Constructing a Personal Orientation to Music Teaching: Growth, Inquiry, and Agency, (Second Edition), is a textbook for studies in music education. Expanding upon the first edition, the authors promote inquiry and reflection to facilitate teacher growth, lifelong learning, and a disposition toward educational change. The revised text responds to current calls for social change and teacher education reform by reaffirming and intensifying the need for music teachers to adopt a personal orientation toward their work. A personal orientation encourages teachers to initiate their own growth, engage in inquiry, and exercise agency in school contexts. Strongly grounded in current theories and research in teacher education, Constructing a Personal Orientation to Music Teaching: Growth, Inquiry, and Agency strives to do the following: Engage readers in analyzing their own experiences in order to conceptualize the complexity of teaching Involve them in clarifying their reasons for seeking a career in teaching Support their insights, questions, and reflections about their work Promote a reflective, critical attitude about schools in general as music teachers are urged to think of themselves as change agents in school settings Construct a moral purpose as a compass to guide their current and future endeavors in the profession. Every chapter includes a wealth of pedagogical features, including new methodologies and examples of practice to engage the readers in processes of inquiry and reflection. The second edition is organized in two parts. Part I focuses on positioning music teachers as learners in the profession, significantly expanding concepts explored in the first edition that are central to a personal orientation to professional growth. In the new edition, a reconceptualized Chapter 5 challenges teachers to cultivate their identities as change agents. The second half of the book—focusing on becoming a student of music teaching— features five new chapters. A provocative chapter on curriculum sets the stage for a set of additional chapters that invite deeper considerations of the commonplaces of teacher, learners, subject matter, and context. An epilogue speaks directly to the power of agency, imagination, and hope in teachers’ lives.

Constructing a Personal Orientation to Music Teaching promotes inquiry and reflection to facilitate teacher growth, lifelong learning and a disposition toward educational change. Strongly grounded in current theories and research in teacher education, the text engages readers in analyzing their own experiences in order to conceptualize the complexity of teaching; involves them in clarifying their reasons for seeking a career in teaching; supports their insights, questions, and reflections about their work; and promotes a reflective, critical attitude about schools in general as teachers are urged to think of themselves as change agents in school settings.

This book surveys emerging music and education landscapes to present a sampling of the promising practices of music teacher education that may serve as new models for the 21st century. Contributors explore the delicate balance between curriculum and pedagogy, the power structures that influence music education at all levels, the role of contemporary musical practices in teacher education, and the communication challenges that surround institutional change. Models of programs that feature in-school, out-of-school and beyond school contexts, lifespan learning perspectives, active juxtapositions of formal and informal approaches to teaching and learning, student-driven project-based fieldwork, and the purposeful employment of technology and digital media as platforms for authentic music engagement within a contemporary participatory culture are all offered as springboards for innovative practice.

A guide to educating those who teach choral music in the classroom, this text provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the relevant literature, drawing on qualitative methodologies to collect and interpret primary source data. Student-teacher portraits are provided as examples. The author presents a convincing argument for assigning a special role to the development of reflective capacities and to image construction in the process of becoming a teacher, and her recommendations for music teacher education and research are thorough and developed.

Appropriate as a supplemental text for all music education methods courses and a core text in music education curriculum. This text is intended to assist preservice and experienced teachers make thoughtful decisions regarding music teaching and learning that are essential to effective practice. It emphasizes contextual issues as well as matters specifically pertinent to the teaching of music in all school settings, and it provides the structural knowledge and seminal questions that need to be addressed in making good choices about what and how to teach in music.