Pasquale "Pat" Ciricillo (1907-1978) was a twentieth-century musician-teacher who incorporated multiple musical approaches in his work. Born to an Italian family in Cleveland, Ohio, Ciricillo's affinity for wide-ranging musicianship afforded him a storied career as a professional trumpet player in New York City. His success as a jazz,…

Each year, clinicians are invited to work with music ensembles at schools throughout the country, often in preparation for a contest or festival. Traditional clinics in which guest conductors refine and inspire students in the music-making process are wonderful events but arguably produce only short-term results, due in part to the limited amount…

Conservatoires are specialist and practical schools that provide immersive training for aspiring performing arts professionals. Historically, performance training in music has been valued over and above other aspects of the curriculum in conservatoires. For example, learning how to teach is rarely considered as important as learning how to…

In this manuscript, we introduce four philosophical camps and provide bulletin board and classroom decoration examples of how music teachers can visually communicate their teaching philosophies to their students, parents, colleagues, and administrators. The categories emerged from our review of bulletin board examples created by our music teacher…

An extended (and probably unnecessary) parallel is drawn between engagement in mathematics and engagement in musical performance. Key facets of engagement are described and a model of how mathematics engagement plays out in task-level activities is discussed in light of new findings related to its social and emotional facets. Implications for…

Playing video games is one of the most popular leisure activities across the world. Video game music (VGM) is a musical art form prevalent in popular culture, and there is potential to use it for the music education of students. Using informal music learning (Green, 2002) and online participatory culture (Jenkins, 1992/2013) theories as grounds…

In this paper I unpack how Mad-positive music may disrupt pathogizing mental-health discourses and affirm Mad subjectivities. I draw on the field of Mad Studies to discuss how Mad-positive music recognizes the subjugated knowledge(s) of self-identifying Mad persons, troubles the dominance of psy-disciplinary knowledge(s), and opens complex…

Much like an effective speaker, a flexible musician is competent across multiple settings. The sociolinguistic theory of code-switching can be a useful tool to better understand how musicians acquire a set of skills and knowledge to support music-making in a range of activities in and outside of school and throughout society. In this article,…

Many K-12 teachers face hurdles when it comes to running a Modern Band, including the pedagogical challenges of facilitating large scale ensembles with unfamiliar repertoire and instruments. Approximation and scaffolding are two important tools teachers can use to help learners thrive in this environment. This article uses music examples to…

This article presents the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) as an historical educator in the context of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures on Poetry at Harvard University (1939-1940), published as "The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons." As music professors at North American institutions of Christian Higher Education, the…

During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, a serious concern regarding the academic credentials of musicians arose in Spain. This movement was led by Francisco Barbieri and Felipe Pedrell. Drawing on Krausism and Regenerationism, Pedrell defined the cultural background required by true artists, following…

Feedback plays an essential role in music education, helping individuals learn to consider creative works from multiple perspectives. In this article, we explore the Critical Response Process, a four-step process for engaging with artistic works in progress. Founded on the principle that both artists and responders play active roles in feedback,…

The Australian mezzo-soprano Ada Beatrice Bloxham (1865-1956) was the inaugural winner (in 1883) of the Clarke Scholarship for a promising musician resident in the Colony of Victoria to study at the Royal College of Music in London. She was the first Australian to enrol at the Royal College of Music and to graduate as an Associate of the College…

Whether by mandate or by personal aspiration, teachers across the United States are compelled to teach in a manner that is culturally relevant to their students. Culturally relevant pedagogy, and its recent iteration, culturally sustaining pedagogy, call for high levels of student achievement, the development of multiple cultural competencies, and…

Recent changes in educational policy have placed 21st-century skills at the forefront of arts education, presenting arts educators with an opportunity to reassess instructional practices. Popular music pedagogies are approaches to learning and practicing popular music that may be useful for addressing 21st-century skills and knowledge in arts…