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Chris Owen
MUS431
16 April 2014
My Philosophy of Music Education
Introduction
Music is a uniquely human construct and understanding why it exists can lead to
understanding about how we learn and conceive of the world. Answering questions such as
What is music? and Why should we teach music? can lead us learn how humans come to
understand the world, what role music plays in this process, and therefore how we should teach
and what we should teach in music.
Why should we teach music?
It has been my experience that most people connect with music on some level. Whether it
is listening to popular music on the radio, playing in a garage band, going to dance clubs, or
attending an orchestra concert, most people have some level of interaction with (and
understanding of) music. For music educators, this means our students will have prior musical
experience on which we can build. We can then take these experiences and create new ones
towards a goal of developing musicianship in our students.
Shively writes music is a symbol that is used to make meaning out of the world, to
construct a world. Opportunities to interpret, apply, invent, and revise music should be at the
core of musical experiencesexperiences that will lead to musical understanding (p. 210). If
we argue music is a symbolic system used to convey meaning, then our goal as educators is to
have our students be fluent in interpreting this medium and using it to convey their ideas.
We engage with music in different ways that are often connected. In a broad sense, we
connect with music by performing, listening and creating. These categories are not mutually
exclusive and often overlap. For example, a jazz trombone player who is playing an improvised
solo over chord changes for an audience is performing, listening, and creating simultaneously.
More specifically, there are multiple aspects of musicianship, including cultural knowledge,

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theoretical knowledge, creative knowledge, understanding of musical dimensions such as form,
texture, and phrasing, understanding of different types of music, understanding historical
contexts in which music is written, and ability to use and develop these aspects in a practical
application (e.g., an instrument, voice, electronic music software). For example, an artist who
creates a complex dubstep work in response to more accessible electronic dance music is using
music as a medium to make a cultural statement (that is, electronic music should not always be
easy to listen to). This means he understands the cultural context of the music which he is
creating, the musical dimensions he is using to create, and is using this understanding in a
practical application. All of these aspects are interdependent and music educators teach for these
different aspects in order to foster musical development in their students. This will allow their
students to become effective in understanding music as a symbolic process. Reimer describes
these ways of engaging with music as musical roles. The roles he lists are composing,
performing, improvising, listening, music theory, musicology, and music teaching (pp. 221-229).
All of these specific aspects of engaging with music fall under the broader categories of
listening, performing, and creating.
We engage with music in these ways often to communicate through music. Music allows
us to communicate through a medium that is linked with emotion. Many who have had
experience with music have experienced the emotion music can evoke. Whether it is a song on
the radio that reminds the listener of summer, or an orchestra that performs a piece that was
played at a loved ones funeral, people experience the emotive qualities of music in some way.
This is a quality of music that helps us to communicate with others, convey ideas, and
understand the world. For example, I recently presented a lesson in a content area literacy course
for fellow future educators. The members of the class were future art, Spanish, and English
educators, none of whom had music education beyond high school. The class had read The Book

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Thief by Markus Zusak which depicts a city outside of Munich, Germany and the impact of
bombings near the end of World War II. To get the class members to think about what life was
like for a typical German citizen at the time, I played a recording Daniel Bukvichs Symphony
No. 1 (In Memoriam, Dresden, 1945) and had them answer questions on a prompt (What do you
hear? What could it represent? What is being communicated? Is it effective?) The piece uses
atonal clusters, screaming, and other techniques to represent sounds heard before, during, and
immediately after the bombing. It also uses tonal melodies and expansion of rhythmic and
melodic motives used to represent various aspects of the setting at the time of the bombing.
When we came together as a class to discuss their answers to the questions, I asked what was
unique about using music to communicate these ideas. A class member said that it conveys
emotion that a written text cant convey. The extent to which this true is difficult to prove, but
music does lend a unique experience that allows us to understand the world. In this particular
case, it allows a possibly abstract experience such as a bombing to become more relatable by
using sound to communicate.
Music is similar to language in that they are both symbolic, communicative processes.
However, when drawing parallels, it is important to know that because they are similar does not
mean they are the same, and how we learn and teach one does not necessarily transfer to how we
learn and teach the other. I provided an example of how music can be used to supplement a text
to gain a better understanding of an aspect of the context of the text. Music advocates often argue
that learning music helps facilitate growth in other disciplines such as math and science. There
are links on advocacy.nafme.org which lead to research that has been conducted in attempts to
determine the relationship between learning music and learning in other disciplines. While we
can document and compare progress of students who are and are not in music in other subjects,
all this shows us is a correlation. It is challenging to definitively be able to show that learning

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music causes students to do better in other areas. This is because we can observe how students in
music perform in other classes and compare their performance to those who are not in music.
From this we can collect data and draw a conclusion about the correlation of music and other
disciplines, but it says nothing about whether or not music is the cause of the quality of
performance in other disciplines. However, we can say that when taught well, critical thinking
and problem solving skills are developed in the music classroom. Steven Kelly views music
education from a sociological perspective. He writes:
Music education is also a global human phenomenon involving the development
of cognitive, psychomotor, and affective social skills. A major goal of education
in general and music education too, is to provide skills and knowledge that enable
individuals to maximize their success in life. Successful music programs
recognize the contributions music plays in achieving success in life and its
connections with the entire school curriculum. (p. 5)
It is important for educators to consider using content from other disciplines to
supplement education. Each piece of music is created within a certain context that can be
explored. This context can often be explored through multiple mediums, music being only one of
them. While music offers a unique symbolic perspective, it is not the only perspective, and
figuring out ways to teach students through multiple mediums can result in meaningful learning.
Kelly argues that a goal of education is to provide students with skills and knowledge that allow
them to be successful in life. This use of connecting certain disciplines to other disciplines is
important when considering the broader goal of education.
Who should have the opportunity to learn music?
Music has been an important part of my personal life. Each person has a unique set of
experiences, and this holds true for musical experiences as well. I went through a band program
on trumpet through middle school and high school, and I also had a lot of experience learning

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informally, or outside of school. I taught myself keyboard, played in rock groups, sang in bands,
learned guitar and bass guitar, and had interest in a variety of musical styles. I had the unique
experience of also being in a band class and learning music in that setting, and being able to use
what I learned outside of school and apply it to what we were doing in school, and vice versa. It
would have been beneficial for me if there were some kind of program offered that focused on
teaching music outside of a performance-based or emerging performance curriculum. For
example, there are many students who learn guitar in high school, but these students typically are
not found in band programs (or music programs in general). Therefore, they are missing out on a
formal education that could be beneficial to their development as a musician. As mentioned
above, most people have some type of experience with music and those who wish to develop
their musicianship should be provided the opportunity to do so. This leads to the question of who
should be a student in a music program.
Students who have the desire to develop their musicianship and develop a broad and deep
level of understanding of music are students whom I am willing to teach. However, I am also
willing to teach students who do not necessarily want to develop their musicianship, or at least
not in the beginning. Many students do not seek to further their musical understanding, but still
want to have musical experiences, and this is a start to developing musicianship. It is the job of
any teacher to accept students where they are and design a curriculum appropriately. It is also the
teachers job to foster an environment where students want to learn. This is the case with any
instruction, but also with music. Students with exceptionalities should always be provided with
the least restrictive environment for learning. If students are having difficulty functioning in a
normal classroom setting but still wish to have an education in music, I will do everything in my
power to make this happen. Each student is unique and each set of circumstances is different, so
finding ways to provide an education for students in their least restrictive environment is

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something I will work to be able to achieve as an educator. If a students least restrictive
environment is the music classroom, then I am more than willing to have him or her be a part of
the program.
There seems to be a duality in many cases between formal music making (musical
experiences in school) and informal music making (musical experiences outside of school).
These two settings are often treated as mutually exclusive and disconnected from one another. I
believe that it is important to meaningfully connect what students are experiencing musically
outside of school and what they are experiencing in school. This might mean that a rock band has
the opportunity to take a music class and be guided in exploring new styles and genres, and in
doing so learn how music is used as a symbolic process. It might mean that a teacher sets up an
African drumming ensemble as an environment to teach music. All of these settings in a school
could be used to teach and learn about the world through music. Green interacted with musicians
who learned informally and tried to discover how they learned. She poses a hypothesis: young
musicians who acquire their skills and knowledge more through informal learning practices than
through formal education may be more likely to continue playing music, alone or with others, for
enjoyment later in life (p. 56). While it is only a hypothesis, it is still a reason for music
educators to acknowledge and meaningfully incorporate these informal processes in classrooms.
While I believe that we should incorporate what students are experiencing musically
outside of school with what students learn in school, I acknowledge that sometimes this is not
possible or the connections are not meaningful. For example, if there is a single student who
listens to music that is inappropriate for school who is in the music classroom, making a
meaningful connection to what is happening in the music classroom might prove problematic.
There is also the problem that the student might not want the music he listens to outside of
school to be incorporated into the music curriculum. Therefore, music educators are faced with

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the task of determining what music to incorporate in a curriculum and what music to leave out.
This leads to the nature of musical knowledge, what should be taught, and how it is best learned.
What is the nature of musical knowledge? What should be taught? How is it best learned?
Dewey argues that education cannot exist without experience, but not all experiences are
educative. He writes I take it that the fundamental unity of the newer philosophy is found in the
idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the process of actual experience and
education (p. 7). If we argue music is a symbolic system we use to understand the world, then
these educative experiences are how we are learning to understand music as a symbolic system
and how it conveys ideas and helps us to make sense of the world. Dewey argues that we learn
by connecting new experiences to our prior experiences in meaningful ways. In music education,
this means first knowing where our students are and having a sense what prior experiences they
have. It also means being able to design a curriculum that allows students to connect prior
experience to the content, but also builds on the experiences they have to create new experiences
toward a goal that is set by the teacher.
In a music classroom, the literature with which students engage is the conduit through
which they learn music. This means that literature selection is an important process in designing
curriculum. It is the job of the teacher to know the abilities and to the extent possible, prior
experiences of his or her students to find the best literature that builds on these experiences but
still has value in being an educative tool. This means if the literature is being performed, it
should be within the students abilities and provide opportunities for the students to learn musical
dimensions through the music. If the music is solely being analyzed, it should build on the
students prior experience in some way, but still allow room for the teacher to design lessons
where the students learn new concepts through the music. Curriculum design in music classroom
is largely based on the students experiences, what the teacher decides is important to teach, and

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the music that will get the students there. Lessons, units, and curricula are all based on knowing
these factors.
Performing, listening, and creating are broad categories that describe how people interact
with and learn music. Many schools have performance-based ensembles, such as band, orchestra,
and choir. That is, these groups are expected to prepare music and have a concert or performance
of that music. If we focus on the performance aspect of performing, listening, and creating,
Turino argues that there are two types of performing: presentational and participatory. He writes
presentational music is a field involving one group of people (the artists) providing music for
another (the audience) in which there is a pronounced audience separation within face-to-face
situations (p. 52). He also writes in fully participatory occasions there are no artist-audience
distinctions, only participants and potential participants (p. 28). This means that there is not a
distinct line where we can call one event participatory and another presentational, but rather
more of a continuum on which events fall. Many concerts of performance-based ensembles fall
closer to the presentational side, as audience members typically are not expected to participate in
any way beyond clapping and actively engaging in listening. For music educators, this means it
is important for us to provide students with the opportunity to perform in multiple different
settings, some that are more presentational and some that are more participatory.
When musicians perform music, it is important that the students are informed about the
music they are performing so they understand what they are trying to convey through the music.
If music is a symbolic system we use to understand the world, we need to focus on the cultural
and historical context under which music was composed and performed, and understand why that
is significant in being able to perform it well. Reimer writes:
The music experienced in both musicianship and listenership opportunities should
include but go beyond the generally available musics students are involved with
in their culture(s). Each particular music provides its characteristic musical

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meanings. Expansion of students repertoire of musical meanings is a foundational
obligation of music education. (p. 160)
Reimer argues that while it is important to meet students where they are and explore
musics generally available in their culture, music educators also need to find a way to
meaningfully incorporate musics that are not as available in their culture. Music educators teach
music through engagement with repertoire. This repertoire varies depending upon the aspect of
the music that is being learned through the music. It is effective for students to learn about
different cultures through music that is authentic to that culture. It is also effective to compare
unfamiliar music to music that is familiar and find differences and similarities in how the music
is constructed depending on what ideas are being conveyed and the context in which the music is
written.
As mentioned above, Reimer identifies different musical roles that musicians take on
such as listening, improvising, music theory, and musicology. Reimer writes:
Creativity is, at bottom, something happening within a persons experience. In
music, that something is the coming into being of musical sounds, the outward
evidence of the inner processes. And that coming into being requires the
individual to both think sounds and do sounds with imagination, originality,
divergence, ingenuity, and so forth. Each musical role requires its particular way
to think and do sounds creatively. (p. 111)
Creatively manipulating sound and thinking and doing sounds creatively is an
important part of being a musician. In a music classroom, this could be students learning form
and they take a song they already know and do a cover, but restructure the form in a way that
makes sense considering what they have learned. It could also be students composing a piece
using different texture in different formal sections to creatively display their understanding of
how texture relates to form. Teachers could also provide students with the opportunity to

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improvise based on what they have learned about music theory in a creative opportunity to
perform, listen, and create in the same lesson. The creative process is an important part of being
a musician and it is the responsibility of the music educator to ensure that students are provided
with the opportunity to have these experiences in meaningful ways that connect to their musical
learning and understanding.
I have mentioned that the students and teacher both play important roles in designing
curriculum, but student-centered instruction cannot effectively take place without building a
community of learners who value one anothers contributions. People belong to many different
communities, and the music classroom is just one community of which our students are
members. In order for students to be willing to share their experiences and offer their ideas
without fear of being embarrassed or ridiculed, the teacher needs to create a community that
encourages risk-taking and mutual contribution. This will lead to a community where students
feel they have ownership of the content and will be more intrinsically motivated to learn and
contribute. This means the teacher needs to value each students ideas and set an expectation that
students will also value one anothers ideas. This community paired with student experiences,
teacher guidance, and the music being engaged, are what drive the decision-making process for
curriculum.
What is the role of the learner? What is the role of the teacher?
I have mentioned some scenarios that involve what I believe to be effective teaching. In
these scenarios, the learner is where the teaching should begin. Each student comes with prior
experience, perceptions, and misconceptions about the world. This is where music educators
begin planning the curriculum. The role of the teacher is then to assess where students are and
decide what to teach. It is the role of the teacher to ensure that individual learners gain sufficient

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knowledge through meaningful experiences to be able to understand and use music as symbolic
system with which to know the world.
Dewey writes about what he calls the experiential continuum. He writes that this
continuum is involved in every attempt to discriminate between experiences that are worth
while educationally and those that are not (p. 24). This means that the role of the learner is to
actively engage in experiences that are worthwhile. As Dewey states, experiences are not either
educative or not educative, but rather fall on a continuum. I agree that the new experiences we
have often are connected with knowledge and experience we have, but the strength of these
connections is where we determine how meaningful or educative an experience is. The stronger
the connections are that are made between new and old experiences, the more meaningful the
new experience will be. This means that educators need to build on the prior experience of their
students. In order to establish this sort of environment, but before they can build on this prior
experience, they need to know what it is.
In order for the teacher to know where the students are in terms of experience and
knowledge, he or she needs to find ways to assess students. The pre-instructional assessment
should relate to the goal of the unit or lesson. For example, a teacher who is teaching a unit about
music in the civil rights movement might ask, How was music used as a tool for protest during
the civil rights movement? This question allows for accurate assessment of the students prior
experiences. A discussion of the topic will also give students who are not as familiar with the
topic insight into the prior experience of others. The question also bears in mind the end goal of
the unit. Assessment of musical intelligence, then, needs to be role specific (Reimer, p. 232).
Reimer argues that when we are assessing our students, we need to assess specific aspects of
their musicianship, which Reimer calls roles. For example, when assessing a students ability
to determine form from a recording, we are addressing what Reimer labels the music theory

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role. The teachers role is to be always assessing where students are in each of these different
roles and using that knowledge to build and create new experiences. The level of musical
intelligence at one point in time compared to musical intelligence at a later point can determine
musical growth.
All of these aspects of music and music education relate to how we engage with music,
the purpose of music, and therefore how and why we learn music. Music is a powerful tool we
can utilize in a way that allows us to discover new concepts, convey and share ideas, and
understand the world in which we live. It is imperative that we as music educators provide our
students with experiences that allow them to become fluent in this symbolic system so they can
use it to grow as musicians and as learners in general.

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Works Cited
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi, 1998. Print.
Green, Lucy. How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education. Aldershot,
Hants: Ashgate, 2002. Print.
Kelly, Steven N. Teaching Music in American Society: A Social and Cultural Understanding of
Teaching Music. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
"Music Education and Reading/Verbal Skills." NAfME Advocacy Groundswell . N.p., n.d.
Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
Reimer, Bennett. A Philosophy of Music Education. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1970. Print.
Shively, J. L. Constructing musical understandings. In B. Hanley and T. Goolsby
(Eds.). Musical understanding. Toronto: Canadian Music Educators Association. 2002.
Print.
Turino, Thomas. Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: U of Chicago,
2008. Print.