Leading Music Education International Conference

Developing Organic Music Teacher Education Programs

Too many music teacher education programs are conceived as if they are independent of their larger institutions. They also ignore the musical ecology of the communities from which their students come and into which they graduate. The causes for this include professional indoctrination, professional and personal biases, deficiencies in expertise, and political realities. This leads to a lack of variety among programs, isolation within institutions, limited resources, disconnection from the musical ecology in which programs are situated, and teacher preparation that is not as relevant as it could be. In this paper I advocate for music teacher educators and university arts administrators to develop programs that are organic to the institutions and contexts in which they are located, in touch with the musical ecologies in which they are situated, and focused on preparing students for the settings in which they will teach.