The Core Arts Standards are now available for public review.
A video orientation helps in providing some background information but you will probably want to take a look at the conceptual framework of the core arts standards as well.
It is critical that music educators participate in the public review process, analyze the proposed standards, provide specific feedback and critique, and propose potential alternatives if they are not satisfied with those proposed.
It may be helpful to consider concrete examples of music teaching and learning and then determine to what extent they are supported by, addressed by, or limited by the proposed standards throughout the review process. It may also be beneficial for thinking in terms of possibilities besides what currently exists in music programs.
For instance, as I review the standards I might be keeping in mind some of the types of musicking I discussed in my recent article Towards convergence: Adapting music education for contemporary society and participatory culture.
In addition to the music standards, music educators might also be interested in the new Media Arts standards. (In the spirit of transparency, I am a member of the media arts writing team)
A description of media arts is available on the NCCAS website.
You will notice that the standards incorporate aspects of Understanding by Design (UBD) by Wiggins and McTighe, particularly in terms of articulating enduring understandings and essential questions. You can access a set of links to resources related to UBD I’ve curated with others as a service of the Consortium for Digital, Popular, and Participatory Culture in Music Education.
For inspiration in the review process, consider the following quotes from Elliot Eisner’s The Arts and The Creation of Mind:
“When the teacher’s perspective is one that might be called emergent rather than prescriptive the stakes for pedagogical innovation are higher and the demands greater. And when students themselves are invited to have a hand in defining their own purposes and in framing their own curricular activities, uniformity among students with respect to what they do and what they learn is much less likely. The more teachers open the door to the suggestions of students, the more opportunities they provide for genuine individualization” (p. 152).
“I believe standards can make a contribution to arts education if they do the following: if they represent in a meaningful and nonrigid way the values we embrace and the general goals we seek to attain, if they provide those who plan curricula with an opportunity to discuss and debate what is considered important to teach and learn, and if they suggest criteria that can be used to make judgments about our effectiveness. Standards should be viewed as aids, as heuristics for debate and for planning. They should not be regarded as contracts or prescriptions that override local judgments. My argument is an argument not for mindlessness but for a recognition of the virtues of diversity and of the need for curriculum planners and teachers to be sensitive to local circumstances and individual efforts” (p. 173)
“If standards are conceived us as fixed models of outcomes, then their appropriateness in a domain in which ingenuity and imagination are important is questionable. Criteria, however, are ideas that prompt a teacher or evaluator to inquire into the work at hand in order to discern its educational and aesthetic value. Criteria invite inquiry; they do not close it off” (p. 176).