Higher Music Education and the Establishment of New Congruences

Any kind of engagement in policy practice change requires serious consideration of the relationship between adoption, enactment, and legitimization. This is to say that potential systemic openings for music education curricula expanding the ensemble- performance nexus would require: 1) a clear rationale, 2) social and cultural impetus or pressure, 3) models of practice and action, 4) the experiences of policy practitioner enthusiasts, and 5) ongoing support and networking.

As we articulated above and as proposed elsewhere (see Kaschub and Smith, 2014) rationales for action are as multiple as convincing. Here, we argued that placing composition-as-music/sound-creation-and-manipulation functioning as an umbrella concept that is capable of opening up curricular space that is exploratory, socially engaged, and personally meaningful and that more easily intersects with general educational curricular concerns, is a policy practice that deserves attention. Composition as a space where creation or a form of cultural production can complement learning about, listening to, and performing/interpreting music is also central.

We argue this is critical particularly if we are to consider musical practices as opportune ways to foster equity, diversity, and a decolonizing curriculum that goes beyond awareness (Bylica, 2020; Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018). To see this actualized, work toward policy priorities that would de-center music and establish curricular and programmatic spaces where composing can claim space into the ensemble-performance nexus is necessary.

It is also clear to us that in 2021 social and cultural demand for changes in music education were, to use a policy theory image, finding a moment of convergence where traditional equilibrium is being punctuated, It is doubtless that multiple efforts to adapt choral and instrumental practices are well intentioned and responsive to calls for equity, decolonization, culturally relevant pedagogies and directive-hierarchical pedagogy (Marcho, 2020; Palkki & Caldwell, 2018; Shaw, 2015; Costa-Giomi & Chappell, 2007). Such reforms are limited, though, by virtue of the very formats themselves, their structures and histories, as we have articulated. This is not reason for abandonment or dismissal. Indeed, as Casey and Dr. S demonstrate, performing ensembles can and do offer opportunities to move freely within their formats and sustain spaces of resonances for collaborative composition that is both musical and meaningful.

We must acknowledge, however, that systemic reform requires both some level of structural change as well as adaptive modification. This can be facilitated if we begin with professional and disciplinary policy guided by premises such as this, which we suggest as an example:

Guiding action toward success and effectiveness within music education should be gauged by the ways in which curricular and programmatic diversity are aligned to the diversity of experience, socio-cultural needs, and learning interests of each given learning community.

While this may sound radical to some, if curricular policy in the field is to function in synchrony with local/regional complexities, then expanding the ways in which our professional practice is socially responsive and responsible is imperative. From a policy practice standpoint, we suggest the implementation of tactical goals of this sort can serve as significant starting points:

Given historical deficits meeting standards of practice that address composition and improvisation, music practitioners in K-16 settings commit to the goal of enacting 20 percent of all curricular practice in the form of systemic and sustained engagements with music/sound as composition/creation/manipulation.

Leading Change. Higher education and music teacher education must be leaders in this process. While many individuals in higher education are doing this work, systemic and program-level re-structuring is yet to materialize regardless of much action by music teachers in the field. The troubling realization is that our diversity challenges are intrinsically linked to our programmatic homogeneity (Elpus, 2015; Burton, 2011). Much blame, at least in the US, is placed at the feet of National Association of Schools of Music (NASM). This is intriguing given that NASM’s own General Principles (NASM Handbook 2019-20) articulate that “NASM affirms its special commitment to those principles of voluntary accreditation that encourage diversity among institutions and respect for operational integrity within institutions.”

At least nominally, this seems to establish a dialogical relationship which begins from the standpoints of institutions’ needs and their curricular commitments and interests (see ibid., Standards and Guidelines, p. 53). Accreditation visits are at times led by individuals who might read NASM’s guidelines in conservative ways, and the institution as a whole might indeed behave in a way whereby its soft policy directives supersede, and at times contradict, its own policy texts. Regardless, given NASM’s ostensive commitment to “diversity among institutions and respect for operational integrity” (p. 53), the rush to the policy “middle” based on NASM principles alone seems unfounded. The question then is: Are efforts to maintain a middle point that is “generally characteristic” so strong as to create the widespread homogeneity we see? We find it doubtful.

We argue that a central hurdle may live in the rather writerly (Ball, 2015) manner in which policy is observed and a systemic hesitancy at the meso and micro level of schools of music to more readerly engage with program design and accreditation policy terms. Successful accounts of systemic program changes seem to suggest this as well—the creation of music education composition at Nebraska, renewal of the music education program at ASU, re-design of the core theory sequence at University of Miami, to cite a few. The challenges to our diversity seem more emic than etic.

From our vantage point, it is clear that NASM guidelines present a discursive traditionalism that could be amended:
- A repertory for study that includes various cultures and historical periods. (p. 95)
- Achieving a measurable degree of technical mastery in at least one of the traditional or innovative techniques appropriate to their area of study. (p. 86)
- The ability to hear, identify, and work conceptually with the elements of music such as rhythm, melody, harmony, structure, timbre, texture. (p. 99)

Often, however, NASM distinguishes “guidelines” from “standards” (regardless of individuals misreading both to mean the same thing) and as accreditors establish minimal parameters of practice, which while tendentious (toward content and structure) would not prevent other more ecumenical understandings of the terms. There is, importantly, much discursive opportunity to ground significant curricular and program diversity in the NASM document that is in line with suggestions articulated here. They remain under-explored from a policy standpoint by institutions of higher learning in music.

To cite a few:
- Repeated opportunities for enacting in a variety of ways in roles such as listener, performer, composer, and scholar, and by responding to, interpreting, creating, analyzing, and evaluating music. (p. 96)

- An understanding of compositional processes, aesthetic properties of style, and the ways these shape and are shaped by artistic and cultural forces. (p. 98)

- Evaluation, planning, and making projections are a set of connected activities that relate to all aspects of a music unit’s work. They include, but go well beyond numbers of students, personnel, or programs, lists of resource needs, or declarations of aspiration. They address strategies and contextual issues consistent with the purposes, size and scope, program offerings, and responsibilities of the music unit. (p. 76)

- There are many ways to achieve excellence. Innovative and carefully planned experimentation is encouraged. Experimentation might lead to programs of study not specifically indicated in Standards for Accreditation IV—XVI. (p. 86)

Differential Legitimacy. As this chapter aims to establish both a conceptual and pragmatic way to engage in change that might place composition/creation as a more present aspect of curricular policy, what we are able to offer here only begins to address the challenging dialogue and action needed today. Where might we start with simple, systemic, and effective action, tomorrow? In higher music education, taking credible steps to enact more inclusive and equitable curricular aims seems reasonable.

To cite a few:
- Commit to expanding the rationale and pedagogical purpose of “core” curricular activities within music schools, aligning with a professional practice that innovatively approximates excellence to social responsibility, and artistry to equity and diversity.
- Amplify the aims of “methods” classes, placing creation as a critical element.
- Systemically expand co-teaching opportunities, intra and across department teaching.
- Expand the role of the co-curricular, structurally creating programs-within- programs, specifically eyeing integration, risk-taking, and diversification of practice
- For those institutions where that is possible (and related to the item above), facilitate graduate students as drivers for/of innovation.

As we see it, these tactical aims are the kind of foundational steps toward larger policy shifts. The Association of European Conservatoires offers a current example in a multiyear project named Strengthening Music in Society, which resonates with our argument and places renewed professionalism front and center, looking at “rethinking and opening curricula,” “exploring the landscape for digitization,” “embedding entrepreneurship in higher ed,” and “contextualizing the admissions [process]” among others.

We also see the significance interdepartmental collaboration can have in realizing composition projects within community and local school settings (Edwards et. al, 2020; Veblen, 2022) as evinced at one Canadian university, thus fostering the fundamental idea that “creativity is a collaborative process (not an individual possession)” (Haiven, 2014, p. 192). A similar model of this that has been running for 15 years is QuerKlang— Experimentelles Komponieren in der Schule⁶ created by composers and music pedagogy faculty at the Universitat der Kunste, Berlin (Edwards, in press).

Faculty composers and their students partner with music education students designing and implementing composition curricula with/for local schoolteachers throughout the city. University sponsored workshops/conferences such as Composing in the Classroom: Models and Designs for the Creative Music Teacher are another example. This event offered local teachers an opportunity to engage with composition and music education faculty and to hear and see how teachers in their own districts integrated composition throughout their general, choral, and band programs, and fostered progressive framings for professional development.

These and myriad other curricular practices can be constitutive of how programs can better integrate multiple “peripheries” to establish programs that better use the curricular and the co-curricular, finding greater flexibility and establishing more dynamic program policies—characterizing efforts toward differential legitimacy within higher music education. Policy renewal only happens when changing values are expressed in actualizable ways. This is already emergent—so identifying models or practices is not the issue—systemic spread, however, will take strategic effort.

References: Allsup, R. E. (2016). Remixing the classroom: Toward an open philosophy of music education. Indiana University Press.

Allsup, R. E., & Benedict, C. (2008). The problems of band: An inquiry into the future of instrumental music education. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 16(2), 156-173

Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Educational Policy, 18(2), 215-228.

Ball, S. (2016). Following policy: Networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549-566.

Ball, S. (2015) What is policy? 21 years later: reflections on the possibilities of policy research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(3), 306-313.

Ball, S., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. London: Routledge.

Benedict, C. & Schmidt, P. (2011). Politics of not knowing: The disappearing act of an education in music. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 27(3), 134-148.