Composing Our Future ─ Preparing Music Educators to Teach Composition

Composing Our Future is the ideal book for music teacher-educators seeking to learn more about composition education. While much has been written on the value of composition, both pre-service and practicing teachers still report a degree of trepidation when asked to engage in composition or in leading students to compose. In order to prepare pre-service teachers and meet the needs of practitioners already in the field, music teacher educators need resources to guide the development of undergraduate and graduate curriculum, specific courses, professional development workshops, and environments where composition education can begin, grow and flourish.

This volume offers insight to current practices written by authors engaged in this work. Each chapter provides information, solid theory, and examples of successful practices that teacher educators can draw upon in the creation and implementation of engaging and invigorating practices in music education. This information includes:

i?? A charge to teacher educators to embrace composition as a critical component in teacher preparation
i?? An examination of the philosophical issues surrounding composition's inclusion in, and exclusion from, music teacher education
i?? An overview of what is known about child composers and the work they create and how to help teachers draw vital information from that body of literature
i?? An examination of the relationship between creativity and composition
i?? Examples of successful practices ranging from working with individual special learners to teaching in a variety of school-based teaching contexts
i?? Models of university and school-based partnerships to facilitate pre-service teachers' transition from collegiate study to school-based work with children
i?? An exploration into new tools, partnerships and opportunities available through technology
i?? A vision for creating and sustaining meaningful composition programs both in colleges and in PK-12 schools

Michele Kashub is Professor of Music Education at the University of Southern Maine. She is a frequent workshop presenter on the topic of music composition in the classroom and she has published in such journals as Research Studies in Music Education, Choral Journal, Music Educators Journal, and Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning. Janice Smith is Associate Professor of Music Education at Queens College, City University of New York. Like Kaschub, she is a frequent workshop presenter and also auther of articles which have appeared in several music education journals. Together they are authors of Minds on Music: Composition for Creative and Critical Thinking (2009).