Contemporary Issues in Music Education

There were two major questions facing music educators in the modern era. Number one is “What is the biggest issue facing music educators today, and how do we fix it?” and number two is “How do we face an ever-changing student population and provide high-quality music education experiences for all students?” These questions go hand-in-hand, as one of the biggest issues facing music educators is encompassed in the second question: how do we face an ever-changing dynamic in music education, and what makes us versatile and resilient enough educators that we can face these situations head-on and not buckle under the pressure. The biggest problem facing music educators IS the ever-changing circumstances in which they work, and the result is a lack of high-quality music education experiences for all students. In general, teachers face the world, and are told that their first five years are the period of time in which they learn and fail so they can grow into a quality music educator. But what if this time period was unnecessary? What if we bred music educators in such a way that they were ready to teach as soon as they hit the ground in their first classroom? In fixing the former, you fix the latter and provide the quality music education that students deserve. This paper will address the three major topics that I believe are the most pressing issues that music educators face, and their effects on providing high-quality music education experiences for all students. These topics will be;

1.) Teacher preparedness programs and their shortcomings.

2.) Collegiate education benchmarks

3.) Ownership of the educational process

In addressing these three issues, we can come to a better understanding of ourselves as educators, and in turn, create higher-quality educational environments in all aspects.

Beginning with teacher preparedness programs and their shortcomings is a dangerous area to start. This should be prefaced by saying that not every collegiate program has shortcomings, and that a lot of times, colleges are restricted in the time that they are allotted to spend with future teachers, as well as financial/logistical restrictions. This does not make all teacher preparedness programs bad, but it does illuminate the fact that there are factors at play over which we have no control, and in learning to focus on controlling the controllables, we can learn to move forward as educators beyond the status quo. In a study by a cohort of researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland1, researchers concluded the following;

“In this study, we found evidence that teacher preparedness, and in particular mathematics teachers’ self-assessments of their initial preparedness, or TFIP, is related to their long-term retention in their first schools, the school district that subsidized their entry into teaching, and the teaching profession.”

Additionally, a second article written in collaboration by researchers at the Center for Music Research, School of Music, The Florida State University2 posited the following statement; 

“Teacher attrition may be influenced (and reduced) by any of a number of variables involved in the process of preparing new music teachers. Most of these have been advocated for years; traditional variables include adequate preparation in music skills (Kuhn, 1972) and teaching skills (Jellison & Wolfe, 1987; Moore & Kuhn, 1974), as well as the development of classroom-management techniques and subject-matter presentation (Madsen & Madsen, 1998, Madsen & Yarborough, 1985.)”

As evidenced above, the preparedness of a teacher is critical in the development of sustainable programs. In citing my own alma mater as an example, the current curriculum map requires enrollment in a Teacher Education Program (TEP) at the end of the second year of study. Additionally, students are restricted from certain educational courses until they are admitted into the TEP. Before admission to the TEP, undergraduate students take Foundations of Music Education, Human Growth and Development, and brass/woodwind/strings/percussion methods as education courses. Once admitted, the student is required to take a number of additional education courses, including Vocal/Instrumental Methods and Materials, Vocal Pedagogy for the Music Educator, Materials and Methods for the Elementary Grades, and Content Area Literacy3. However, it is worth noting that while all of these courses have valuable information in them, none of them place you in front of a classroom to teach. The first time most students are likely to be placed in front of a classroom is during their student teaching, which takes place in their final semester. Additionally, students are often required to obtain field experience hours, but are required to set up and obtain these hours on their own. In supplying them with each class, providing parameters, and cooperating teachers, a change could be made to provide students with educational opportunities before they are placed in charge of a full classroom.

By changing these preparedness boundaries, and allowing/requiring students to teach ensembles of peers/students (such as community ensembles, concert/chamber groups, etc.), we could more adequately prepare the student for stepping in front of a classroom for the first time. This would be a collaborative effort between the education department and the music department, but it is a worthwhile endeavor in the long run for improving teacher retention in music schools.

Ownership of the educational process is something that is hard to measure. Student engagement, ownership, autonomy, and overall interest are incredibly difficult things to quantify without additional research, and would require self-assessment from varying sources, as well as creating an entire project centered around quantifying current student self-assessment on preparedness, as well as established teachers' self-assessment on preparedness from their alma mater. While undoubtedly the findings of this study would be interesting, it’s surely a topic that can not be explored in a small number of pages, and as such, we will be driving forward this portion on previous evidence, as well as drawing our own speculations.

A number of researchers from the University of Lousiville, Lousville, Kentucky, Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana, and the RAND Corporation presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego, California in April, 2004.4  The purpose of their paper was to test the correlation between student engagement and student learning. Their focus was expanding on the correlation provided by P.T. Ewell, and while their findings were not as conclusive as they had hoped, they were able to expand upon the idea, potentially prompting further research. Their conclusions were as follows;

On balance, the results of this study corroborate what many other researchers have found: that student engagement is linked positively to desirable learning outcomes such as critical thinking and grades. Although the relationships between engagement and academic performance were not as robust as we might hope, they were more conclusive than those reported by Ewell… Our findings, along with others (Ewell, 2002; Klein et al., 2005; Pasarella and Terenzini, 2005) underscore the fact that learning outcomes stem from a variety of sources, of which student engagement is only one… Indeed, the positive relationships between engagement and outcomes described in this paper are relatively small in magnitude. A large portion —and in some cases, a majority— of the variance in key outcomes remains to be explained by yet undiscovered factors.”

The above research provides a number of ideas to consider: student engagement in the learning process results in more desirable outcomes, student engagement is not the only factor at play when measuring desirable outcomes, and further research is needed to understand the process and how to refine it. While the evidence points towards the fact that there are likely other factors that contribute equally, if not more than student engagement, student engagement remains one of the factors that is controllable, and previously researched, leading it to be a starting point to revitalizing our current educational practices.

Ultimately, by addressing the major issues facing music educators today, which in this author’s opinion are preparedness and experiences early in the educational process, we can create lifelong teachers who are prepared to instill in their students a high-quality education and remain in the field to continue moving music education forward.

References

1. Viviani, W., Brantlinger, A., & Grant, A. A. (2023). Teacher Preparedness and Retention. Teacher Education Quarterly, 50(3), 54–77. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27257019

2. Madsen, C. K., & Hancock, C. B. (2002). Support for Music Education: A Case Study of Issues Concerning Teacher Retention and Attrition. Journal of Research in Music Education, 50(1), 6–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/3345689

3. Morehead State University, Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, School of Creative Arts. (n.d.). Music voice BME curriculum map. Retrieved June 27, 2025, from https://www.moreheadstate.edu/_files/files/academics/curriculum-maps/caudill-college-of-arts- humanities-and-social-sciences/school-of-creative-arts/music/map-music-voice-bme.pdf

4. Carini, R. M., Kuh, G. D., & Klein, S. P. (2006). Student Engagement and Student Learning: Testing the Linkages. Research in Higher Education, 47(1), 1–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40185882