I had a fabulous time at the 2007 SMTE Symposium this past weekend. Congratulations to everyone at University of North Carolina at Greensboro that organized and ran the symposium so smoothly. It was great seeing people I’ve met at previous conferences and meeting new colleagues as well. The conference was packed with important presentations and I learned much from the research, best practices and position papers. I also had a lot of fun giving my presentation with Janet Barrett. I’ve posted resources on the SMTE 2007 section of the presentations page.
One exciting aspect of the SMTE symposium was the role that ASPAs play both throughout the weekend and during the year. The twelve ASPAs (Areas of Strategic Planning and Action) are organized around specific themes and issues in higher education. It is not by chance that they are considered special action groups rather than special interest groups. While the members of ASPAS are certainly interested in the particular focus of the group it is the planning and action that make them such an important and unique part of SMTE. Each ASPA was given at least 45 minutes built into the schedule on Friday to discuss important issues and then 2 hours on Friday to come up with two specific goals to be accomplished by the next ASPA meeting which will take place during a pre-conference at MENC National in April of 2008. The inclusion of ASPAS in conferences would be an excellent addition to other music education conferences.
Each session I attended gave much food for thought; from wanting to know more about what graduates of music education degree programs make of their degree once they leave the university to expanding the way we think about music education methodologies in to fully encompass teaching and learning and considering Schwab’s four commonplaces in relation to methods classes. If you weren’t at this year’s symposium and have an interest in music teacher education, I highly recommend going to the next one two years from now.