The Arts Advantage: Expanding Arts Education in the Boston Public Schools

Presents findings from a survey on the availability of arts education in the city's public schools, relevant school traits, funding needs, and partners. Offers recommendations and strategies for a three-year expansion plan. Highlights best practices

Philosophies of Empirical and Habitual Teaching: Healthy Vocal Methodologies in Higher Education for the Twenty-first Century

Despite research done on healthy vocal methodologies, there are continuous changes in how best to prepare collegiate music students, relating to their emotional health through empirical and habitual teachings. This study will show how healthy vocal methodologies can influence higher education vocal students of the twenty-first century. This qualitative study can build a bridge to related topics in an exploratory framework with perspectives on: Dr. William Hettler’s Emotional Well-Being and its seven dimensions, Jean Piaget\u27s Cognitive Construction Theory, Peter Salovey and John Mayer\u27s Emotional Intelligence Theory, Daniel Goleman’s Social Emotional Learning Methodology, Susan Brookhart’s “Classroometrics” Theory, Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Imagery-Based Learning Methodology, and Learning-Based Methodology. By applying these theories and methodologies to the study, one can gain a better understanding of the process of higher education music students\u27 vocal background. In addition, music educators can facilitate and address relevant concerns regarding healthy vocal techniques that one’s emotional condition may influence. This study highlights gaps in the research on constructive and adverse effects of habitual and empirical vocal technique studies through interviews and facilitated lessons with higher education participants, which is essential because a solid foundation for music students\u27 success begins with vocal health. Based on new and developing perspectives of empirical and habitual teachings, this research will seek to explore findings benefiting music educators, vocal students, and further develop music specialists’ knowledge of what may affect higher education music students\u27 vocal health by discovering constructive and adverse habits that arise from empirical and habitual musical experiences

Teachers' and students' conceptions of the professional world

In the original 'Improving Student Learning' project led by Prof Graham Gibbs in 1991, one of the case studies focused on approaches to learning on a BA(Hons) Graphic Information Design course. The case study, led by Allan Davies, had the modest intention of trying to determine whether a particular curriculum innovation encouraged a deep approach to learning. Our only significant tool then was Bigg's SOLO taxonomy. Eleven years later and the innovators have moved on, the course has disappeared and the research context and methodologies have developed. During this period, research has suggested that both teachers and students describe their understanding of teaching and learning according to their perception of the teaching/ learning environment (Ramsden, 1992; Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). Studies have identified variation in the way that teachers experience teaching (Samuelowicz & Bain, 1992; Prosser, Trigwell & Taylor, 1994 for example) and variation in the way teachers experience student learning (Bruce & Gerber, 1995). More recently, Reid (1997) has widened the context of research by examining the relation between the experience of work and teaching/learning within the music discipline. In further research (Reid 1999), relations were found within the music discipline where teachers' and students' experience of one of three defined dimensions was strongly related to the ways in which they understood teaching and learning music. The musicians (and their students) described their experience of the professional world in three hierarchically related ways. This constitution has become known as the 'Music' Entity. In 1999, following a fortuitous meeting at the ISL conference in York, Davies and Reid conducted a joint enquiry, using a phenomenographic approach, to determine the 'Design' entity (Davies and Reid, 2001). This research focused on discerning the critical differences, or variation, in the way teachers and students experience and understand their subject and its relation to the professional design world. The outcomes of this research has, consequently, begun to impact on student learning through course design and, in particular, assessment. This paper will be a comparative study of the research already carried out by the authors in a number of disciplines in which the same focus and methodology has been used