,
for without seasoned career professionals providing positive models, mentors, and motivators for
future generations of music students, the pipeline for incoming new teachers (and I might add,
applied majors too) will be a very thin one indeed. And without music educators staying in the
profession long enough to gain the expertise and desire to prepare another generation of music
educators, we have no ready pool of future music education professors, another area
experiencing a critical shortage. To be honest, we are facing the de-professionalization of music
teacher education in very short order as we race to find contract faculty who can quickly prepare
students or develop equivalency or licensure programs full of performance majors who couldn’t
get jobs and think they want to teach—and probably can and should. Is preparing students
quickly for minimal competency what we want as a profession? Is this the expertise on which
future schools of music and student music experience will depend?
Challenges within the Academy

Schools of music have played a unique role in the preparation of a professional core of music
educators in this country. Until the early 1990s most music education programs required
145–150 (or more) credits for graduation, back in the days when tuition was cheap and you
could take 22–24 credits per semester. Those days no longer exist. But when they did exist,
students took separate semesters on each supplemental instrument; multiple semesters of
conducting, methods, and lab ensemble experiences; arranging; and more field experience. As
the cost of higher education began to burgeon and states (and parents) were seeking neat four-
year solutions to increasing costs, limits were imposed where about 120 credits became
equivalent to a bachelors degree, regardless of the discipline. It was a simplistic solution with
serious consequences. As degree programs were required to shrink toward that magic 120-credit
limit, the strict adherence of schools of music to the 75-year-old NASM policy of 65% music
content, 35% methods/other courses, and an increase in state-mandated courses and exit
requirements forced many music education programs to disproportionately reduce the number of
music education courses. There was no corresponding decrease in theory or musicology courses,
and in fact many schools actually increased theory and musicology, raised applied requirements
to one hour for all majors, and added chamber music requirements to ensemble requirements.
Today we graduate music education majors who are, as my friend Paul Haack says, “minimally
competent and capable of doing no great damage.” In other words, our students are leaving our
universities less equipped to handle the increasing challenges of K–12 instruction and
management than they were 20 years ago. I am convinced that there is a direct correlation
between the reduction in the number of music education courses and experiences and the dropout
rate of entry-level music teachers.
Even if we wanted to increase the number of music education students in schools of music, I

doubt that our colleagues in applied and academic areas would endorse such an idea, and I
question whether there is the leadership in schools of music to raise the flag. The well
intentioned letter sent in 2002 from NASM leadership to NASM member institutions asking
them to support the growth of music education majors has not been warmly embraced by our
academic and performance colleagues, particularly in the largest Tier I institutions. We may
need to turn the microscope upon ourselves as music schools to understand the environment that
has partially produced this problem. There is a virtual class system in schools of music between
music education and performance majors, particularly at some of our largest and most respected
institutions. Music education students are viewed as second-class citizens with “lesser” musical
and academic qualities. Many applied professors limit the number of music education students in
their studios; some schools even have standing quotas that prevent large numbers of music
education students from being accepted. If we were to tally the number and amount of
scholarships given to performance and education (which could be a really valuable question for
the Higher Education Arts Data Services report), I can almost predict that the largest number and
size of scholarships are overwhelmingly awarded to performance students. It would be a rare
administrator who would change that formula, but I do believe that it bears review if we are
serious about solving this problem.
What bothers me more than anything is the decline in anticipated longevity of those who do
choose to teach. A couple of years ago I participated in a leadership conference for young music
educators in Minnesota, 15 teachers in their first three to seven years of their teaching careers
brought together in a leadership training institute. Before we started, however, I asked them to
describe their experience to date. Only 4 of the 15 had originally started out in music—the rest
came to it because they loved music and were frustrated in their first majors of computers,
business, and pre-med to general education. The majority of them mentioned that their high
school directors had been role models; almost everyone doubted they would make teaching a
lifelong profession.
When I asked them why they didn’t think they would last beyond 15 years, they talked of
many frustrations, wanting more options and choices in lifestyle (location), and wanting a better
economic future for themselves and their families (salaries). They talked of the terrible isolation
they experience each day in their schools, where music is marginally a part of the curriculum and
they have no one to share their teaching challenges with because they are often the only music
teacher. Most were afraid that their jobs were all too expendable in the next budget crisis, and
they all wished that they had more experience with the politics of education, a greater
understanding of the issues of school finance and the education reform and accountability
movement, and a better knowledge of their communities. Interestingly enough, most of them felt
that they left their undergraduate institution relatively well equipped to teach—until the first
week of school in their first job. And then they spoke with great clarity about the lack of

experience in methods and techniques, improvisation and arranging, reflective practice and
analysis, conducting, materials selection—and the artificiality of the student-teaching experience
and its relationship to “real” teaching. They had strong feelings about how they would change
their preparation. As one young woman told me, “if we trained doctors the way we were
prepared to be music teachers, we would all be dead.”
This raises an interesting question. If students leave a school of music with minimal courses
and competencies, where do they gain a connection to professional development that is a part of
all professions? It would seem that the university would have some role in professional
development, but the reality of that is that universities aren’t really involved in professional
development. For the most part, higher education gives credits that lead to degrees that are not
linked to individual teacher skill and competence. You sign up for graduate courses on a degree
plan that may have no connection to what you need to be more successful as a teacher. I have
long said that new information on top of no previous learning does not prepare master teachers.
Few if any institutions today have the time, faculty resources, and I daresay real faculty interest
to stay connected with young music educators once they receive their diploma and enter the
field. There is no incentive in higher education to be involved in postgraduate professional
development; merit and salary review considerations would view that as service and not
creativity or scholarship. Statewide systems such as those in Virginia and Connecticut are not
specific to music education and have had problems. Higher education will quickly point to
graduate programs as professional development, but those programs are not usually the kinds of
experiences, courses, or skills that relate to the instructional process and teacher developmental
skills many novice teachers feel they need to be successful in the profession. We need new
models, and they may not be able to come from higher education.
Professional Development and Professional Organizations

Most of us think that professional development is the responsibility of state and national
professional organizations in music education, but a careful look at these institutions will reveal
that they are not really engaged in the professional development of teachers. These groups have
chosen two clear directions: advocacy and holding conventions. The cost of advocacy has
diverted resources from the issue of teacher capacity and professional development. I am deeply
concerned that our national and state professional organizations are so firmly entrenched in the
advocacy movement that they have marginalized themselves in being part of the solution to the
teacher education movement. Advocacy may have been something we had to do, and it may
have prevented an even greater deterioration of music education in our nation’s schools, but after
25 years of trying to convince this country that music is important, are we stronger and more
vibrant in the quality and quantity of programs than we were 30 years ago? Advocacy is a
perpetual job, rather like mowing the grass, and noble and valiant as those efforts have been, I

have to ask if anyone is really listening to the message? If, after nearly three decades of
advocacy, in a country with more music education than any other industrialized country in the
Western world, we can’t find enough teachers to teach and we are still seeing music education in
a perpetual crisis with every hiccup of the economy, then what role has advocacy played in
creating the climate for arts education that it has espoused? As I indicated in the forward to
Colleen Conway’s 2003 book on music teacher mentoring, if we had taken just half of the money
we expended on the National Standards movement and spent it on creating models,
collaborations, investments in new research for teacher education and mentoring, we might
really have helped the supply of teachers be better equipped to teach well with the Standards.
Our almost singular focus on advocacy has prevented us from seeing the systemic problems
in teacher education. We have become so concerned about the slick delivery, positive packaging,
and celebrity endorsement of the advocacy message of curricular legitimacy that we have been
coopted by the very entertainment world that is the antithesis of the Standards-based, sequential
instruction in music education we have espoused for years, an entertainment industry that is
threatening live classical musical culture in this country, and by association music education and
music teacher education. Please show me the proof that Justin Timberlake, Shari Lewis, country
music stars, Bose stereo discounts, the ’N Sync/Herbalescence contests and lesson plans, and the
Oscar Meyer composition contest are really helping teachers, and especially young teachers,
keep their jobs and solve vexing and perpetual issues in how to teach music—and teach music
well. Good teaching and solving the instructional capacity of young teachers requires more than
a Web site of experts, the World’s Largest Concert, or a 75-minute panel discussion with three
experts and five minutes of question and answer.
Looking Outside the Box for New Models

How do we begin to talk about change? We must begin by thinking about changing the model
and by thinking outside of the box. Of course, for us in higher education we know all too well
that we live inside the box, and we are very afraid to move beyond its four walls. Part of the box
is why we are here. Presenting sessions at MENC is what helps us get tenure in the box. But the
music teacher preparation box is built by four walls of four very intimidating systems: state
certification requirements on one side, university requirements and the 120-credit diploma limit
on the other, NASM requirements and recommendations on the third side, and on the fourth side,
perhaps the most difficult side of all, conventional practice in higher education. For most college
faculty and administration there is a deep-seated fear of challenging faculty consensus and the
time-honored traditions, experiences, and credit requirements that are rigidly in place in most
music schools in theory, musicology, performance, and many other disciplines both in the school
and the university. Those are formidable walls in higher education. But these walls must be
challenged, and in some cases, they must be bent or removed if we are to create a new cohort of

career music teachers. I do not believe that we can change the box ourselves by being in the box.
Which means that we are going to have to move in different directions for the future, by
ourselves as music teacher educators, and as individuals in our own areas.
I do not come to you today as someone who talks about change and hasn’t tried to make that
change. While I was at the University of Minnesota we decided that we wanted to increase the
quality of our music education majors. (Enrollment in music education accounted for 50% of our
600 undergraduate and graduate majors.) We looked at their preparation as part of a complete
rethinking of our undergraduate curriculum. The four walls of the box were just as real for us as
for anyone else. We built four key strategic directions to help us look over the walls, and then we
looked at how each discipline would approach them, together, and in collaborations. And there
was faculty consensus that the program of preparation for our performance students was just as
important to change. This included changing the rigor and quality of the undergraduate
curriculum; raising the quality of our student body overall; integrating the musical, academic,
and creative processes that our students would need for the coming decades; and developing
systemic partnerships and relationships that would expand content into context and experience.
My music education colleagues who helped build this system—David Teachout, Keitha
Hamann, Akosua Addo, Paul Haack, Linda Thompson, and the late Clare McCoy—all deserve
credit for engaging their faculty colleagues in a positive and holistic process of change.
Like you, we were not satisfied with what we were doing; we were not going to be able to
add full-time faculty, we had credit limits to live with, and we wanted to attract a higher quality
of student, in all disciplines. We had two choices: tinker with the status quo, or start to move the
walls of the box, carefully, respectfully, deliberately, but move them nevertheless.
In figuring out what we wanted to do at Minnesota we stepped back and asked ourselves what
it was about the current system and curriculum that we wanted to change, for there was
frustration with many parts of the Berlin Wall model of governance and curriculum that is so
typical in the academy. In many ways the frustrations expressed by faculty were the same as
those of our students. All faculty spoke of how difficult it was to get enough content into a short
period of time and the lack of engagement in required courses in theory and history. Often music
education students question the validity of much of the content of their degree, such as in theory
and musicology, because they have not been helped to understand how to apply that content in
the context of teaching—and why that content is so very important. The diploma, which many
view as a terminal degree and is in fact only a pass card to a life of professional development, is
crammed with a smattering of so many different kinds of experiences, benchmarks, tests, and
expectations that students are bewildered when they have their own classroom and realize that
they are in fact not going to be able to conduct Lincolnshire Posy with their middle school band
the first year they teach.
At Minnesota we decided to create at a comprehensive system of growing, preparing and

nurturing music educators in a series of comprehensive relationships that would start before they
arrived as undergraduates and extend through and beyond the undergraduate degree. We started
first with our undergraduate program, where we spent almost two years reshaping the
undergraduate experience and core curriculum, looking at the natural intersections between
theory, technology, sight singing, ear training, keyboard skills, improvisation, and music
education methods, techniques courses, and practicum experiences. Rather than add new
courses, we looked at ways to integrate content, experiences, and competencies. We added a fifth
semester of theory that presented various options to students—counterpoint, 20th-century music,
jazz theory—but reduced total credits in each of the five semesters to do so. Professors now team
teach across disciplines, with the jazz studies professor coming into the theory sequence to work
on improvisation, and the theory professor working with music education professors on score
study and analysis. We were blessed with new positions and critical retirements that allowed us
to bring great new faculty to campus with collaborative interests. Their cross-curricular attitude
has enriched the entire curriculum and helped establish a new validity among all students—and
especially those in music education—for the content of theory and musicology, keyboard skills,
and the like, because it is being applied in contexts that prove the validity. We restructured
credits in techniques classes so that we could add additional methods courses. We reshaped
conducting courses in instrumental and choral areas to become comprehensive experiences
where students would work with instructional pedagogies; create and teach their own
arrangements; prepare music history, listening, and improvisational activities; and analyze what
they do on videotape and in small mentor groups with graduate students and faculty.
To counter the faculty notion that music education students are not of the same caliber as
applied students, we toughened admissions requirements across the board, and particularly for
music education. Applications and auditions for the school and music education jumped
dramatically, and the resultant rise in quality reduced most (but not all) of our esteemed applied
faculty concerns. We also equitably distributed scholarship aid across the board to the best
students in both degree programs and raised $3.2 million in scholarship money specifically for
music education majors.
Our music education faculty turned our CMENC chapter into an extension of the formal
classroom experience where subjects and issues are covered that students need to know but for
which there is no time remaining for credit-bearing courses. These sessions range from
interviewing skills to the realities of politics and finance in Minnesota schools, understanding
community engagement, and using new graduates out in the field to bring the reality of their
classrooms to our students. These experiences extended into field observations and service-
learning projects. We began to use graduate students and TAs as mentors for undergraduate
courses, where they provided one-on-one instruction, coached videotape feedback sessions of
conducting, and worked with techniques and methods classes. Major ensembles regularly

provided time for student conductors at the end of the semester. The steps described are small in
comparison to where we need to be, yet incremental steps are what bring real change over time.
Since these changes were implemented, the retention rates at Minnesota have been high, the
applications to music education are growing, and the quality of students is rising sharply. Future
music teachers want to succeed. Build a new system, and they will come.
I think we have little choice but to invest in new models in which we explore a new kind of
relationship and interdependency between and among the parts of the profession, where our
traditional institutions will become as interested in helping new models gain greater ground,
succeed, and be sustained as they are in the quality of performance program. It isn’t either/or, it
is both/and. We must create a new system of lighthouses, beacons of change that represent a
rebellion of sort, new models in teacher education that are connected with networks of models,
where the sharing of methods and practices becomes a habit of mind. It will take time, courage,
boldness, leadership, and yes, funding. We will have to ask deans and directors to make choices.
In the 1980s Gordon Cawelti, executive director of the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development (ASCD), brought the issue of systemic school reform to a new level of
prominence in the national debate by creating a remarkable group of networks focused on
aspects of school-based change. His work, and those networks, created a climate for school
change that advanced research by a generation in less than a decade. What if this profession were
to do the same thing? Those models could represent an exciting and serious research investment
by institutions and professional organizations that could advance the agenda of change in music
teacher education by a generation. While there are clear roles to play for each part of our
profession, everyone has to be prepared to give up old ways find new ways to think about this
issue. If no one is prepared to do that, then Houston, we do indeed have a problem.
The three questions for this afternoon’s discussion groups speak to the kinds of questions we
must ask ourselves. These questions will help us grapple with the issues, think of some solutions,
share existing models, or dream of new ideas and new models that could be implemented.
First, what partnerships must we create, build, or reenergize in K–12, higher, and
professional education for music teacher education in the future? In your region or area, what
partnerships must you build to bring about a greater local/regional awareness for the need for
quality teachers? How do you work with local districts in providing mentor opportunities to new
teachers? What does you state music education organization do to connect entry-level teachers
with career master teachers? In what ways do you use your state or regional music education
meetings to help and nurture the beginning music teacher?
Where will the supply of new teachers come from? How must we recruit, where shall we
recruit, and who will teach these prospective new teachers if there are indeed not enough music
teacher education professors? How do we find prospective teachers? Who encourages these
students to think about this profession? How are they connected with other young teachers who

have made that choice? Should state professional music organizations sponsor career days for
high school music students interested in music education who are brought by their local music
teacher, perhaps to state conventions, all states or regional gatherings? What role will colleges
and universities play in making these connections? Should colleges or universities seek
nominations of prospective students from high school directors that can form a database that
colleges and universities can use to recruit future teachers? Should we connect prospective
teachers into online communities, create special campus days for prospective teachers, or create
early mentor relationships between incoming and existing music education majors? How will we
grapple with alternative certification and licensure? How might you help create local
collaboratives of districts and teachers to take a leadership role in ensuring that these kinds of
activities are valuable, targeted, and productive? Must we look to clinical professorships of
seasoned practitioners, similar to those in schools of medicine and social work?
What is the role of MENC, NASM, or other state or national professional organizations in
providing leadership and support for new research and models? If not them, then who? What
role will colleges, universities, and state professional organizations or other state agencies play
in shaping meaningful postbaccalaureate professional development and licensure and alternative
certification programs? How will entry-level teachers be paired with career music educators for
assistance or observations? Should state organizations provide regional meetings of novice
teachers to facilitate mentoring and reflective growth experiences? How might we rethink the
curriculum and experience of graduate programs to reflect the capacity and needs of individual
novice teachers in order to retain them in the profession longer than five years?
Of course, there are far more questions than answers, but we are at a point in time where we
must at least start asking the questions. The result of the great institutionalization of our culture
is that we tend to wait until the system responds to meet our challenges. We want quick answers
and ready solutions to complex issues from the institutions that we created to serve our
professional needs. We think that our dues give license to others to act on our behalf. But more
quick fixes within the same institutional framework that caused the problems are not going to
solve these problems. Individuals must take action, finding others with shared concerns and
hopes to work together and choose to make differences through dialogue, consensus, leadership,
and a willingness to change the box. It is about establishing a culture of change so that the idea
of continual growth is built into the culture of teaching music. While our topic today is about
music education, there might also be something to learn in this process for all music students,
whether in performance or music education. This is very much about the culture of change in
how we teach all musicians—performers, scholars, teachers, creators—in the academy.
I urge you to push the agenda, and the envelope, under your own initiative, within your own
box. We can’t wait for the system to fix itself. That won’t happen in the near future. Solving
these problems will require your personal, active engagement at your own level of involvement.

I believe that your actions, linked and served by strong leadership from SMTE, will help us to
challenge every part of our current ecosystem, reinvest resources, time, ideas and policies in
helping new models of research and experimentation in teacher education move forward. It is
time, and I think that every one of us in this room knows that it is time. You are at a crossroads;
choose wisely which direction you decide to go, because it will determine far more than we
might ever imagine.
References
American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE) (2001). Educator Supply and
Demand in the United States. Information available from AAEE, 3040 Riverside Drive,
Suite 125, Columbus, OH 43221.
Bergee, M. J., Coffman, D. D., Demorest, S. M., Humphreys, J. T., & Thornton, L. P. (2001,
Summer). Influences on collegiate students’ decision to become a music educator. Report
sponsored by MENC: The National Association for Music Education. Retrieved October,
1, 2002, from http://www.menc.org/networks/rnc/Bergee-Report.html.
Conway, C. M. (Ed.). (2003). Great Beginnings for Music Teachers: Mentoring and Supporting
New Teachers. Reston, VA: MENC.
Hickey, M. (2002, May). Music teacher shortage! Time for crisis or for change? College Music
Society Newsletter.
Lindemann, C. A. (2002, November). How can higher education address the K–12 music
teacher shortage? Speech presented at the National Association of Schools of Music
Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA.

What Partnerships Must We Create, Build, or Reenergize in K–12
Higher and Professional Education for Music Teacher Education in
the Future?
By Janet Robbins and Robin Stein
Janet Robbins is professor of music at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Robin Stein
is coordinator of music education at Texas State University in San Marcos.
At the 2004 MENC preconference session sponsored by the Society of Music Teacher
Education, the question of “What partnerships must we create in our teacher education
programs?” was addressed in one of three breakout sessions. We began the discussion by
looking at the types of partnerships that currently exist. Our thinking was that only when we
have taken stock of where we’ve been can we begin to think outside the box in response to
Jeffrey Kimpton’s call for change in music teacher education.
Many of the participants reported on methods classes that apply a clinical model. These site-
based methods courses vary in the degree of collaboration that exists. On one end of the
spectrum is the lab school approach in which university professors and students provide music
instruction in schools where music otherwise doesn’t exist. A more collaborative model is the
Professional Development School (PDS), in which the methods class relocates to a school and is
taught by both university and school-based teacher. Other collaborative ventures that were
discussed included service learning that partnered university students with community
organizations and after-school programs. The conversation then turned to examples of “internal”
partnerships that involve the integration of music education courses with other disciplines, both
outside music as well as within music departments.
It is clear that there are many angles to consider when thinking about the kinds of
partnerships we need to create or reenergize in music teacher education. The literature on
partnerships in music education reaches far beyond the scope of our discussion in the breakout
session and includes partnerships between universities and professional artists and arts
organizations, as well as collaborative enterprises between universities and corporations. The
following discussion draws upon selected sources as a way to frame the current conversation on
partnerships and to serve as a springboard for future planning.
Professional Development School Partnerships:

Collaborative Teaching and Research
Since the mid-1980s, various initiatives to strengthen teacher education have called for more
field experiences that would better prepare undergraduates for the “real world” of music teaching
and learning. Possibly the most popular form of school-university partnerships in teacher

education is the Professional Development School (Neirman, Zeichner, & Hobbel, 2002). The
establishment of Professional Development Schools was a response to the Holmes Group, a
consortium of research universities involved in teacher education reform that called for improved
partnerships between higher education and K–12 schools. Their report in 1990 spawned the
development of a number of PDSs that were based on shared decision making and collaborative
research among university teachers, student teachers, and site-based teachers. Theory that
resided in the university classroom was merged with practice in K–12 classrooms in order to
produce practicing teachers who were both responsible and responsive (Darling-Hammond,
1994, p. 204).
At first glance, the differences between what we think of as the music education practicum
and the PDS partnership model may not be entirely obvious. However, PDSs are founded on a
significantly different principle, namely, that everyone is a learner—university teacher, site-
based master teacher, and student teacher. Planning, teaching, and reflecting occur
collaboratively, requiring a rethinking of roles and authority. In music education, however, only
a few have fully realized the PDS concept.
The work of Conkling and Henry is well documented (1999, 2002) and provides a strong
model for change, one that challenges the traditional music education practicum in which theory
resides exclusively in the university and reflection is an individual rather than collective act.
Based on their work in general and choral music classrooms, they make the following
suggestions for creating PDS partnerships (2000):
• Make a long-term, philosophical commitment to the partnership project.
• Identify a K–12 partner with whom you can spend many hours designing, implementing,
and maintaining the project.
• Be prepared for some discomfort when confronting competing value systems.
• Secure appropriate allocation of human and financial resources.
• Determine how the university faculty’s work in the PDS will be viewed and rewarded by
the university in terms of teaching and research.
• Place student learning at the heart of both theory and practice.
Partnerships associated with Professional Development Schools also involve collaborative
research. “One of the most striking features of current PDSs is their emphasis on collaborative
research among teachers, student teachers and teacher educators” (Darling-Hammond, 1994, p.
9). Preservice teachers, particularly those in five-year programs leading to a master’s degree,
engage in action research projects during their final year. Action research, or teacher research,
helps to cultivate habits of inquiry, and as a result of conducting research, both preservice and
in-service teachers may become part of a professional culture that values research. The formation
of teacher research groups, or cooperatives, provides necessary support for getting started and
also decreases feelings of isolation that so many music teachers experience (Robbins, 2000).

Most important, the research process is liberating and transformative for teachers. Researching
teachers who view themselves as producers of knowledge, as opposed to consumers of
knowledge, have a greater chance of becoming independent, curious, and innovative.
According to Zeichner (1994), “reflection and teacher research signify a recognition that the
process of learning to be a teacher continues throughout one’s entire career, and no matter what
teacher education programs do, and how well it is done, we can at best only prepare teachers to
begin practice” (p. 71). A beginning that includes teachers collaborating to study their own
teaching and their students’ learning may reduce the teacher burnout rate in the long run.
Partnership Networks for In-Service Teachers

Teachers’ continued professional development can be the single most important factor that
contributes to career success and fulfillment (Olsen, 1987). Socialization into the profession does
not end with graduation. Universities need to establish networks that provide professional
development opportunities for both novice and expert teachers in the form of apprentice
programs, professional development workshops, site-based methods classes, and collaborative
research. Unfortunately, teachers often become isolated and unaware of professional-
development opportunities. Even when opportunities do exist, teachers are rarely included in the
planning, and as a result, the activities often do not engage teachers in thinking about how to
solve real classroom problems.
Universities can help develop networks for in-service teachers that connect them with other
teachers, community musicians, and university experts with like interests who might not
otherwise come together (Hookey, 2002). Such is the case in several initiatives taking place at
the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York (Robinson, 1998). The Rochester-
Eastman String Project has a multifaceted design that connects university students, K–12
students and teachers, and community members. University faculty and graduate students
provide the instruction for students in one of Rochester’s urban elementary schools where no
string program has existed for years. Undergraduate music education students volunteer as
mentors to the young students. Participating K–12 students are paired with a beginning adult
string player from the community who agrees to learn and practice with the student. The adult
musician, in turn, receives an instrument from the schools along with free beginning instruction
from Eastman.
Another Eastman initiative uses an apprenticeship model in which middle school choral
teachers work side-by-side with Eastman faculty. Many Voices, Many Songs involves several
layers of apprenticeship that function simultaneously, not only for the K–12 teachers, but also for
music education students who work as apprentices in the schools during short-term internships
(Robinson, 1998).
In addition to Eastman’s many initiatives, a number of arts organizations, such as the Lincoln

Center Institute and the Kennedy Center, have long traditions of offering professional
development workshops and institutes for teachers; however, university involvement is often
superficial or lacking. A future goal might include the establishment of stronger partnerships
between arts organizations and university music education programs for the purpose of providing
professional development opportunities for new music teachers.
Community-Based Partnerships
Music education partnerships often develop between universities, schools, and arts
organizations. Research supports the premise that such partnerships, if designed and executed
well, can strengthen music teaching and learning (Myers & Brooks, 2003). For more than thirty
years we have seen varying types of artist-in-education programs (AIE) that feature artists
working in schools. While Professional Development School models bring university faculty and
students into K–12 schools, AIE programs bring artists into the schools for short-term
residencies to enrich the school environment and enhance student learning. Sometimes
universities develop the project or are included in it, but often projects only involve an
interaction between artists and the resident school. A grant-funding agency or donor is
sometimes the catalyst in the mix.
A number of orchestras have created outreach programs for area schools, moving beyond an
emphasis on exposure-type goals in music to the creation of more meaningful connections
throughout the curriculum (Myers, 2003). Performance models of the sort that McCusker (1999)
describes connect music teachers and students with university and community performances.
The Gibbs Street Connection in Rochester was designed as a collaboration with the Rochester
area schools to bring K–12 students to the performance environment of the Eastman School and
the Rochester Philharmonic. The Pennock Listening Project (Addo, 2002) is an interesting
departure from the normal public school outreach. Home-schooled students were identified as an
underserved population and were for the first time included in this listening project with the
Minnesota Orchestra, the University of Minnesota Division of Music Education/Music Therapy,
and the local school district.
Sound Learning is an Atlanta collaborative among faculty and students at Georgia State
University, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, three elementary schools, and freelance
performers. Its primary goal is to “strengthen sequential music learning” and to ensure a
sustained presence in the schools, rather than short-term interaction (Myers, 2003). Performers
and composers collaborate with music specialists and classroom teachers, each contributing their
own expertise.
There has been criticism of some artists-in-schools models because of the concern that artists
will somehow replace arts specialists and that long-term sequential instruction will be reduced to
mere exposure activities. Continuing issues for community-based partnerships relate to the

specific roles of teachers and artists, the preservice and in-service education of teachers and
artists, and the development of high-quality classroom models (Myers & Brooks, 2001).
Internal Partnerships
Unless we build partnerships within our own units and universities, efforts to create teaching
and research partnerships with K–12 schools and community artists and organizations may not
be entirely appreciated and understood. Ours is a profession that has been socialized to teach and
research in relative isolation. “Faculty have been initiated into a system in which, except for the
sciences, team teaching and collaborative research are rare” (Hutchens, 1998, p. 36), and with
the growing demand for fewer hours in the undergraduate curriculum, issues of turf often
escalate as faculty become protective of content. However, despite the competitive culture of
academe, more and more faculty are working together to develop interdisciplinary courses and
design experiences that cut across the curriculum. Although not well documented, stories of
collaboration do exist.
Entry-level Introduction to Music Education courses are often taught collaboratively by
music education faculty who design experiences and assignments aimed at examining the
diversity of music teaching and learning contexts. Music education and theory faculty at St.
Cloud State University in Minnesota experimented with a team-taught freshman ear-training
course, collaborating to apply music education methods to teach aural skills. Students and
teachers began to recognize the value of collaborative teaching and realized that pedagogy and
content used in theory and piano classes, for example, did indeed apply to music teaching and
learning.
Postbaccalaureate students at the University of Northern Colorado take an integrated methods
course for art, music, and physical education. The class is a collaboration among three
instructors, one from each department. They work using a common theme, sharing segments of
class time to teach within their own discipline, and then bringing everything together during
integrated segments in several theme-related projects.
Perhaps more dramatic is Kimpton’s account of the reshaping of the undergraduate
curriculum at the University of Minnesota that involved integrating content and competencies
and the restructuring of credits. The level of collaboration and the amount of time required may
seem daunting for some, but the “cross-curricular attitude” that now permeates the thinking of
faculty and students is clearly attainable.
Future Possibilities
Looking back on this preconference session and the experiences that were shared, it is clear
that more time and thought are needed to fully appreciate the concept of partnership, not only in
its myriad applications, but also with respect to the implications for music teacher education. Our

scholarship on music teaching and learning must not be done in isolation and needs to include
more voices of K–12 teachers. Myers (2003) challenges us to continue to strengthen
relationships between schools of education and schools of music in order to broaden professional
understanding of the role of music in children’s lives and learning. We must also strengthen
relationships within our undergraduate music program, not only for music education majors, but
also for classroom teachers. Traditionally, we separate the course work for music majors and
general classroom teacher. How might more collaborative work in their undergraduate programs
build communities of learners once they’re teaching? Could graduate seminars combine music
education students with administrators and teachers of other disciplines for learning-centered
partnerships? Would these relationships lead to better understanding and collaboration in future
community relationships outside the university environment?
Bresler (2002) cautions that we must not mandate or prescribe collaborations; rather she
suggests that we consider conditions that would favor thoughtful and productive outcomes. As
we think ahead to partnerships in the future, the following conditions, or principles, may be
useful to our work:
1. Plan strategically. Work collaboratively with colleagues to integrate existing course
content and streamline curricula.
2. Search for funding opportunities to “buy” the time needed to develop innovative courses
and collaborative programs. Strong partnerships take time to develop. Many universities
already offer incentives for faculty to develop new, interdisciplinary courses, and many
state departments and arts agencies are eager to collaborate to develop professional
programs in the arts for teachers.
3. Expand faculty perspectives and consider whether collaborators are open to diverse ways
of thinking. A greater understanding of other disciplines and will lead to an increased
understanding of our own.
4. Be open to multiple perspectives and values and learn to appreciate the ideas of others. In
the case of the PDS partnerships, “two cultures” are coming together, each with its own
set of roles and rules.
5. Be aware of the issues of power and authority related to the question of “whose
knowledge” is the most valuable.
6. Establish clear goals that all understand and agree to. Compromise is necessary when
designing courses and programs, making it important to develop shared outcomes that do
not dilute content.
7. Search for overlapping content and concepts in curriculum. What skills and knowledge
cut across the curriculum in music?
8. Resist isolation. Professional renewal of skill and knowledge can result from shared
experiences. This is true for both faculty and K–12 teachers.

Strong partnerships are vital to the future of music teacher education. With appropriate
partnerships in place, students will be better prepared to sustain a lifelong commitment to music
teaching and learning. Working in a collaborative environment at all levels can lead to renewed
engagement in music and strengthen our music teacher education programs in the future.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following participants in the MENC breakout session:
David R. Montano University of Denver
Diane Mack Central Missouri State University
Linda K. Damer Indiana State University
Katy Strand Indiana University
Joe Murphy Mansfield University
Mary Kennedy Rutgers University
Patrick Freer Georgia State University
Brett Nolker University of North Carolina–Greensboro
Pam Stover Clarion University
Andrew Murphy Missouri Western State College
Rachel Harrison Missouri Western State College
Mary Schleff CSU Northridge
Ben Smar University of Massachusetts–Amherst
Ellen Abrahams Westminster Choir College
Alicia Mueller Towson University
June Grice Colorado State University
Diane Persellin Trinity University
References
Addo, A. (2002). University-community music partnerships. Paper presented at ISME
Community Music Activities Seminar. Retrieved October 25, 2004, from
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Bresler, L. (2002). Out of the trenches: The joys (and risks) of cross-disciplinary collaborations.
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Education, 152, 17–39.
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education: We need you! Presentation at the American Orff-Schulwerk Association
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Where Will the Supply of New Teachers Come From, Where Shall
We Recruit, and Who Will Teach These Prospective Teachers?
By William E. Fredrickson and J. Bryan Burton
William E. Fredrickson is associate professor of music education and associate dean of

academic affairs at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. J.
Bryan Burton is professor of music education and graduate coordinator for the School of Music
at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
This question is central to the long-term viability of the music teaching profession. The
changing landscape of public education, the prevalent values of American society, and countless
other variables have brought us to a point where these questions need concrete answers if music
education is to survive and thrive as a central part of our public education system.
Participants in the 2004 MENC National Biennial In-Service Meeting Preconference Special
Focus Session on Teacher Preparation considered this question in one of three breakout sessions
following Jeffrey Kimpton’s keynote address. Current thought and practice, as represented by
the participants of the session, as well as extant research in this area, suggest some possible
solutions for consideration. These solutions are a starting point for continued discussion and
action in this area.
Developing a Recruiting Pipeline

It may be that the sources we traditionally gravitate toward to recruit undergraduate music
education students aren’t sufficient, or even most appropriate, for the many and varied needs of
the music teaching profession. High school students in all-state performance groups and from
large suburban school districts with highly visible music programs naturally get a great deal of
attention from college recruiters. Not only are these students likely to possess refined musical
skills, but they are also in situations that appear attractive from a professional standpoint. But
according to the research it is likely that these students will think of the music education
profession as being what they see in their schools and ensemble experiences and may expect that
they will go into the work force in similar situations (Kelly, 2003). Reality of the marketplace
dictates that entry-level jobs might not be in these settings and areas of highest need certainly are
not.
1. With greater areas of need in urban and rural settings, we should increase efforts to
identify, mentor, and recruit high school music students in those settings to increase the
likelihood that students might be willing to work in these settings after graduation.
2. In preparation for the needs of the marketplace, we need to develop ways to portray the
music teaching profession’s diversity to high school students.
Current music teachers may be the best recruiters the profession has. They exert a great deal

of influence that could positively affect the recruiting of future music teachers (Bergee, Coffman,
Demorest, Humphreys, & Thornton, 2001). From the time students make a choice to be involved
in music, music teachers are representing their profession and should consider the possibility that
any of their students might develop the interest and potential to become a colleague someday.
Looking for opportunities to foster students’ early interest in music teaching might include
focusing efforts on Tri-M chapters and future teachers’ clubs. College/university music
education faculty could investigate partnerships between their institutions and these public
school–based efforts as well as local MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) groups.
While Bergee et al. (2001) did not find these types of experiences to be highly influential, if their
purpose was focused on identifying and recruiting future teachers, that trend could change.
Bergee et al. (2001) also found that previous teaching opportunities were influential, although
rare, and these organizations might be used to facilitate the development of precollege
experiences in classrooms and ensembles. While extensive “podium time” is unlikely in many
programs, the development of regular “peer-tutoring” opportunities at various levels might be
facilitated. Many college/university music education faculty members also regularly present
clinics and guest conduct in public school settings. It might be fruitful to think of these instances
as opportunities for professional recruitment. The profession has a “farm system,” but we need to
be better at sending out “scouts” and encouraging young prospects.
1. Urge current music teachers to promote the positive aspects of their profession to their
students and community.
2. Look for opportunities (through Tri-M chapters, future teachers clubs, and their own
clinics with school-aged children) to enfranchise students early by helping develop
teaching experiences (such as peer-tutoring) for students.
Once high school students get to college and begin a music education degree program, they
become highly involved in a variety of music-related activities. Some naturally begin to question
whether they really want to teach. Early opportunities to experience public school music
classrooms are a chance to develop perspective and make decisions about educational goals.
Teachout (2004) found that undergraduates in methods classes see these early experiences as an
important part of their education. If we are looking for more students to teach in urban and rural
schools and in elementary and middle school classrooms those early experiences should reflect
those needs of the profession. Balancing the needs of the profession with the students’ comfort
level and expectations (where they came from and what they know) make this a delicate task
(Benham, 2003). Informing students, and helping them develop their attitudes towards diverse
situations without scaring or alienating them, is not easy (Emmanuel, 2003). Identifying the
important characteristics of good teachers and formulating assessments to help identify
promising students has been a focus of research, and implementing findings from that research
can help (Rohwer & Henry, 2004).

When first-year teachers were asked to give advice to students currently in music teacher
education programs, they put a great deal of focus on job-related skills not traditionally
associated with music, pedagogy, or classroom discipline (Fredrickson & Hackworth, 2005).
Administrative skills and people skills in general, the things all new professionals need in almost
any environment, were very much on these new teachers’ minds. In preparing undergraduates, it
might also be wise to allow some flexibility for the development of other interests and talents.
Facilitating and promoting the pursuit of a double major (performance and education, for
example) might help keep good students involved in teacher preparation programs.
1. Help undergraduates begin to think and work as professionals early in their programs by
infusing field experiences in freshman and sophomore years.
2. Find diverse placement environments that mirror the needs of the profession, but supply
support for students going into those placements to prepare them for success.
3. For talented students with a variety of musical interests, encourage and facilitate dual
degrees or double majors rather than forcing choice too early.
Musicians with a bachelors or masters degree in another area of music (performance, theory,
history, etc.) sometimes reconsider music education as a professional choice (Bergee et al.,
2001). Helping this population involves adjusting the existing curriculum, which was originally
designed and scheduled as an integral part of a complete undergraduate degree experience, and
making those experiences available for someone with subject-matter expertise looking for a
quick path to teacher certification. Sometimes those obstacles are difficult for both the
prospective student and the music unit to overcome. It could be advantageous to be proactive
about identifying promising undergraduate or even graduate music majors while they are still in
school. Faculty could talk with them about the possibility of adding teacher certification and help
deal with some of the misconceptions that might create negative bias. At the same time
facilitating the addition of new curriculum to existing degree programs might require some
flexibility and creativity on the part of music education faculty. Approaching colleagues in other
music areas about assisting us in identifying appropriate students and enlisting their help in the
inevitable curricular compromises can make recruiting of the next generation of teachers every
college music faculty member’s business (Thornton, Murphy, & Hamilton, 2004).
1. Actively look for good students in music bachelor’s and master’s programs who might
consider adding teacher certification. Include international students who have come to the
United States to further their musical education and may not know about the potential
possibilities for employment in this field.
2. Develop flexible alternatives within teacher certification programs so current students
can add on teacher certification without adding overwhelming time and credits to their
planned programs while still covering material needed to meet state requirements and
professional expectations.

3. Enlist music faculty colleagues in identifying students and facilitating long-term career
planning.
The way we think about how one chooses a profession and how long one commits to a given
profession may have changed. People are changing jobs, and even career areas, more often.
Schools and departments of music are receiving inquiries from people who did not even receive
a music degree as an undergraduate who are interested in coming back to school to become a
music teacher. College/university music education faculty might consider working to identify
good candidates who are actively involved in music-related activities in proximity to their
institutions. These nontraditional students bring their own set of logistical challenges and
curricular needs. Many colleges and universities are actively involved in developing viable paths
for the growing demand for “alternative certification” (Asmus, 2003). People with existing
degrees in music as well as those with much less formal training are looking for programs that
allow them to make the transition they are considering without going back to the very beginning.
In many cases these students want course work scheduled for nights, weekends, and summers to
accommodate their need for concurrent full-time employment. In many parts of the country,
schools are partnering with universities to allow these populations to work full-time in
classrooms while completing the course work necessary to be fully certified to teach.
Unfortunately the paradigm for alternative certification that has developed for the certification of
elementary classroom and secondary subject-matter teachers in areas other than music don’t
always align comfortably with music education faculty expectations. Flexibility and creativity
are needed on the part of school districts, nontraditional music teacher education students, and
college/university teacher educators if viable alternatives are to be found.
1. Develop partnerships with school districts to create viable alternative certification
programs that meet the needs identified by music education faculty.
2. Work with college/university music departments and music education faculty to facilitate
the accommodation of nontraditional teacher education students’ needs.
3. Be proactive in identifying viable candidates from nontraditional populations
(community bands, choirs, and orchestras, church choirs, and adults taking private
lessons).
Retaining Good Teachers in the Profession

Ending the current shortage of good music teachers is not simply a matter of finding more
individuals to train. Keeping good teachers that are already certified and teaching should also be
a priority. Attrition is particularly high at the beginning of the career. A large group of
potentially productive music educators leave teaching within the first three years for a variety of
reasons (South, 2004). For some it is due to a lack of adequate preparation. Others become
disillusioned when the job isn’t what they were expecting. Some simply find out too late that

they are not suited to the demands of the teaching profession.
Some research (Conway & Garlock, 2002; Fredrickson & Hackworth, 2004; Fredrickson &
Neill, in press; Pembrook & Fredrickson, 2000/2001) suggests that both new teachers and
experienced teachers are preoccupied with the demands of teaching as an everyday job (not just
problems with subject-matter, teaching competency, or classroom discipline). Providing training,
experiences, and perspective to deal with these many issues, which can range from lunch duty
and budget preparation to personal emotional strain and stability, would better prepare teachers
to face the realities of their jobs. Often there isn’t time in an undergraduate program to deal
effectively with the myriad issues involved, and in-service workshops, continuing education
experiences, and master’s programs could help (Bowles, 2003).
1. Teacher preparation programs can continue to work toward training that provides
realistic preparation for all the daily tasks encountered by the music teacher. Moving
from a model dominated by the use of student teaching as the capstone experience to one
with a true “internship” could also help.
2. Provide in-service workshops, continuing education classes, and experiences in master’s
programs that help practitioners cope with the many challenges of their environments.
Mentoring for new teachers might further help with difficulties encountered in the initial
years of teaching. State music educators groups and college/university music education
departments could sponsor and facilitate programs matching experienced teachers with new
teachers. Using available database resources and communication tools, these organizations might
be able to construct programs that could potentially benefit a large majority of the new teachers
functioning in the public schools of their state. Preparing college music education students to
find their own mentors could help in cases where a new teacher is in an isolated circumstance or
does not have access to a formal program. Teaching these new professionals that good mentors
can include teachers outside their subject-matter specialty might be wise.
Acknowledgments
On behalf of the Society for Music Teacher Education, the authors would like to thank the
following professionals for their contributions to the conference session and this article:
Sheila Feay-Shaw University of Wisconsin–Whitewater
Darla Hanley Shenandoah University
Linda Hartley University of Dayton
Steven Kelly Florida State University
William Lee University of Tennessee–Chattanooga
Rod Loeffler Northwestern College
Peter McCoy State University of New York at Potsdam
Ken Phillips Palm Beach Atlantic University

Ann Porter University of Cincinnati
Dale Misenhelter University of Arkansas
Barbara Resch University of Indiana–Purdue Fort Wayne
Victoria Smith Elizabethtown College
David Teachout University of Minnesota
Somchai Trakarurung University of Toronto (graduate student)
References
Asmus, E. P. (2003). Commentary: Advantages and disadvantages of alternative certification.
Journal of Music Teacher Education, 13(1), 5–6. Retrieved May 17, 2004, from
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/journals.html.
Benham, S. (2003). Being the other: Adapting to life in a culturally diverse classroom. Journal
of Music Teacher Education, 13(1), 21–32. Retrieved May 17, 2004, from
http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/journals.html.
Bergee, M.J., Coffman, D. D., Demorest, S. M., Humphreys, J. T., & Thornton, L. P. (2001,
Summer). Influences on collegiate students’ decision to become a music educator. Report
sponsored by MENC: The National Association for Music Education. Retrieved May, 17,
2004, from http://www.menc.org/networks/rnc/Bergee-Report.html.
Bowles, C. (2003). The self-expressed professional development needs of music educators.
Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 21(2). Retrieved May 17, 2004,
from http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/journals.html.
Conway, C., & Garlock, M. (2002). The first year teaching K–3 general music: A case study of
Mandi. Contributions to Music Education, 29(2), 9–28.
Emmanuel, D. T. (2003). An immersion field experience: An undergraduate music education
course in intercultural competence. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 13(1), 33–41.
Retrieved May 17, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/journals.html.
Fredrickson, W. E., & Hackworth, R. S. (2005). Analysis of First-Year Teacher’s Advice to
Music Education Students. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 23(2).
Fredrickson, W. E., & Neill, S. (in press). Is it Friday yet? (Perceptions of first-year music
teachers). Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education.
Kelly, S. N. (2003). The influence of selected cultural factors on the environmental teaching
preference of undergraduate music education majors. Journal of Music Teacher
Education, 12(2), 40–50. Retrieved May 17, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/
publication/articles/journals.html.
Pembrook, R. G., & Fredrickson, W. E. (2000/2001). Prepared yet flexible: Insights from the
Daily Logs of Music Teachers. Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education,
147, 149–52.
Rohwer, D., & Henry, W. (2004). University teachers’ perceptions of requisite skills and
characteristics of effective music teachers. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 13(2),
18–27. Retrieved May 17, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/
journals.html.
South, J. (2004, January). Factors related to music teacher retention in Oklahoma. Poster
presented at the Missouri Music Educators Association Annual In-Service Meeting,
Osage Beach, MO.

Teachout, D. J. (2004). Preservice teachers’ opinions of music education methods course
content. Contributions to Music Education, 31(1), 71–88.
Thornton, L., Murphy, P., & Hamilton, S. (2004). A case of faculty collaboration for music
education curricular change. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 13(2), 34–40.
Retrieved May 17, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/publication/articles/journals.html.

What Is the Role of MENC, NASM, or Other State or National
Professional Organizations in Providing Leadership and Support
for New Research and Models?
By Don P. Ester and David J. Brinkman
Don P. Ester is associate professor and coordinator of music education at Ball State
University in Muncie, Indiana. David J. Brinkman is area coordinator for music education at the
University of Wyoming in Laramie.
The question of leadership is perhaps the seminal issue related to the looming crisis in music
teacher education. Jeffrey Kimpton grants that MENC and NASM are aware of the situation and
have made at least some effort to address it over the past 20 years. He also suggests, however,
that “we’re still waiting for leadership from, and standing in, this organization [MENC], as well
as recognition that there is a need for new models, sponsored research, or networks of colleges
and districts, teachers and professors and students doing innovative work” (Kimpton, 2005, p. 9).
This fundamental question of leadership served as the focal point of the third breakout session
following Kimpton’s keynote address at the 2004 Special Focus Session on Teacher Preparation.
The group was charged with the following questions: “What is the role of MENC, NASM, or
other state or national professional organizations in providing leadership and support for new
research and models? If not them, then who?”
The open forum included music teacher educators from throughout the nation, resulting in a
lively and valuable brainstorming session. Suggestions covered the gamut from removing
MENC from the process and having SMTE assume sole leadership to pushing for a permanent
position in the MENC national office focused on teacher education issues and activities. All
participants recognized the importance of facilitating the development of a more effective
network that can share information related to innovative and effective curricular models,
alternative licensing, and other current issues affecting music teacher education.
Other significant discussion points focused on the importance of involving not only MENC
but also the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) and The College Music Society
(CMS). It is these three national organizations, in fact, that seem to be the primary players in the
profession of music education. While a considerable number of content-specific and method-
specific organizations exist (e.g., ACDA, NBA, ASTA with NSOA, OAKE, AOSA), these three
organizations are involved with the concerns of all music educators. As a result, they, along with
SMTE, have the visibility, credibility, and potential authority to provide leadership and facilitate
change in the area of music teacher education. Given this, it is perhaps wise to examine the self-
proclaimed missions of each of these organizations before considering the roles each might play
in addressing the critical issues at this crossroads of our profession.

Background and Mission of MENC, SMTE, NASM, and CMS
MENC: The National Association for Music Education. MENC was founded in 1907 as the
Music Supervisors National Conference. The organization now boasts a membership of nearly
120,000 music educators throughout the United States and the European Union. Its stated
mission is as follows:
The mission of MENC: The National Association for Music Education is to

advance music education by encouraging the study and making of music by all.
(MENC, n.d.,a)
As this mission statement indicates, the leadership of MENC views advocacy as a fundamental
charge. MENC holds a biennial national conference in even-numbered years while each of the
six regions hosts a conference in odd-numbered years. State organizations typically hold annual
meetings as well. Further information about MENC can be found at http://www.menc.org
SMTE: The Society for Music Teacher Education. SMTE functions under the auspices of
MENC. Membership in SMTE is automatic for those members of MENC who are collegiate
music teacher educators. At present there is no formal articulation between MENC and SMTE as
indicated on the official MENC Organizational Chart (MENC, n.d.,b). Rather, the three societies
associated with MENC are connected with each other but unconnected to the MENC leadership.
This is interesting given the formal connections indicated for a variety of other affiliated
organizations, including instrument-specific associations and a professional fraternity.
Nevertheless, SMTE is clearly part of the MENC organization. The present mission statement
for SMTE is as follows:
The Society for Music Teacher Education’s (SMTE) primary function is to

improve the quality of teaching and research in music teacher education. Equally
important are its efforts to provide leadership in the establishment of standards for
certification of music teachers and to serve as an arm of MENC to influence
developments in music teacher education and certification. (Van Rysselberghe,
1998, p. 3)
NASM: The National Association for Schools of Music. NASM, founded in 1924, is an
association of approximately 600 schools of music, primarily at the collegiate level but also
including precollegiate and community schools of music. It is the national accrediting agency for
music and music-related disciplines (NASM, n.d.,a). The present purpose statement for NASM is
as follows:
The National Association of Schools of Music was founded in 1924 for the

purpose of securing a better understanding among institutions of higher education
engaged in work in music; of establishing a more uniform method of granting
credit; and of developing and maintaining basic, threshold standards for the
granting of degrees and other credentials.(NASM, n.d.,b)
As a result of NASM’s accreditation function, it has tremendous power and authority over music
curricula in higher education. NASM’s Web site is at http://nasm.arts-accredit.org/index.jsp.
CMS: The College Music Society. “The College Music Society is a consortium of college,
conservatory, university, and independent musicians and scholars interested in all disciplines of
music. Its mission is to promote music teaching and learning, musical creativity and expression,
research and dialogue, and diversity and interdisciplinary interaction” (College Music Society,
n.d.). CMS holds an annual national meeting and the 10 regional chapters host annual
assemblies, as well. One of the unique aspects of CMS conferences is the breadth of
presentations and performances, facilitating discussion across disciplinary lines within the field
of music. The society maintains several different databases that include listings of international
music organizations, organizations that offer support to the music field, companies within the
music business and industry, and current festivals, competitions, events, and scholarships within
the field of music. Clearly, CMS considers networking an important part of its mission. CMS can
be found on the Web at http://www.music.org.
Recommended Roles for Facilitating Change

Each of these four organizations plays an important role in the music education profession,
and each seems presently dedicated to rather unique tasks within the profession. Stated from a
business management point of view, they each have a niche. It is worth noting that the unique
roles represented by each organization are necessary functions if we are to accomplish
significant change in the field of music teacher education. Consider that for any transformation
to occur each of the following roles must be filled: leadership/vision, communication/
networking, public relations/advocacy, and implementation/assessment. A careful examination
of the missions and current strengths of the four organizations appears to indicate that, for the
purposes of facilitating positive change with respect to the recruitment, preparation, and
retention of music educators, the roles might be designated as follows.
Leadership/Vision: The Society for Music Teacher Education. SMTE members are on the
front lines of music teacher education issues: they are the teacher educators who are involved in
the recruiting and preparation of the nation’s music teachers; they are primary presenters of in-
service sessions to practicing teachers at national, state, and local teacher conferences; they are
the primary producers of current research on music teaching and learning. Simply stated, they,
more than the members of any other group, understand the challenges and have the aggregate
knowledge and experience to develop the solutions. As a result, SMTE must eagerly accept the

responsibility of developing the all-important vision and facilitating the cooperation and action
of the other professional organizations to transform the vision into real change.
Communication/Networking: The College Music Society. CMS includes members from all
collegiate-level music disciplines and, as such, offers a vital forum for presentation and
discussion of music teacher education issues that relate to recruitment and preparation of future
music teachers. Studio and ensemble faculty play important and frequently primary roles in the
recruitment of all music majors, including future teachers. Further, they guide the performance-
skill development of aspiring educators. Music theorists and historians are intimately involved in
the development of foundational musical knowledge and skills and have significant interest in
and influence on college music curricula. These faculty members and others must come to
recognize the reality and the corollary impacts of the music teacher shortage. Their support is
crucial to the implementation of any significant changes in the academy.
Public Relations/Advocacy: MENC: The National Association for Music Education. MENC is
the most visible and “connected” organization of the four. Over the years, it has established
relationships with a spectrum of professional musicians from classical to pop, politicians
representing a variety of perspectives, and a broad range of businesses. Further, MENC serves as
the de facto umbrella organization for the music education profession. Therefore, it is MENC
that has the clout to spread the word once a coherent message has been developed.
Implementation/Assessment: The National Association of Schools of Music. NASM
accreditation standards are the most recognized and honored in the profession. Because NASM
is involved in the assessment and accreditation of over 600 schools and departments of music, it
must be involved if significant policy or curriculum changes are to be implemented in any
meaningful way. If NASM determines that changes in the accreditation standards are worthy, it
has the “troops on the ground” to ensure the implementation of and compliance with these new
standards.
Conclusion
It seems that MENC, SMTE, CMS, and NASM might work extremely well together to
accomplish a worthy goal if that goal can be clearly articulated and specific objectives can be
identified and agreed upon. It is reasonable to conclude that each of these organizations is aware
of the problem but waiting for clearer guidance, perhaps feeling unsure of which direction to go
and what changes to make. Given that the pertinent issues are most observably music teacher
education issues (although their roots may run deep and wide), it follows that SMTE is most
appropriately positioned to provide informed leadership. In fact, SMTE must take the lead before
it is too late. Where might we start (or, perhaps more accurately stated, start again)? That, of
course, was the purpose of the Preconference Session at the 2004 MENC Convention and is the
purpose of this issue of the Journal of Music Teacher Education. The other articles in the special

focus section of this issue provide a variety of important recommendations; some are new, while
others are familiar and draw on previous research and publication. The crisis is not one of
limited ideas but rather of collective action. SMTE must provide the leadership to initiate this
collective action. Here are a few basic objectives that might serve as starting points. Few are
new, and some are already in progress.
• Clarify the relationship between MENC and SMTE, formally recognizing SMTE as the
arm of MENC responsible for issues in music teacher education and establishing clear
links in the official organizational structure. The flow of any and all information to and
from MENC related to music teacher education should be channeled through SMTE.
• Be more proactive and assertive, working to inform and recommend action plans to
MENC, NASM, CMS, and other organizations as appropriate. Create formal connections
with NASM and CMS, establishing a liaison on each national board to facilitate
communication.
• Collect and effectively disseminate current research on topics related to music teacher
recruitment, preparation, retention, and professional development. The dissemination
must be much more visible than simply professional research and trade journals; the word
must be spread in ways that reach professionals and the general public alike in an
understandable manner with specific suggestions for action. This should include an
SMTE Web site that is linked from the MENC site but managed independently, allowing
for more appropriate and timely content and much more efficient updates.
• Encourage new research focused on evaluating the effectiveness of various music teacher
education models as measured by the percentage of qualified graduates entering the
profession, longevity in the field, etc. This should be done in cooperation with the
Society for Research in Music Education and as a potential expansion of the present
sponsored research project.
• Facilitate the sharing of innovative and effective music teacher education models,
including traditional licensure and alternative licensure approaches.
• Sponsor state, regional, and national symposia that focus on developing and
communicating recommended action plans to practicing music teacher educators and
other appropriate constituents. This might include regular teleconference meetings of
representatives from each of the four organization’s boards.
• Develop and recommend to NASM revised policies and/or curriculum modifications that
will positively impact the recruitment, preparation, and retention of music educators.
While SMTE can and should take the lead, it cannot make profound changes alone. SMTE can
push the agenda, however, helping MENC, NASM, and CMS to not only understand the
significance of the problem but also work together to implement recommended solutions. SMTE
can no longer wait for other organizations to lead; it must be proactive and assertive, convincing

others that action is required and enlisting each organization to take advantage of its unique
niche to bring about the necessary change.
Acknowledgments
The following professionals contributed to the conference session and thus to this article.
Bill Bauer Case Western Reserve University
John Zschunke Rosemont Middle School (Minnesota)
Maribeth Yoder-White Appalachian State University
Dick Disharoon Pikesville High School (Maryland)
Fran Page Meredith College
John Taylor Friends University
Ed Asmus University of Miami–Coral Gables
Dale Bazan University of Northern Iowa
Jenn Mishra University of Northern Iowa
Kim Walls Auburn University
Randi L’Hommedieu Central Michigan University
Cecilia Wang University of Kentucky
Nancy Barry University of Oklahoma
Roger Rideout University of Massachusetts–Amherst
Darlene Fett University of South Dakota
Don Crowe South Dakota State University
Connie McKoy University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Paul K. Garrison Southwest Missouri State University
George DeGraffenreid California State University at Fresno
Norma McClellan Southwest Missouri State University
Victor Fung Bowling Green State University
Margaret Schmidt Arizona State University
Mark Campbell Crane School of Music
Linda Thompson University of Minnesota
Glenn Nierman University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Ed Duling University of Toledo
Liz Wing CCM, University of Cincinnati
David Brinkman University of Wyoming, Session facilitator
Don Ester Ball State University, Session facilitator
References
College Music Society. (2004). About The College Music Society. Retrieved October 18, 2004,
from http://www.music.org

Kimpton, J. (2005). What to do about music teacher education: Our profession at a crossroads.
Journal of Music Teacher Education, 14(2), 8–21.
MENC: The National Association for Music Education. (n.d.a). Mission statement. Retrieved
October 18, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/information/mission.htm
MENC: The National Association for Music Education. (n.d.b). Organizational chart. Retrieved
October 18, 2004, from http://www.menc.org/guides/menctour/orgchart.pdf
National Association of Schools of Music. (n.d.a). About NASM. Retrieved October 18, 2004,
from http://nasm.arts-accredit.org/index.jsp?page=About+NASM
National Association of Schools of Music. (n.d.b). Purposes. Retrieved October 18, 2004, from
http://nasm.arts-accredit.org/index.jsp?page=Purposes
Van Rysselberghe, M. (1998). Generating excellence. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 7(2),
3.

Editor’s Commentary
Assumptions
William E. Fredrickson
Editor, Journal of Music Teacher Education
Sometimes I worry about the assumptions we make. I don’t necessarily mean the formal
assumptions that we put in research articles, theses, and dissertations, although sometimes I do
worry about whether or not some of those stretch our credibility as researchers. I worry more
about some of the assumptions we make as a profession, or a subgroup of a profession, about
who we are and what we do. The buzzwords in business (and sometimes higher education), like
“silo mentality,” that are popular today seem to be the latest manifestation of something that has
been with us for a long time. I see it as the natural tendency of human beings to want to neatly
compartmentalize things.
One might think that in society today the opposite is true—especially when we see so many
opportunities springing up in daily life or touted through popular culture focused on helping us
become better organized. There are television shows about how to be better at putting our stuff
away into closets, cupboards, and oversized armoires (and buying lots of gadgets to help us do
it). There are entire retail store chains built upon the premise that we need more help organizing
our lives (and buying lots of gadgets to help us do it). Finally there are folks who are
recommending that we get various portions of our lives, from our daily schedule to our financial
future, organized in a more productive way (and offering to sell us their services to help us do it).
The impression is that the fast pace of daily life is such that the fabric of society is unraveling at
the edges and there is great need to restore order.
I tend to think that the hectic nature of our daily lives actually pushes us to seek out the
familiarity of order and structure. Whether or not we need structure has to do with our individual
tolerance for ambiguity and probably varies by situation. For example, ambiguity in our
professional lives may prompt us to feel the need for more structure at home. Those things out of
our control can swirl so violently as to make us yearn for stability in some way. The downside of
this might be that the ebb and flow of uncontrollable events may push us to eschew changing the
way we look at something so that we can maintain that delicate balance of our lives. In spite of
that, and probably against my own better judgment, I have what appears to be a popular
assumption that I am working to try to get some of my colleagues at home and around the
country to reconsider.
I believe that for the majority of musicians, “music education” means teaching music to
students in K–12 settings, primarily in fairly large groups, or the training of musicians who are
focused on those activities. I think the same is true of the phrases “music teacher preparation,”
“teaching music,” and “music teacher.” Then by extension research related to “music education,”

“music teacher preparation,” “teaching music,” and “music teachers” often tends to be the same
thing. The good news is that I do not think this is universally true. I just completed a review of
literature for a paper related to college music performance majors’ preparation for teaching
music in one-on-one settings. In the United States the popular terms for this activity include
“studio teaching” and “applied music.” (I felt the need to qualify that statement with a country of
origin, since I discovered that in the United Kingdom the same thing is routinely referred to as
“vocal or instrumental tuition,” which serves to exclude material in online searches when your
keywords are exclusively American.) But while I found many interesting journal articles, it
seems to me that the extant research related to systematic inquiry and discovery in this area is a
much smaller body or work than the research dedicated to the traditional definitions that
combine the words “music” and “education.”
I’ve been thinking about our assumptions related to this topic for some time. When I was an
undergraduate music education major, I studied my primary performance instrument with a
wonderful teacher. I qualified for and played my senior recital early enough in the whole process
that I had an extra semester of lessons coming to me before graduation. My teacher offered to do
a “weekly topic” approach in which he and I would decide on a series of topics and then spend
the semester working through the issues, many of which involved teaching the instrument. It was
a great way to spend a semester of lessons. But one day I happened to mention that we had not
spent any time in my memory talking about vibrato. His response was that it hadn’t come up
because my vibrato was fine. To which I replied that I wanted to know more about how he taught
vibrato to a student who had difficulty with the concept. He proceeded to give me a very detailed
lesson in teaching vibrato.
Since that time, I have been interested in how we teach musicians to teach in the private
studio. Sandwiched between my bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in music education I did a
master’s degree in performance. My teacher for that degree was also a wonderful teacher. He
always had a “topic of the week” for the studio, such as embouchure or tonguing, and everyone
in the studio worked on that topic for some portion of the lesson and in studio class. For some it
was about simply having a good embouchure or being able to tongue well, for me as a graduate
student the lessons were also about teaching the concepts to others.
Some would suggest, and I would not necessarily argue, that the apprenticeship model we use
for becoming applied teachers works just fine. It might be too big an assumption to say we
couldn’t do better and that research need not play a role. I also think it might be an inappropriate
assumption when we say that the research in this area is not related to “music education,” “music
teacher preparation,” “teaching music,” and becoming a “music teacher.”
In his role as chair of music education for the College Music Society, Victor Fung recently
wrote in the society’s newsletter about “Music Teaching as a Component of Musicianship.”

Victor suggested that we in higher education consider skills in music teaching “be included in
the training of musicians early on, just like the orthodox musicianship skills.” He goes on to say
that “all musicians should view music teaching as a requisite proficiency, just like analyzing,
composing, playing, and critiquing music.” I think this is an important step toward overcoming
some of the assumptions that are still a part of the way we confine ourselves to the many little
boxes that so comfortably make up most music departments and schools of music.
For my part I am doing two things. The first was to devise a graduate course. Our graduate
students have always had access to pedagogy classes, but they were primarily focused on the
very specific pedagogy of a particular instrument. I developed a class that looks at teaching in
more general terms. The course description reads, “An overview of basic pedagogical practice
including modes of instruction, feedback, reinforcement, and assessment. Students will review
current literature in this area and develop a project related to their own teaching. Prerequisite:
none.” I’ve had a great deal of fun teaching this class, and it is a tribute to my colleagues’
flexibility that they allowed one of the “music education guys” to teach a class with the word
pedagogy in the title.
The other thing I would like to do is state publicly, in this official forum, that I think research
related to applied music instruction is appropriate for submission to the Journal of Music
Teacher Education. That has been true for some time in the pages of important journals such as
Journal of Research in Music Education, UPDATE: Applications of Research in Music
Education, and Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education. So if you or one of
your colleagues is doing a project related to teaching music in the studio setting, I invite you not
to assume that I would not be interested just because I am a music education faculty member or
that JMTE would not consider a well-written piece of scholarship because it does not apply to
groups of students in a K–12 setting. One of my personal goals is to continue to develop a
tolerance for ambiguity in my silo.

An Analysis of Certification Practices for Music Educators in the
Fifty States
By Michele Henry
Michele Henry is assistant professor of choral education at Baylor University in Waco,

Texas.
Bruner (1977) observed that “Americans are a changing people; their geographical mobility
makes imperative some degree of uniformity among high school and primary schools. Yet the
diversity of American communities and of American life in general makes equally imperative
some degree of variety” (p. 9). These observations also pertain to teacher credentialing practices
in the United States. A mobile society will see not only students relocating from state to state,
but teachers as well. While uniform teacher certification procedures, as called for by the
Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profession (1986), the Holmes Group (1986), and
Gallegos (1978), may seem accommodating to teachers, the diversity of school settings and
student populations among the states necessitates variety in certification practices.
Each state determines its own standards for certifying teachers. Consequently, certification
practices among states vary significantly. Differences in standards appear even more varied
when looking at a single certification area, such as music. For those involved in music teacher
education, knowledge of the various certification practices is an important tool in providing
quality, relevant preparation for future music educators. While it is expected that those involved
with music educator training be familiar with certification practices for the state in which their
college or university is located, an awareness of requirements in other states is also valuable,
particularly for private schools and programs serving a large number of out-of-state students.
Knowledge of certification practices can shape assignments and activities within methods
courses. While students planning to reside and teach in the same state as the college or university
may use state goals and standards when planning lessons and identifying lesson objectives,
students planning to teach in other states may benefit from citing standards or criteria from other
states or the National Standards for Music Education (Coalition of National Arts Education
Asoociations, 1994). In addition, those serving as advisors to students can offer accurate and
helpful information to students interested in teaching in other states, particularly in terms of
testing and additional course requirements.
Previous Reviews of Certification Practices

In 1972, Wolfe compiled a detailed account of state certification practices for music
educators. Erbes (1983) replicated this study, noting the changes that had occurred during the
preceding decade. Among the changes in certification that had transpired since the 1972 report

was a decrease in the number of states offering K–12 certification in music. While many states
continued to grant an all-encompassing license for teaching music at any grade level, other states
had begun to issue individual certifications for various grade-level groupings. Additionally,
thirteen states implemented some form of required testing for certification in 1983, an increase of
ten states from the 1972 study. In a subsequent report, Erbes (1987) identified 29 states that
required testing to receive initial certification, with 13 of the states requiring testing of music
content knowledge.
Erbes (1984) also reported a decline in the number of states offering life certification, which
coincided with the development of state-mandated continuing education programs and advanced
certification requirements. Rowls and Hanes (1982) identified 27 states requiring recertification
for teachers. Nine states reported no recertification requirements, either renewing certificates
automatically after a requisite number of teaching years or issuing lifetime certification.
In his 1987 article, Erbes cited the development of alternate routes to teacher certification,
primarily due to declining numbers in the profession. In 2001, Berry identified 41 states offering
alternate certification; 14 of these developed their alternative certification requirements from
1999 to 2001. Although these programs have many advocates (Finn & Madigan, 2001), there are
also vocal opponents to the idea of so-called “shortcuts” to teacher certification (Berry, 2000;
Etheridge, 2000–2001). Regardless of one’s opinion on the relative merits of such programs,
their increasing commonality has tremendous implications for music education and teacher
training at large.
Access to state teacher certification information is an important necessity for hundreds of
thousands of educators each year. While increasing access to information concerning teacher
certification is available through Web sites, phone, e-mail, and postal correspondence, a
comparison of practices among states still remains very difficult and time-consuming.
Method
The purpose of this study was to compile relevant information for music educators about the
certification practices of each state in the United States as of fall 2001 and to examine the
commonalities and differences among the states’ policies. While the results of such an analysis
may reveal trends in certification procedures, it was not the intention of this study to recommend
particular certification structures or requirements.
Although states’ terms for their teaching credentials vary—the use of certificate, license, and
credential are not interchangeable in many states—for the purposes of clarity in this study, the
terms certificate and certification are used to designate the legally sanctioned document
permitting employment in education, regardless of the term designated by each state.

Research Questions
This study sought to provide information concerning certification of music educators in each
of the fifty states. In order to gather comparable information, answers to the following questions
were sought for each state: (a) What content areas are included under certification in music
teaching? (b) What are the age-level designations for certification in music teaching? (c) How
recent are the current certification practices in the state? (d) What tests, if any, are required for
certification in music teaching? (e) Does the state have reciprocity for certification with any
other states? (f) What are the types of certificates available and length of validity for the various
certificates? (g) Is there an alternative certification program available for those without
education degrees? (h) What fees, if any, are required for certification in the state? (I) Are
application forms and instructions available online?
A further goal of this study was to provide an overall analysis of the certification practices
identified through the data-gathering process. After gathering the above information for each
jurisdiction, the following questions were considered: (a) Is there a trend among the various
states regarding age-level designations and/or content areas? (b) Is there a trend among the
various states regarding levels of certification and/or length of certificate validity? (c) Is there a
trend among the various states in requiring certain kinds of tests for certification? (d) What is the
level of cooperation among the states in acknowledging teaching certification from other states
(reciprocity)? (e) Is there a trend among the various states regarding alternative certification? (f)
What is the range of certification fees among the various states? (g) How accessible is
information concerning certification in each of the states?
Data collection procedures. Data for the current analysis was gathered using a variety of-
means. Initially an online search engine was used to find a listing of state departments of
education (or comparable agencies). Using the links identified by the search engine, Web sites
for the appropriate credentialing agencies in all 50 states were found. Therefore, data concerning
each question was gathered initially using only information provided through these Web sites.
After obtaining all information available online, each of the agencies was contacted by phone.
All data found online was verified by an official representative of the state credentialing agency.
At this time, a request was made for any information needed for the study not found on the
state’s certification Web site.
Results
Information obtained in response to the initial series of research questions is reported in Table
1. Information for each state is treated individually. Data reported in Table 1 is paraphrased for
the sake of clarity and brevity, but information provided in the table is an accurate reflection of
the actual information gained through specified data-collection procedures.

Age-level and subject area. Forty-three states offer all-level certification for music teachers.
The lowest age range included in all-level certification varies from preschool (or nursery),
kindergarten, or first grade among states. Twenty-nine states offer only all-level certification in
music. Of the 21 states that provide restricted age-level certification, all but four states offer
music certification separately at the elementary level. The grade levels included in the
elementary range vary, but they include combinations from preschool through ninth grade, with
K–6 and K–8 being the most common. Twenty of the 21 age-restricted certification states offer
music teaching at the secondary level as an option. Only Alabama specifies an elementary-only
music teaching credential without also offering a secondary-only music credential. Two states
have designations specifically geared toward middle school, although many states have
overlapping certification ranges that include middle school with either elementary certification
or secondary certification (see Figure 1).
Thirty-one states consider music a single subject area for certification purposes. Five
additional states offer a composite certification for all music areas. Fifteen states differentiate
between vocal and instrumental music for certification purposes. In most of these states, either
certificate enables teaching of general or classroom music. Three states separate certification
between vocal, instrumental, and general music. Finally, South Carolina has certification areas
for choral, instrumental, piano, violin, and voice.
The age ranges and subject areas for music certification vary greatly among the states.
Nineteen states offer only one certification for music, encompassing all grades and disciplines
within music. States such as Kentucky explain their rationale behind broader certification as an
attempt “to reduce and streamline the credential system to allow greater flexibility in staffing
local schools while maintaining standards for teach competence” (KRS 161.028[g]). These
broader certifications also imply more responsibility for schools at the local level. In contrast to
states offering broad credentials for music teaching, other states have chosen to segment their
credentials to reflect specific age levels or disciplines. “The developmental levels, for licensing
purposes, need a P–12 connection and should respect school configurations at the local level,
while ensuring that educators will be thoroughly prepared for the developmental level which
they will teach” (www.in.gov/psb/licensing). States such as Indiana also separate music teaching
licensure into vocal/general and instrumental/general. “The standards clearly define each of the
fine arts … as a discrete discipline” (www.in.gov/psb/licensing). Although manifesting itself in
very different forms, the motivation when constructing their credentialing categories seems to
place an emphasis on local control and appropriate matches for educators and classrooms.
Levels of certification and certificate length. Thirty-four states require some type of
provisional certification for entry-level teachers. Some states also use this initial certification
document for out-of-state teachers with deficiencies to address before full certification is

granted. Sixteen states do not distinguish between levels of certification, using only a single
credentialing designation. The validity length of initial certificates varies from two years to six
years. The validity length for standard certificates varies from three years to lifetime
certification. Currently, only five states grant lifetime certification.
The perceptible trend in certificate structure is toward encouraging continuing education for
teachers by requiring certificate renewal. Many states indicated a departure from previous
structures that included lifetime certification, although teachers with lifetime certification under
previous structures do not have to apply for renewal certificates. Many states have also instituted
mentor or entry-year programs for beginning teachers, mandating satisfaction of these
requirements before full certification status is granted. In almost all states with a tiered
certification structure, some type of continuing education is required. Several states offer
advanced certification for teachers who have earned graduate degrees. Still other states,
including Massachusetts and Oregon, specify the attainment of a graduate degree in order to
have a teaching certificate renewed.
Testing requirements. Currently, seven states require no standardized test for certification.
The remaining 43 states utilize a combination of basic skills and general knowledge, professional
teaching knowledge, and content area knowledge tests, assessed through a variety of national
and state-administered examinations in basic skills, professional knowledge, and content
knowledge (see Figure 2). Of these 43 states, eleven assess applicants in all three areas. Eighteen
states require two tests, either in basic skills and professional knowledge (1), basic skills and
content area (9), or professional knowledge and content area (8). Fourteen states use a single test
in basic skills (8), professional knowledge (2), or content area (4). Of the standardized tests that
are used for certification, the PRAXIS series exams (Educational Testing Service, 2001) are by
far the most frequent, used by 21 states. There are also 15 state-administered tests, from 11
different states, that were identified in this study (see Table 2). Several states also have
additional requirements such as course work in state and national constitution, Native American
studies, or human relations. Most of these requirements are not waived for out-of-state
applicants.
The concept of assessing qualification for teaching through standardized testing is firmly
established in the requirements set forth by state certification agencies. Of the seven states
currently without testing requirements, three indicated plans to implement testing requirements
within the next two years. While some testing is considered necessary by almost every state, the
type of tests employed by these states varies greatly. The most frequently used tests are content
area tests. Many states that do not require basic skills tests rely on the colleges and universities
to determine basic skill levels before admitting students into teacher preparation programs.
Reciprocity. Most states offer some level of reciprocity for individuals desiring certification

who hold valid teaching credentials in other states. Forty-five states claim some kind of
reciprocity with other states, but the level of cooperation among these states is not at all similar.
Seven states claim a nonrestrictive or enhanced reciprocity, in which no additional qualifications
are required to obtain certification with a valid out-of-state certificate. Conversely, five states
acknowledge having no reciprocity of any kind. Individuals seeking certification in these states
must submit their full credentials and fulfill all requirements in the new state to obtain
certification.
In its strictest sense, reciprocity applies only to the mutual acknowledgment of regionally
accredited education programs. It does not exempt applicants from additional requirements such
as testing or specialized course work specified by the new state. Often, states issue a temporary
credential to out-of-state teachers, allowing them time to complete these requirements during this
probationary period. In many of these states, experienced teachers can be exempted from testing
requirements with a minimum number of service years. In most cases, out-of-state teachers are
not exempted from course work requirements. Almost all states make exceptions for national
board certified teachers, offering this elite group automatic certification.
Alternate certification programs. Thirty-nine states currently accommodate individuals who
desire teaching certification but have non-education baccalaureate degrees by providing an
alternative route to certification. The structure of these programs varies greatly. Some require
that all education course work be completed prior to teaching, while others allow for certification
training while individuals are employed as autonomous teachers. These programs are typically
accelerated to allow completion in one or two years. Eleven states do not provide any alternative
routes to certification beyond completing approved traditional education programs.
Alternate certificate programs are a relatively new addition to the certification landscape. In
many cases, these programs were developed to address growing teacher shortages. In some
states, such as Washington and Delaware, these programs are available only in certain subject
areas. Other states actively encourage individuals to consider teaching as a second career.
Fee structures. Fees assessed during the application process vary greatly among states. North
Dakota assesses a $25.00 fee to obtain application materials, and it is the only state to do so.
Some states assess fees for evaluation of materials. Others charge an application fee regardless
of the success of the applicant in obtaining certification. Most fees are for the actual certification
document. While the majority of states assess a flat fee for the certificate, some base their fee on
the number of certification areas or grade levels requested. Others charge by the number of years
that certification will be granted. Fees for initial certification range from zero to $175.00. Four
states charge no fee for certification services. Three additional states charge no fees for in-state
applicants, while out-of-state applicants are assessed $10.00–$25.00. Nine other states charge a
different fee for in-state and out-of-state applicants. The fee amounts identified in Figure 3 are

those assessed to initial in-state applicants.
Fees for certification renewal also vary greatly. Many states have identical charges for initial
and renewal certificates, while others decrease the amount required for renewal. A few states
increase the amount of renewal certificates, though the number of years of certification typically
increases as well. Seventeen states require a fee for fingerprinting and background checks in
addition to application or certificate fees. These fees range from $22.00 to $66.00.
Accessibility. Finally, accessibility to certification information and materials also varies
tremendously among the states. Thirty-six states have all application materials available to
download and print. Ten states do not. Four states have online forms available only for renewal
or supporting documents. While all states maintain certification Web sites, many are difficult to
access, lack necessary information, or present information in a confusing or contradictory
manner. Unfortunately, access to information by telephone is no less accommodating. The
researcher spent approximately 27 hours on the phone trying to reach a live person at state
certification offices to verify information.
Conclusions
Trends in music teacher certification detected by Wolfe (1972) and Erbes (1984, 1987) have
continued into the 21st century. Over 40% of states offer multiple age-level certification; more
than 66% of states have a tiered system for recertification; 43 states require some form of testing
for certification. Questions regarding reciprocity, alternate certification programs, testing fees,
and online availability of information highlight additional facets of the teacher certification
process.
State certification practices are as varied as the 50 states themselves. Specificity of age level
and content area is dependent upon individual states’ needs for flexibility or “matching”
desirability between teacher and classroom. More than two-thirds of states implement a tiered
certification structure, in which teachers advance through levels of certification with added
experience and continuing education. To encourage continuing education, most states have
abandoned lifetime certificates. Testing of basic skills, professional knowledge, or content area
knowledge is required in all but seven states. Most states acknowledge some level of reciprocity
with other states, officially extending only to approved teacher preparation programs. Alternate
routes to certification are available in approximately three-fourths of the states. Fees for
certification also vary greatly. Certification charges range from zero to $175.00, with up to
$66.00 in additional fees for fingerprinting in a limited number of states. Access to information
is as varied as the information itself. Although increasingly available online, some information is
not immediately accessible or downloadable. University or college education departments should
be considered as viable options for obtaining certification information.

Like similar studies before it, information contained in the study will become outdated as
states continue to refine certification policies and to consider other models for certification.
Future research should include a periodic revisitation of state certification practices, in an effort
to detect policy trends within individual states as well as overall certification trends.
Because of the changing nature of certification standards, it is imperative for those involved
in music education certification in any context to commit to an occasional review of current
certification practices in their state. Knowledge of avenues for investigation of other states’
certification practices is also important, although not always of immediate significance. An
understanding of issues involved in certifying teachers can provide insight into the development
of teacher preparation program curricula, individual choices in educational preparation, and
potential certification models for future consideration by state credentialing agencies. By
providing access to this information and highlighting relevant issues in certification standards,
this study is intended to ensure that music educators will not be intimidated by the certification
process but will be encouraged to take ownership of the process.
References
Berry, B. (2001). No shortcuts to preparing good teachers. Educational Leadership, 58(8),
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Finn, C., Jr. & Madigan, K. Removing the barriers for teacher candidates. Educational
Leadership, 58(8), 29–31, 40.
Gallegos, A. (1978). A call for universal accreditation. Journal of Teacher Education, 29, 24–27.
Holmes Group. (1986). Tomorrow’s teachers: A report of the Holmes Group. East Lansing, MI:
Author.
Rowls, M., & Hanes, M. (1982). Teacher recertification: The shift toward local control and
governance. Journal of Teacher Education, 33(4), 24–28.
Wolfe, I. (1972). State certification of music teachers. Washington D.C.: Music Educators
National Conference.

Table 1. Certification Practices for Music Educators in the 50 States
State Certificate Age Levels and Length of Testing Reciprocity Alternative Fees Online
Levels and Certification Requirements Degree Forms
Subject Areas Program
Alabama K–6, 1–9 General 5-year certificate None Yes, for comparable Yes $20 application Yes
K–12 Chorus certificates $49 fingerprinting
K–12 Band
Alaska K–6, K–8, 7–12, 5-year Type A PPST or CBT Yes; 3-year Yes $90 certificate Yes
K–12 Music Alaskan Studies certificate issued $66 fingerprinting
Course while testing and
Multicultural course work is
education completed
Arizona K–6, 7–12 Music 2-year Provisional AEPA (professional Yes; 1-year Yes, but not $30 certificate Yes
All-level 6-year Standard and content area) certificate issued available $20 renewal
endorsement U.S. and Arizona while testing and
available constitution course work is
completed
Arkansas PreK-8, 7-12 3-year Initial PRAXIS I (basic Yes; Exams can be Yes $39 fingerprinting Yes
Vocal 5-year License skills) waived with
PreK-8, 7-12 PLT (professional) equivalent tests
Instrumental PRAXIS II (content
area)
California PreK–12 Music 5-year Preliminary CBEST (basic skills) No; CBEST is Yes $55 credential Yes
5-year Professional PRAXIS II (content required; subject $56 fingerprinting
Clear area) area waived w/ 3+
years experience
Colorado K–12 Music 3-year Provisional PLACE (content Yes; Exam waived Yes $48 license Yes
5-year Professional area) w/ 3+ years $36 fingerprinting (10/01)
experience
Connecticut PreK–12 Music 3-year Initial CBT (basic skills) Yes, but exams are Yes $50 application Suppor
8-year Provisional PRAXIS II (content required $100 Initial ($50 t
5-year Professional area) credit) Materi
$200 Provisional als
$300 Professional
Delaware K–8, 5–12, K–12 5-year Standard PPST or CBT Yes, but requires No No charge in-state Yes
Music 5-year Professional testing $10 out-of-state
Florida K–12 Music 5-year Professional CLAST (basic skills) Yes; Exams can be Yes $56 per subject Yes
FPET (professional) waived with
FSAE (content equivalent tests
area)
Georgia PreK–12 Music 1-year Conditional (out- PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Other state Yes No charge in-state Yes
of-state) skills) content exams $20 out-of-state
5-year Clear Renewable PRAXIS II (content accepted if required
area)
Hawaii K–6, 7–12, K–12 5-year Provisional PPST or CBT (basic Yes, but testing is Yes No charge Yes
Music skills) required
PLT (professional)
PRAXIS II (content
area)
Idaho 6–12, K–12 Music 5-year Standard None Yes, within the last Yes $35 application Yes
Secondary 5 years $40 fingerprinting
Illinois K–-9, K–12 Music 4-year Initial ILCTS (basic skills Yes, but test is Yes $30 certificate Yes
5–12 Vocal 5-year Standard and content area) required
5–12 Instrumental
Indiana Vocal/General or 5-year Initial Practitioner PPST or CBT (basic No; Full review of Yes $5 for each school Yes
Instrumental/ 10-year Proficient skills) credentials is setting
General available Practitioner PRAXIS II (content required
for: 5-year Accomplished area)
Preschool/Element Practitioner
ary
Primary/Elementar
y
Intermediate
Middle School/Jr
High
High School
Iowa K–8, 7–12 Music 2-year Initial PLT (professional) Yes; 2-year regional No $50 transcript Yes
5-year Standard PRAXIS II (content exchange license evaluation
area) $50 license
$37 fingerprinting
Kansas 7–12, K–12 Music 3-year Standard PLT (professional) Yes; Valid out-of- Yes $24 application No
5-year Standard state receives a 2-
year license
Kentucky K–12 Music 5-year Statement of PLT (professional) Yes; Exam waived Yes $35 Statement fee No
Eligibility PRAXIS II (content w/ 2+ years $50 Provisional
5-year Provisional area) experience

Louisiana 1–12 Vocal 3-year Type C CBT (basic skills) 3-year provisional Yes $55 certificate Yes
1–12 Instrumental Lifetime Type B PLT (professional) while PRAXIS
Lifetime Type A PRAXIS II (content testing is completed
area)
Maine K–12 Music 2-year Provisional PPST or CBT (basic Yes No $50 certificate No
5-year Professional skills)
Maryland Nursery–12 Music 3-year Standard I PPST or CBT (basic Yes; PPST waived Yes $10 certificate No
7-year Standard II skills) w/ 3+ years
5-year Advanced PRAXIS II (content experience
area)
Massachusett PreK-9 Vocal, 5-year Provisional w/ MET (basic skills Yes, but test is No $100 for first Yes
s Instrumental, or Adv. Standing and content area) required; 3-year certificate
Composite 5-year Standard certificate issued $25 for
5-12 Vocal, (master’s required) while deficiencies endorsement (for
Instrumental, or are met all level music)
Composite
Michigan K–5, K–8, 7–12 6-year Provisional MTTC (basic skills, Yes; Testing is Yes $175 provisional Yes
Music 5-year Professional professional, required but full $125 professional
content area if certification may
secondary) exempt from testing
Minnesota K–12 Vocal/Class 5-year Professional PPST or CBT (basic No No $47 application Yes
K–12 skills) $26 fingerprinting
Instrumental/Class PLT (professional)
PRAXIS II (content
area)
Human Relations
Program
Mississippi K–12 Vocal 5-year Class A PLT (professional) Yes; 2+ years Yes None Yes
K–12 Instrumental 5-year Class AA PRAXIS II (content experience Full; but ending
area) -2 years Special
Missouri K–12 Vocal 3-year PC I PRAXIS II (content Not full; Testing is Yes No charge in-state Out-of-
K–12 Instrumental 7-year PC II area) required unless 2+ $25 out-of-state state
endorsement 10-year CPC years experience $22 fingerprinting only
available with other content
area test
Montana K–8, 5–12, 7–12, Provisional PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Other state Yes $6 initial application Yes
K–12 Music 5-year Class 2 Standard skills) basic skills tests $6 per year of
5-year Class 1 accepted certificate
Professional
Nebraska K–12 Music 5-year Initial PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Other state No $45 certificate Yes
7-year Standard skills) basic skills tests $40 fingerprinting
accepted
Nevada 7–12 Choral 5-year Standard PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Requires No $100 initial Yes
7–12 Instrumental 6, 7, or 10-year skills) courses in U.S. and application
7–12, K–12 Professional PLT (professional) Nevada constitution
Composite PRAXIS II (content
area)
New K–12 Music 3-year Beginning PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Other state Yes $80 beginning or Yes
Hampshire Educator skills) basic skills tests renewal
3-year Experienced accepted
Educator
New Jersey Nursery–12 Music Standard Lifetime PRAXIS II (content Yes; Test and 2.75 Yes $10 Cert. of No
area) g.p.a. required Eligibility
$50 Lifetime
Certificate
New Mexico K–8, 7–12, K–12 3-year Level 1 NMTA (basic skills Yes; Other state Yes $50 licensure Yes
Music 9-year Level 2 and professional) basic skills and $34 fingerprinting
9-year Level 3 w/ professional tests
master’s accepted
New York PreK–12 Music 5-year Provisional NYSTCE (basic Yes, but tests Yes $100 certification Yes
Lifetime Permanent skills, professional, required
content area)
North Carolina K–12 Music 5-year Continuing PRAXIS II (content Yes, but tests Yes $85 processing Yes
area) required
North Dakota K–12 Vocal 2-year Initial North Dakota Native All credentials must No $25 application Renew
K–12 Instrumental 5-year Professional American Studies be submitted for packet al
K–12 Composite Course review; Native $60 application forms
American course is $175 out-of-state
required review
$42 fingerprinting

Ohio PreK–12 Music 2-year Provisional PLT (professional) Yes; Tests may be Yes $24 provisional No
5-year Professional PRAXIS II (content required depending $60 professional
area) on original $50 out-of-state
certification date evaluation
Oklahoma PreK–12 Vocal Optional 1-year OGET (basic skills) Yes; 1-year license Yes $30 certificate Yes
PreK–12 Provisional OPTE issued while OK $10 out-of-state
Instrumental 5-year certificate (professional) tests are completed license
OSAT (content $41 fingerprinting
area)
Oregon Early 3-year Initial PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Tests may be Yes $60 in-state Yes
Child/Elementary, 5-year Continuing skills) waived with $90 out-of-state
Middle/High PRAXIS II (content experience $42 fingerprinting
School Music area)
Pennsylvania K–12 Music 6-year Instructional I PPST (basic skills) Yes, but all tests are Yes, but not $15 certificate Yes
Permanent Instructional PLT (professional) required in use
II available after 3 years PRAXIS II (content
area)
Rhode Island K–12 Music 3-year Certificate PLT (professional) Yes; Enhanced No $25 application Yes
Reciprocity
South Carolina K–12 Choral 3-year Initial PLT (professional) Yes; Texts waived Yes $49 application Yes
K–12 Instrumental 5-year Professional PRAXIS II (content with 3 years
K–12 Piano area) experience
K–12 Violin
K–12 Voice
South Dakota K–12 Vocal 5-year Certificate Human Relations Yes, but human Yes $30 certificate Yes
K–12 Instrumental and South Dakota relations and Indian $20 out-of-state
K–12 Composite Indian Studies courses are review fee
courses required
Tennessee K–12 Vocal 5-year Apprentice PLT (professional) Yes; Exemption Yes None Yes
K–12 Instrumental 10-year Professional PRAXIS II (content from testing for
area) experience
Texas PreK–12 Music 5-year Standard ExCET Yes; 1-year Yes $75 in-state No
(professional and certificate to $175 out-of-state
content area) complete testing for (1/1/02)
states w/o
reciprocity
Utah 6–12, K–12 Music 3-year Level I Basic None Yes, with equivalent Yes $15 certificate Renew
Type course work $15 out-of-state al
5-year Level II Standard filing forms
Type
Vermont K–6, 7–12, K–12 2-year Beginning Level I PPST or CBT Yes, but test is Yes $25 letter of No
Music 7-year Professional required eligibility
Out-of-state Level II $35 filing fee
specific areas $35 per year of
license
Virginia PreK–12 Vocal 5-year License PPST or CBT (basic Yes; Testing waived Yes $50 in-state license Yes
PreK–12 skills) with 2+ years $75 out-of-state
Instrumental PRAXIS II (content experience license
area) $25 renewal fee
Washington PreK-12 General 5-year Residency None Complete Yes $25 certificate Yes
PreK-12 Choral 5-year Professional application is as intern $20 initial
PreK-12 required processing
Instrumental $59 fingerprinting
West Virginia PreK-12 Music 3-year Provisional PPST or CBT (basic Yes; 1-year license No $15 license No
Professional skills) to complete testing $40 fingerprinting
5-year Professional PLT (professional) (1/1/02)
Permanent PRAXIS II (content
area)
Wisconsin K–6, 7–12, K–12 5-year Initial PPST or CBT (basic Accepts other No $100 in-state No
General 5-year Renewal skills) states’ basic skills license
7–12 Choral Native American tests; $150 out-of-state
K–12 Instrumental Tribes course 2-year to complete license
Native Am. course
Wyoming K–6, 5–8, 7–12, 5-year Standard None Yes, but may have Yes $125 evaluation Yes
K–12 U.S. and Wyoming renewal $45 fingerprinting
Vocal/General, Constitution course requirements
Instrumental, or
Composite

Figure 1. Certification Age Levels for Music
35
30
Number of States
25
20
15
10
1-9
5-8
1-12
5-12
6-12
7-12
K-5
K-6
K-8
K-9
K-12
PreK-9
PreK-12
All-Level Elementary Secondary

Figure 2. Types of Required Tests for Certification
35
30
Number of States
25
20
15
10
0
Basic Professional Content None
Testing Area

Table 2. State-Administered Certification Tests and Their Categorization
Test category
State Test name Basic Professional Content area

skills
AZ Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessment X X
CA California Basic Educational Skills Test X
CO Program for Licensure Assessment for Colorado X

Educators
FL College Level Academic Skills Test X
Florida Professional Educators Test X
Florida Subject Area Examination X
IL Illinois Certification Testing System X X
MA Massachusetts Educator Tests X X
MI Michigan Test for Teacher Certification X X X
NM New Mexico Teacher Assessments X X
NY New York State Teacher Certification X X X

Examinations
OK Oklahoma General Education Test X
Oklahoma Professional Teacher Examination X
Oklahoma Subject Area Tests X
TX Examination for the Certification of Educators in X X

Texas

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$40.00
$60.00
$80.00
$100.00
$120.00
$140.00
$160.00
$180.00
$200.00
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The Effects of Field Experience on Music Education Majors’
Perceptions of Music Instruction for Secondary Students with
Special Needs
By Kimberly VanWeelden and Jennifer Whipple
Kimberly VanWeelden is assistant professor of choral music education in the College of

Music at The Florida State University in Tallahassee. Jennifer Whipple is a policy analyst in the
Florida Legislature’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability.
Teacher academic preparation is a key component of the successful inclusion of students with
special needs in music classes. Music educators have expressed the feeling of being inadequately
prepared to address the needs of special learners (Atterbury, 1986; Frisque, Niebur, &
Humphreys, 1994; Gfeller, Darrow, & Hedden, 1990; Gilbert & Asmus, 1981; Sideridis &
Chandler, 1995). Specifically, developing classroom management techniques (Hawkins, 1992),
acquiring new skills and competencies to adapt instruction (Sideridis & Chandler, 1995), and
creating a successful learning environment for all students (Gfeller, Darrow, & Hedden, 1990)
are among the concerns music teachers have about their preparation when including special
learners in their classrooms. These concerns have become the impetus for greater training within
music education undergraduate curricula so as to prepare preservice teachers to meet the current
challenges of the profession.
Research examining institutions offering undergraduate degrees in music education have
found many requiring course work to prepare students to work with special learners (Colwell &
Thompson, 2000; Heller, 1995; Schmidt, 1989). For example, Colwell and Thompson (2000)
randomly selected one Research Category I, one state-funded regional, and one private
institution from each state as well as all institutions that offered a degree in music therapy,
creating a total of 171 schools, to examine for the study. Results found 140 courses within these
institutions available for music education majors (74%), with 30 containing content that was
music specific and 110 made up of non-music specific content. While these results indicate that
the majority of colleges and universities include mainstreaming course work within the
curriculum, the authors recommend further investigation of the nature of this course work,
including field-based experiences (Colwell & Thompson, 2000).
To date, little research investigating field experiences for preservice music educators in
working with students with special needs has been conducted. In a study closely related to the
current paper, Kaiser and Johnson (2000) examined the effect of an interactive experience on
music majors’ perceptions of music for students who are deaf. A pretest questionnaire was
administered to all participants, followed by a 30-minute description of the experience and a

one-time interaction with the students. The interaction contained a performance by the university
students; visual-tactile demonstrations of sound vibrations and pitch; and opportunities for the
children to feel, play, and conduct the instruments. At the conclusion of the study, a posttest was
administered for comparison analysis. Results revealed positive increases in music majors’
perceptions of music for students who are deaf and their preparedness to work with these
children in music settings.
The Kaiser and Johnson study gave music education and performance majors an experience
interacting with students with special needs. However, the music majors were not given the
opportunity to work with the children more than once or to practice planning and teaching the
activities to the children. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of
a long-term field experience, which included planning and teaching, on music education
students’ perceptions of music for secondary students with special needs. Specifically, the study
investigated music education students’ (a) personal comfort interacting with persons with
physical, mental, and emotional disabilities; (b) perceptions of preparation in their educational
training to work with students with special needs in music settings; (c) comfort working with
students with special needs in music settings; (d) willingness to provide music for students with
special needs; and (e) perceptions of behavior and learning of students with special needs.
Method
The subjects (N=28) were undergraduate music education majors at a large university
enrolled during the fall (n=15) and spring (n=13) semesters in a course titled “Teaching
Secondary General Music.” This course was a part of the undergraduate music education
curriculum and included students specializing in choral, instrumental, or general music. The
class consisted of 10 weeks of in-class instruction (which met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
every week) and 5 weeks of field-based secondary general music lab experience (working with
secondary students with special needs on Monday and Friday) each semester.
In-class Instruction. The in-class instruction included activities pertaining to various aspects
of teaching general music within secondary schools. Specifically, five broad areas were covered:
(1) microteaching, (2) music listening, (3) musical games, (4) issues within secondary schools,
and (5) assessment and evaluation procedures. The first area gave all students the opportunity to
practice planning and teaching to their peers song leading, Orff-Schulwerk instrumental
orchestrations, world music and dance, and Western art-music lessons. The music listening
assignment asked students to read three articles (Bibbins, 1998; Burns, 1995; Kerchner, 1996)
and employ each technique to a set of music chosen by the teacher. The third area asked students
to create a game that would teach a musical concept that was age appropriate for students in
middle or high school. Articles related to a variety of issues when teaching in secondary schools,

including two about students with special needs (Darrow, 1998; Thompson, 1999), were read by
students and discussed in class. The last area asked students to evaluate their teaching while
watching videotapes of themselves during their microteaching lessons and to set individual
teaching behavior goals to address for the next teaching assignment.
Field-based Experience. The field-based secondary general music lab experience consisted of
working with students with special needs at a local middle school. These students were primarily
educated within a self-contained setting and were divided into two classrooms that were based
upon the students’ disability(s). The first class consisted of students with emotional and/or
behavioral disorders (EDBD) and the resulting academic delays that often accompany these
disabilities. The second class contained students who exhibited acute cognitive delays (ACD),
such as autism, Down syndrome, mental retardation, and extensive learning disabilities. Each
classroom had 11 to 15 students and represented the same ages as all middle school children.
The preservice music educators were divided into two groups: one to work with students in
the EDBD classroom and the other to work with students in the ACD classroom. Both classes
were taught during the same time but in separate locations. Therefore, it was necessary to divide
the preservice teachers into two groups to facilitate the logistical constraints. Each class was
supervised by one of the researchers. The division of the preservice teachers was based upon
their gender and major emphasis (choral, instrumental, or general) so as to create roughly the
same teacher demographics within each classroom. Teachers were further divided into teaching
groups of three to four persons, creating two teaching groups per classroom, using the same
demographics. All divisions were determined by the researchers prior to the field experience.
Two secondary general music curricula, created by the researchers, were used as the
foundation for the field-teaching experience: one for the fall semester and one for the spring
semester. Both curricula contained the same types of activities found in the in-class portion of
the course. Specifically, song leading, Orff instrumental orchestrations, world music and dance,
Western Art music, music listening, and musical games were included. Because most of the
students with special needs participated throughout the entire year, two curricula were needed to
provide new variations of the activities for students. The only exceptions to this were the
opening and closing songs that were sung by all students and preservice teachers during both
semesters.
The week immediately prior to the field experience was devoted to explaining the logistics of
the field experience, dividing the undergraduates into teaching groups, discussing the
curriculum, reading and discussing the special education articles, and giving the teaching groups
time to plan and prepare for their first teaching experience. During the first week of the field-
based experience, the preservice teachers introduced themselves, created name tags for each

student, sat interspersed with the students, and participated as teaching assistants as the
researchers taught the lessons. The purpose of this first week was to give the preservice teachers
time to acclimate to the experience and students without the additional responsibilities of
teaching.
Beginning in the second week, the teacher groups were given the responsibility of preparing
and teaching all aspects of the lessons. Since there were two teaching groups per classroom, the
groups alternated lesson responsibilities every other week. Each lesson contained four activities
from the curriculum. This gave each member of one teaching group the opportunity to plan and
lead the class during the lesson. Additionally, teachers were required to teach a different part of
the curriculum every lesson. When groups were not actively involved in teaching the lesson they
acted as teaching assistants to help students individually. During the last teaching experience for
each group, teachers were given the responsibility of planning and preparing the lesson without
guidelines provided by the researcher. Thus, at the end of the semester, each preservice teacher
had taught four times in different general music curricular areas and assisted individual students
with various musical tasks during 10 class periods.
Classroom management techniques, consisting of rewards and consequences, were set by the
researchers under the advisement of the special education teachers at the middle school. Students
were rewarded individually for good behavior, participation, effort, and correct answers.
Teachers were highly encouraged to reward students often throughout each lesson and were
given the responsibility of determining what type of reward (verbal approval, sticker, pencil, or
candy) and how the reward would be delivered (during an activity, between activities, or at the
end of the lesson) to best meet the needs of the students while maintaining the greatest amount of
lesson continuity. Likewise, students were individually given consequences if they became
disruptive or disrespectful to their peers or teachers. Teachers were again responsible for
determining what type of consequence (verbal disapproval, time-out, or no reward) and how the
consequence would be delivered.
Teaching assessments were conducted immediately following each lesson. All teachers from
one classroom met with the supervising researcher to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the
lesson taught. Individual teaching goals (i.e., talking slower, adjusting the teaching sequence) as
well as teaching group goals (i.e., making better transitions from one activity to the next, keeping
all students actively involved) were discussed and set. Teachers also met at the university every
Wednesday during the experience with the researchers and their fellow classmates to discuss
specific concerns and joys as well as plan and prepare for the next lesson.
The Survey Instrument. The dependent variable was a survey made up of 17 questions
regarding the students’ perceptions of music for secondary students with special needs, including

how prepared, comfortable, willing, and perceptive they were toward working with special
learners. This questionnaire was fashioned after a similar survey instrument used by Kaiser and
Johnson (2000) who investigated the effect of an interactive experience on music majors’
perceptions of music for students who are deaf. Prior to any in-class discussion relating to
students with special needs or general music lab experience, each subject was asked to complete
the pretest questionnaire. At the conclusion of the field experience, students were asked to
complete the same questionnaire, creating a pretest-posttest design. All questions used a five-
point Likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” to ensure that all
participants interpreted the rating scale in the same direction. Questions are listed in Figure 1.
Results
To begin the analysis process, questions were grouped according to the following categories:
general interactions (questions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5); preparation (questions 6, 7, 8); comfort
(questions 9, 10, and 11); willingness (questions 12, 13, and 14); and perceptions (questions 15,
16, and 17). One-way ANOVAs using pretest and posttest scores for each grouping were
completed. The preservice teachers’ scores significantly increased within the categories of
general interactions (F{28,1}6.19, p = .016) from pretest (M = 15.07, SD = 3.10) to posttest (M =
16.78, SD =1.73); preparation (F{28,1}18.46, p = .001) from pretest (M = 9.89, SD = 2.42) to
posttest (M = 12.29, SD = 1.67); and comfort (F{28,1}11.47, p = .001) from pretest (M = 10.79,
SD = 2.21) to posttest (M = 12.64, SD = 1.87). Significant increases were also found when all
categories, creating overall pretest (M = 65.36, SD = 9.23) and posttest (M = 71.52, SD = 5.74)
scores, were combined (F{28,1}8.75, p = .005).
One-way ANOVAs comparing pretest and posttest scores for each classroom assignment,
EDBD or ACD, by category were completed to determine whether differences existed. The
results found the EDBD teachers’ scores significantly increased in the categories of preparation
(F{14,1}20.11, p = .001) from pretest (M = 9.14, SD = 0.54) to posttest (M = 12.69, SD = 0.56)
and comfort (F{14,1}14.63, p = .001) from pretest (M = 10.14, SD = 0.54) to posttest (M =
13.00, SD = 0.56), as well as for all categories combined (F{14,1}8.61, p = .007) from pretest
(M = 62.57, SD = 2.02) to posttest (M = 71.30, SD = 2.10). The ACD teachers’ scores increased
in the categories of general interactions, preparations, comfort, and all categories combined,
though not significantly.
Several questions on the survey asked preservice teachers about working with secondary
students with special needs in different music settings. These included secondary general music
class (questions 5, 6, 9, and 12); performance ensemble (questions 5, 7, 10, and 13); and private
studio (questions 5, 8, and 11). Comparative analyses of the teachers’ pretest and posttest scores
for each setting were completed. One-way ANOVAs revealed significant increases in preservice

Figure 1. Survey Instrument Questions
1. I am comfortable interacting with middle school students.
2. I am comfortable interacting with people with physical disabilities.
3. I am comfortable interacting with people with mental disabilities.
4. I am comfortable interacting with people with emotional disabilities.
5. I believe music education should be a part of the curriculum for students with special needs.
6. I feel my educational training has prepared me to work with students with special needs in a
secondary general music class setting.
music ensemble setting.
private music studio setting.
9. I would be comfortable working with students with special needs in a secondary general music
classroom.
10. I would be comfortable working with students with special needs in a private studio for music
lessons.
11. I would be comfortable working with students with special needs in a music ensemble.
12. I would be willing to provide music experiences to students with special needs in a secondary
general music classroom.
13. I would be willing to provide music experiences to students with special needs in a secondary
performance ensemble.
14. I would be willing to provide music experiences to students with special needs ina special
education classroom.
15. I believe students with special needs behave in class the same as other students their age.
16. I believe students with special needs can learn the same musical material as other students
their age.
17. I believe lesson adaptations for students with special needs should be stated on the lesson
plan.
teachers’ perceptions of music for special learners in all three settings: classroom (F{28,1}11.89,
p = .001) from pretest (M = 17.00, SD = 1.84) to posttest (M = 18.50, SD = 1.37); ensemble
(F{128,1}6.37, p = .015) from pretest (M = 16.50, SD = 2.33) to posttest (M = 17.86, SD = 1.62);
and studio (F{28,1}13.46, p = .001) from pretest (M = 11.11, SD = 2.04) to posttest (M = 13.96,
SD = 1.73). Additionally, individual classroom assignment differences within each music
education setting were investigated using one-way ANOVAs. Significant differences were found
within the EDBD class for all three settings: classroom (F{14,1}9.86, p = .004) from pretest (M
= 16.64, SD = 1.73) to posttest (M = 18.57, SD = 1.50), ensemble (F{14,1}8.28, p = .008) from
pretest (M = 15.79, SD = 2.54) to posttest (M = 18.14, SD = 1.70), and studio (F{14,1}19.66, p =
.001) from pretest (M = 10.79, SD = 2.04) to posttest (M = 13.64, SD = 1.27). The ACD
teachers’ scores also increased within each area, though not significantly.
Discussion
Some caution should be used in interpreting these data since they were obtained from a
sample of only 28 music education majors. Still, the first category of survey questions examined
the general comfort preservice teachers felt when interacting with persons with physical, mental,

and emotional disabilities. All preservice teachers’ comfort in interacting with persons with these
disabilities increased after the field experience. Being comfortable interacting with persons with
disabilities is a major step toward positive attitudes about people with disabilities. Sideridis and
Chandler (1995) found that music educators expressed negative attitudes regarding the
integration of students with mental retardation and emotional and behavioral disabilities in
general music classrooms. Students within this study, however, became more comfortable
interacting with these populations after the secondary general music lab experience. These
results lend support to one of the goals of this experience, and a purpose for all field-based
instructions, which was to facilitate positive attitudes about the populations served (Eyck, 1985).
Educational preparation to work with students with special needs in music education settings
was also rated significantly higher at the end of the experience. Specifically, preservice teachers
rated their preparation to work in inclusive secondary general music classrooms and performance
ensembles as well as individually with students with special needs in private studio lessons
higher at the end of the experience. The great advantage of working in the field during preservice
training is to practice and prepare for “real life” experiences. Since this field experience was
designed to prepare students to successfully work with students with special needs in music, the
students’ posttest scores indicate this goal was met. And, while the experience took place within
a secondary general music class setting, the results indicate this situation transferred to the
preservice teachers’ feelings of preparedness in other music education settings as well.
Students were also asked about their comfort in working with students with special needs in
music settings. Results indicated the field experience had a significantly positive effect in regard
to students’ comfort in inclusive music education settings. Student posttest scores also showed
positive increases in all three music settings, classroom, ensemble, and studio, with the largest
increases found within the EDBD teachers. Since the field experience combined knowledge and
teaching skills acquired in class with direct hands-on application, the positive results are
important. During the in-class portion of the course, the teachers were never asked to design
their microteaches, musical game, or listening assignments to meet the needs of special learners.
Yet, during the field experience, teachers had to plan and prepare the activities in order to adapt
to the students’ needs as well as modify rate of instruction and material covered during the actual
lesson presentation. Thus, when the act of teaching was coupled with the myriad of challenges
displayed by the needs of the special learners, the comfort of working with this population may
have seemed difficult for beginners. Students within this study, however, ended with high levels
of comfort in their abilities to work with students with special needs in different music education
settings following their field experience.

Greater increases by the EDBD than the ACD classroom teachers from pretest to posttest may
have been due to a variety of factors. The mean pre-experience survey scores for the EDBD
teachers in the classroom, ensemble, and studio question groupings were lower than those of the
ACD teachers. This difference may have predisposed the ACD teachers to less room for
improvement. For the classroom and ensemble question groupings, the post means of the EDBD
and ACD groups were more comparable than were the pre means of the two groups. The reason
for the differences between groups in pre-experience survey response scores is unclear, though a
larger sample size might provide a more even distribution of student perceptions. Differences in
class dynamics, including student strengths and deficits, may have resulted in greater impact
from the EDBD classroom experience, though additional research is needed to determine
whether this is a consistent trend and, if so, what the specific cause may be.
Willingness to work with students with special needs in the future showed positive, but not
significant, gains. This was the only category of questions that asked students to predict future
activities. While it may be unreasonable to ask and difficult for students to plan beyond their
internship, it should be noted the students did rate their preparedness and comfort working with
students with special needs in music significantly higher after the field experience. Comfort and
preparation in dealing with special populations is necessary before additional opportunities to
work in these areas are sought (Kaiser & Johnson, 2000; Stephens & Braun, 1980; Wilson &
McCrary, 1996). Therefore, since the students responded positively to those categories and to the
overall field experience, a longitudinal study during the students’ internship or after they are
working within the profession should be used to investigate whether these students are willing to
work with students with special needs in their specific music education setting.
The preservice teachers’ perceptions of the behaviors of students with special needs and their
capabilities to learn like other children their age did not change significantly after the field
experience. This experience did not give the preservice teachers the opportunity to work with
students with and without disabilities together in one classroom; only students who were
primarily educated within the two self-contained settings were instructed. While all the music
education students had worked with children in other field-based experiences in their major
emphasis prior to this class, this was their first opportunity to work with students in a secondary
general music setting. Thus, it may have been difficult for teachers to determine whether the
students’ behavior and capabilities to learn were the same as their nondisabled peers in a
secondary general music classroom since they had no frame of reference. Future research in this
music education setting will ideally include larger sample sizes and examine how secondary
students with and without disabilities behave and learn when in the same general music
classroom as well as the teachers’ perceptions of all students’ behavior and capabilities to learn.

References
Atterbury, B. (1986). A survey of present mainstreaming practices in the southern United States.
Journal of Music Therapy, 23(4), 202–7.
Bibbins, N. P. (1998). Listening with the whole mind. General Music Today, 11(3), 11–13.
Burns, K. (1995). Teaching music listening skills: How low can you go? General Music Today,
8(3), 31–33.
Colwell, C. M., & Thompson, L. K. (2000). “Inclusion” of information on mainstreaming in
undergraduate music education curricula. Journal of Music Therapy, 37(3), 205–21.
Darrow, A. A. (1998). Sticks and stones … and words can hurt: Eliminating handicapping
language. Music Therapy Perspectives, 16(2), 81–83.
Eyck, S. G. T. (1985). The effect of simulation and observation training on the music teaching
behaviors of undergraduate music therapy/music education majors in a field teaching
experience. Journal of Music Therapy, 22(4), 168–82.
Frisque, J., Niebur, L., & Humphreys, J. T. (1994). Music mainstreaming: Practices in Arizona.
Journal of Research in Music Education, 42(2), 94–104.
Gfeller, K., Darrow, A. A., & Hedden, S. K. (1990). Perceived effectiveness of mainstreaming in
Iowa and Kansas schools. Journal of Research in Music Education, 38(2), 90–101.
Gilbert, J. P., & Asmus, E. P. (1981). Mainstreaming: Music educators’ participation and
professional needs. Journal of Research in Music Education, 29(1), 31–37.
Hawkins, G. D. (1992). Attitudes toward mainstreaming students with disabilities among regular
elementary music and physical educators. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland,
College Park, 1991). Dissertation Abstracts International, 52, 3245A.
Heller, L. (1995). Undergraduate music teacher preparation for mainstreaming: A survey of
music education teacher training institutions in the Great Lakes region of the United
States. (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, 1994). Dissertation Abstracts
International, 56, 858A.
Kaiser, K. A., & Johnson, K. E. (2000). The effect of an interactive experience on music majors’
perceptions of music for deaf students. Journal of Music Therapy, 37(3), 222–34.
Kerchner, J. L. (1996). Creative music listening. General Music Today, 10(1), 28–30.
Schmidt, C. P. (1989). An investigation of undergraduate music education curriculum content.
Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 99, 42–56.
Sideridis, G. D., & Chandler, J. P. (1995). Attitudes and characteristics of general music teachers
toward integrating children with developmental disabilities. Update: Applications of
Research in Music Education, 14(1), 11–15.
Stephens, T. M., & Braun, B. L. (1980). Measures of regular classroom teachers’ attitudes
toward handicapped children. Exceptional Children, 46, 292–94.
Thompson, K. P. (1999). Challenges of inclusion for the general music teacher. General Music
Today, 12(3), 7–9.
Wilson, B., & McCrary, J. (1996). The effect of instruction on music educators’ attitudes toward
students with disabilities. Journal of Research in Music Education, 44(1), 26–33.

Call for Submissions for Assessments in All Music Subject Areas
and All Grade Levels for New MENC Assessment Publication
Music educators are invited to submit copies of assessments they use in their classrooms to be
reviewed for inclusion in an upcoming assessment publication. Assessments that address the
National Standards are especially sought. Many types of assessments including rubrics, written
tests, and checklists are welcome. Assessments are sought for band, chorus, orchestra, general
music, and specialized areas at all levels: elementary, middle school, and high school. Please
submit assessments no later than August 30, 2005.
Criteria for Evaluation of Assessments are as follows:

• Assessments should be standards-based and reflect the music skills and knowledge that
are most important for students to learn.
• Assessments should support, enhance, and reinforce learning.
• Assessment should be reliable, valid, and authentic.
• Assessment is replicable in many classrooms and teaching situations.
• We ask that contributors please submit their assessments using the template found on the
MENC Web site at www.menc.org/connect/assessment/call.html.
Please submit a clean copy of each assessment, as well as an electronic copy to Beth Pontiff,
MENC, 1806 Robert Fulton Dr, Reston, VA 20191-4348. Electronic copy can be on disk or e-
mailed as a Word attachment or in the body of an e-mail. For further information, contact Tim S.
Brophy, PhD, book editor, at University of Florida School of Music, PO Box 117900,
Gainesville, FL 32611-7900 or Beth Pontiff, production editor, at 800-336-3768.

Call for Committee Members for New MENC Assessment
Publication
Committee members to review classroom assessments for a new MENC publication on
assessment are now being sought. This book will be a collection of assessments that working
teachers are using in their classrooms. Committee members will need to be available to review
assessments in summer and fall 2005. Applicants should have a strong academic or practical
background in both assessment and their subject area.
Please send an abbreviated Curriculum Vitae or resume (1–2 pages) highlighting your
experience with assessment and complete contact information by May 1 to Tim S. Brophy, PhD,
book editor, at University of Florida School of Music, PO Box 117900, Gainesville, FL 32611-
7900. For further information contact Beth Pontiff, production editor, at 800-336-3768.

Symposium on Music Teacher Education
MUSIC TEACHER EDUCATION: RETHINKING, RESEARCHING, REVITALIZING
September 15-17, 2005
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Sponsored By
• Society for Music Teacher Education
• School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG)
• Music Research Institute at the UNCG School of Music
• Music Educators National Conference: The National Association for Music Education
• The College Music Society
Purpose
The purpose of this symposium is to initiate a sustained exploration of current critical issues in music teacher
education. Three broad areas of critical need are (a) finding future music educators, (b) preparing future music
educators, and (c) supporting the professional development of music educators. These areas correspond to major
themes of the MENC Task Force on Music Teacher Education that resulted in the publication of Music Teacher
Education: Partnership and Process. In this symposium, we will examine the charges presented in that 1987
document, discuss the current challenges, and explore current research and models of effective practice. A
distinguishing feature of this symposium is that the agenda will be pursued beyond the conclusion of the meeting.
The symposium will culminate with the development of specific plans for action and research in the effort to
advance coordinated and sustained work on the critical issues. The first of several opportunities to review progress
will be at the SMTE preconference session during the MENC biennial conference in Salt Lake City in 2006.
Target Audience
Anyone who is interested in music teacher education is welcome to attend the symposium and submit a proposal.
Music teacher educators, deans/directors of schools of music, state and local fine arts supervisors, state policy
officials associated with certification, licensure, and school improvement, K–12 educators, and graduate students in
music education are especially encouraged to participate.
Presentation Formats
• Research Papers
• Presentations on Best Practices
• Position Papers
• Research Posters
• Graduate Research Posters of In-progress or Completed Work
Topics
Those submitting research papers, presentations on best practices, or position papers are asked to address one of the
three areas of critical need:
(a) finding future music educators;
(b) preparing future music educators; or
(c) supporting the professional development of music educators
Those submitting research posters or graduate research posters of in-progress or completed work may explore any
area of music education in addition to the three areas of critical need mentioned above.
Submission Format and Procedures

Research Papers addressing an area of critical need (see Topics) will be considered for presentation at one of the
primary working sessions of the symposium. Papers may utilize quantitative or qualitative paradigms as well as
philosophical or historical research methodologies. Please submit four copies of an abstract of no more than 500

words describing your study. If your paper is accepted, you will be asked to submit a completed full version to be
included in the symposium proceedings.
Presentations on Best Practices will be considered for one of the primary working sessions of the symposium.
Sessions should describe programs or practices that are effectively meeting one or more of the areas of critical need
(see Topics). Sessions may be presented utilizing PowerPoint. Please submit four copies of an abstract of no more
than 500 words describing the session that you plan to present. If your session is accepted, you will be asked to
submit a completed version either as a PowerPoint file or as a paper by July 1, 2005, to be included in the
symposium proceedings.
Position Papers will be considered for presentation at one of the primary working sessions of the symposium.
Authors should present a unique viewpoint capable of generating thoughtful discussion about one or more of the
areas of critical need (see Topics). Please submit four copies of an abstract of no more than 500 words. If your paper
is accepted, you will be asked to submit a completed full version by July 1, 2005, to be included in the symposium
proceedings.
Research Posters proposals exploring any area of music education will be considered for presentation at the
Symposium Research Poster Session. Posters may utilize quantitative or qualitative paradigms as well as
philosophical or historical research methodologies. Please submit four copies of an abstract of no more than 500
words describing the study that you plan to present. If your poster proposal is accepted, you will be asked to submit
an updated abstract by July 1, 2005, to be included in the symposium proceedings. Also, participants will be required
to furnish 10 copies of the completed report and 50 copies of a one- to two-page report summary at the poster
session.
Graduate Research Posters of In-Progress or Completed Work exploring any area of music education will be
considered for presentation at the Graduate Research Forum during which members of the JMTE Editorial Board
will provide encouragement and feedback to members of the next generation of music education researchers. Please
submit four copies of an abstract of no more than 500 words describing the study that you plan to present. Posters
may utilize quantitative or qualitative paradigms as well as philosophical or historical research methodologies. If
your poster proposal is accepted, you will be asked to submit an updated abstract by July 1, 2005, to be included in
the symposium proceedings.
General Submission Information

All submissions should not have been published prior to the symposium and should comply with the “Code of
Ethics” published in the Journal of Research in Music Education
Proposals that represent collaborations—either cross-institutional or cross-departmental within a single
institution—of research and/or practice are especially welcome.
All submissions should include a cover letter (indicating name of the author(s), institutional affiliations, email
addresses/contact information, and presentation format) and four copies of a 500-word abstract. Submissions must be
postmarked by April 15, 2005, and sent to:
David J. Teachout, Chair

Symposium on Music Teacher Education
School of Music
P.O. Box 26170
UNC Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
April 15, 2005: Submission postmark deadline for proposals

June 1, 2005: Notification of acceptance for proposals
July 1, 2005: Deadline to submit materials for publication in the symposium proceedings.
All proposals will be subject to blind review by an advisory panel. If accepted, the primary or a listed co-author must
register for and attend the symposium. Registration information will be posted on the SMTE Web site in late spring
2005 (www.menc.org/smte).

“Sounds of Learning” Study
The International Foundation for Music Research (IFMR), a nonprofit foundation funded in part
by NAMM, the International Music Products Association, has launched a major research project
designed to expand knowledge of the value music plays in a quality education. The organization
is currently soliciting research proposals for this important undertaking.
IFMR has contributed $150,000 toward projects that will be funded under “Sounds of Learning:
The Impact of Music Education,” an authoritative examination of music education’s influence on
academic achievement, children’s growth and development, how music is used in people’s daily
lives and how it impacts school, home and work environments. Additional funds available for
contract research have been provided by the Fund for Improvement of Education at the U.S.
Department of Education.
By inaugurating the “Sounds of Learning: The Impact of Music Education” project, IFMR
executives aim to assemble quantifiable, unimpeachable data on some of the finer points in the
ongoing music education discussion. There has been an abundance of credible research showing
the immediate as well as long-term value of music education, but this new project, which will
comprise numerous research studies, delves deeper into specific areas of study as it relates to the
benefits of teaching music and encouraging the playing of music in school-age children.
“As evidenced by the debates over the federal government’s No Child Left Behind initiative and
the continuing discussions in state houses across the country, key decision-makers and
academics are hungry for the best research on music education’s importance,” said Mary
Luehrsen, executive director of IFMR. “We’re soliciting proposals from the top researchers
interested in conducting an authoritative, important study of this crucially important topic.”
“Sounds of Learning” will be an extended project that has been divided into two phases. For
Phase I, research proposals are due April 1, 2005. Research requests for phase two of the
“Sounds of Learning” project, which will give closer focus to how music education impacts
people’s home and work lives, are due later this summer.
For more information on the project, and to submit a proposal, interested parties can e-mail
IFMR at info@music-research.org.

JMTE Yearbook!
If you’re weary of searching online for new ideas and research in music teacher education, the new
JMTE Yearbook is for you! This first edition is a hard copy publication of the fall 2004 and spring 2005
issues of the Journal of Music Teacher Education.
Articles in this first edition of the JTME Yearbook will include:
A Tribute to a Founder of the Society for Music Teacher Education: George N. Heller
Edward P. Asmus
An Investigation of Second-Career Music Teaching

Margaret H. Berg
The Problem of Music Education Philosophy for Undergraduates

Paul Broomhead
Where Do We Begin with Inquiry-Based Degree Programs?

Suzanne L. Burton
Raising the Standards: Music Teacher Education in a Performance-Based World

Don P. Ester
Comparing Prospective Freshmen and Preservice

Music Education Majors’ Reflections of Music Interactions
Deborah A. Sheldon and Gregory DeNardo
What to Do about Music Teacher Education: Our Profession at a Crossroads

Jeffrey Kimpton
What Partnerships Must We Create, Build, or Reenergize in K–12 Higher and Professional Education
for Music Teacher Education in the Future?
Janet Robbins and Robin Stein
Where Will the Supply of New Teachers Come From, Where Shall We Recruit,
and Who Will Teach These Prospective Teachers?
William E. Fredrickson and J. Bryan Burton
What Is the Role of MENC, NASM, or Other State or National Professional Organizations
in Providing Leadership and Support for New Research and Models?
Don P. Ester and David J. Brinkman
An Analysis of Certification Practices for Music Education in the Fifty States

Michele L. Henry
The Effects of Field Experience on Music Education Majors’ Perceptions of Music Instruction
for Secondary Students with Special Needs
Kimberly VanWeelden and Jennifer Whipple
Visit www.rowmaneducation.com after June 1 for price and availability information.

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JOURNAL OF MUSIC TEACHER EDUCATION

Society for Music Teacher Education Executive Committee

Journal of Music Teacher Education Editorial Committee

Alan Gumm Kimberly Walls

Alice Hammel Cecilia Wang

Debra Hedden Molly Weaver

Director, Music Educators Journal and Publications Associate Editor

Special Issue: The Future of Music Education

From the Chair

What to Do about Music Teacher Education: Our Profession at a Crossroads

An Analysis of Certification Practices for Music Education in the Fifty States

JMTE, Spring 2005, 3

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How Big Is the Problem?

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Teachers and Preparation

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Challenges within the Academy

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Professional Development and Professional Organizations

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Looking Outside the Box for New Models

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Professional Development School Partnerships:

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Partnership Networks for In-Service Teachers

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William E. Fredrickson is associate professor of music education and associate dean of

Developing a Recruiting Pipeline

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Retaining Good Teachers in the Profession

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The mission of MENC: The National Association for Music Education is to

The Society for Music Teacher Education’s (SMTE) primary function is to

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Recommended Roles for Facilitating Change

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