Music Educators Journal

What does effective feedback look like in the music classroom? In this article, we explore a prominent perspective on feedback proposed by scholar John Hattie and his colleagues and then provide practical examples for application in music contexts. We begin by defining what feedback is and then explore what makes it effective and provide strategies for teachers to develop more effective feedback skills. Using this understanding of what makes feedback effective for learners, teachers can help students be active partners in the learning process and to achieve their goals with greater musical understanding.

This article offers music educators ideas for supporting English learners in music classrooms. Music teachers across all grade levels work with English Learners, a diverse group of students with varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In the classroom, planning specific instructional supports can increase English Learners’ participation and achievement in music. This article encourages educators to approach English learners from an assets-based perspective, creating a welcoming classroom environment that positively benefits students. With the goal of providing access to music education for all students, music teachers can become advocates for English learners in their classrooms and schools.

As we work to connect equity to our curriculum and pedagogy, a rhizomatic approach may provide a valuable lens for reconsidering traditional conventions. Such an approach underlines interconnected multiplicity with a noncentered, nonhierarchical emphasis. Applying a rhizomatic method, I offer music teachers some practical applications to challenge conventional curricular tendencies in subtle but important ways. Instead of using an additive approach to the Western classical canon, this approach helps to engage in music comparatively or relationally, which can enable teachers and students to think broadly across categories by recognizing the interconnections between musics. More important, lessons adopting a rhizomatic approach may help teachers and students consider all musics as bearers of equal status and honor many diverse forms of music.

Playing musical instruments represents an engaging and important feature of music-making for children. Music teachers can support students with physical differences and disabilities using inclusive mindsets and practices, such as making adaptations to the instruments or the playing style. If teachers are aware of the variety of options available, they will be better able help all players achieve their fullest potential. This article draws on relevant research and literature to describe who faces limitations in instrumental settings, conceptualize disability, outline music-specific options for accommodating learners’ physical differences, and offer instrument-specific strategies that may be useful to both general and instrumental music teachers. Focusing on students’ strengths, increasing teacher knowledge and awareness, and using instrument-specific adaptations can improve educational opportunities for all.

Much like an effective speaker, a flexible musician is competent across multiple settings. The sociolinguistic theory of code-switching can be a useful tool to better understand how musicians acquire a set of skills and knowledge to support music-making in a range of activities in and outside of school and throughout society. In this article, readers learn about the specific skills and knowledge musical code-switchers rely on the most when moving among a diverse range of musical events. This article includes examples of how code-switching experiences can improve music classes, lessons, and rehearsals and support meaningful independent music-making.