This article synthesizes current dance education research that demonstrates connections between the culturally relevant pedagogy and student academic achievement, details why the arts are exponentially important and valuable to all communities, and provides practical solutions for the everyday teacher. Through a pointed focus on culturally…

Predicting the future is a challenging task for music education, requiring both retrospection, analysis of current events, and foresight. This article examines several predictions from 2001 and challenges music educators to consider factors that may influence the future of teaching music in society.

Federal education legislation over the past ten years has increasingly focused on high-stakes testing in the areas of science, technology, English, and math. The resultant decrease in time and funding for the arts has caused administrators to reconsider the role of the arts in education. Although a great deal of literature has been written about…

The purpose of this study was to examine how instrumental music educator skills are being evaluated in current undergraduate programs. While accrediting organizations mandate certain elements of these programs, they provide limited guidance on what evaluative approaches should be used. Instrumental music teacher educators in the College Music…

The recruitment and retention of the highest-quality artist educators in colleges and universities is a key element in supporting strong K-12 arts education programs. Artist educators must be expert in at least two disciplines: their art forms and education. However, the peer review processes commonly employed to recommend higher education faculty…

In education policy, practice, and discussion, we find ourselves caught between responsibility--fidelity to one's experience, conscience, and discernment--and a narrow kind of accountability. In order to preserve integrity, we (educators and leaders) must maintain independence of thought while skillfully articulating our work to the outside world.…

An immediate critical task of the arts education field is to resolve the polarities of low-quality integrative and overly marginalized discipline-specific approaches to teaching in schools. In pursuing this challenge, the author defines three teaching approaches--arts as craftsmanship, arts as play, and arts as inquiry--and calls for re-weighted…

Music education in K-12 school programs may continue to lose ground to other subjects unless music education and performance studies are viewed as interdependent. The author argues that the reinvigoration of both music education and performance requires that the studio experience integrate a research-based pedagogy, multi-stylistic range of…

This study investigates teaching artists whose work is rooted in dance and theater. Although the term remains both ambiguous and debated, teaching artists provide a good deal of arts education delivery in P-12 and afterschool programs throughout the United States. Based on survey data from a range of teaching artists across the nation (N = 133),…

In this article we propose a policy intended to alleviate the typical problems of student internships and improve the usefulness and relevancy of any partnership. We extend previous ideas about professional development schools or partnerships to eliminate the disconnect between K-12 schools and universities and add a component of multiple…

The field of dance arts education in the United States is in an entirely different place today than it was at the turn of the century. Much of this change is due to a convergence of events that involved: federal and state legislation, policy, and funding that supported dance in arts education; a forty-year transition of dance out of departments of…

Reflective teachers are always searching for ways to improve their teaching. When this reflection becomes intentional and systematic, they are engaging in teacher research. This type of research, sometimes called "action research", can help bridge the gap between theory and practice by addressing topics that are relevant to practicing teachers.…

Arts education partnerships have become an important means for developing and sustaining school arts programs that engage students, teachers, and communities. Tapping into additional perspectives, resources, and support from arts agencies and postsecondary institutions, arts education partnerships strengthen arts education infrastructure within…

The intersection of the arts with technology can provide educators with a focus that is more in tune with students' lived experiences, providing a relevant context for the making of meaning. Yet the technological advances of the last few decades have done little to alter the pedagogical practice of most music teachers. Teaching with technology…

Strong school-university partnerships yield effective music teachers. However, music teacher preparation curriculum has undergone little reform over the years, resulting in a homogeneous P-12 curriculum. Encouraging preservice music teachers to consider cultural and pedagogical differences holds promise for changing music teacher preparation and…