Music Teacher Education in This Century: Part I

he following musings on suggested new policies in music teacher education were occasioned by several current trends and events in education. First, there is the newly placed responsibility for success in schooling that, after a history of shifting of responsible parties, has recently transferred accountability from students to teachers (Gerstner 2006). Second, as Gipps (2005) suggests, we are seeing a shift of the teacher’s responsibility from pupil learning to performance and accountability measures. Third, prompted by the results from the accountability measures, the federal government is subsequently making an effort to identify and approve only “well-qualified” (No Child Left Behind) teachers. A fourth but related event is the work of a higher education commission appointed by the George W. Bush administration to examine issues of access, affordability, accountability, lifetime learning, retention, and efficacy. An accountability question for this commission asks whether standardized testing should be expanded into universities and colleges. Any musings or visions about policy lead to multiple considerations including structural arrangements, available resources, incentives, constraints (including tradition), purpose (vocational and/or professional), and entrance and exit standards. These musings are based primarily on a lifetime of experience and observation, continuous reading, and the beliefs I have arrived at in that time. Beliefs are too often ignored in formulating policies; this is understandable as their range is so great. Some policy beliefs, no doubt, are unreasonable and must be revealed as such. Americans believe deeply in the potential of education, a belief only partially supported by the effects and data on educating a large population over an extended period of time. Beliefs about education, like beliefs throughout the social sciences, cannot always be proved, as much depends on our views about the human experience. Faculty members in educational institutions work cooperatively because they share a value system and multiple common beliefs about their students and the potential of the institution. Beliefs alone do not lead to progress; a balance must be struck between acting on data and acting on thinking. Teaching and learning are complex, too complex to be addressed solely by data, and satisfactory solutions for these complexities should be addressed by reasonable deliberations as well as valid, focused research. A concern for this balance between knowledge and belief underlies the basic thrust of this paper; the line between opinion and fact is often indistinct. Teacher education in music has its strength in knowledge and skills but is lacking an emphasis on the general purpose of schooling, more attention to the student, greater flexibility in the requirements in music, a focus on scholarship in and out of music, and access to the remainder of the curriculum. In short, the research data in education do not justify present music education curricular requirements. Any policy change away from present requirements to a more relevant preparation for teaching in pre-K–12 schools cannot be accomplished without informed and conscientious faculty advising. A few initial comments set the stage for these conditions. This article focuses on the teacher’s responsibilities based on beliefs, data, issues of language, teacher characteristics, acts of teaching, outcome beliefs, and consideration for the curriculum that is presently defendable. It is not about the music component of teacher education; Dean Robert Cutietta of the University of Southern California is writing that paper. The focus is on the remaining 40–50 percent of the curriculum. As one who has worked primarily with data (often derived from evaluation of teaching and learning), I am more comfortable, like many of us are, with decisions based on data and can appreciate the public’s demand for understandable indictors of success. I am therefore