Survey regarding current trends in pedagogy

Jennifer Snodgrass

Over the past year, a group of theorists representing both the College Music Society and the Society for Music Theory began to discuss the ideas presented in the document “Transforming Music Study from Its Foundations,” now best known as the CMS manifesto. This group of theorists will be featured in a panel at the upcoming SMT meeting this fall. A website has been developed in order to provide more information on the panel, and to enable those who will be unable to attend the meeting to ask questions of the panelists. http://manifestopanel.weebly.com/

 

In the interest of developing a better understanding of some of the current teaching practices of teachers of theory and ear training, a survey has been developed to be distributed nationwide and beyond.  We are asking that all teachers of the musicianship core, including performers teaching core courses, share their responses. The final results will be presented at the SMT meeting.  http://manifestopanel.weebly.com/survey.html

 

We look forward to the discussion!

Jennifer Snodgrass

Over the past 24 hours, over 90 individuals have responded to the survey of theory teaching.  This has created an extraordinary amount of data that will be assessed over the next few months and presented at the national SMT meeting.  We encourage you to continue to share the link with your colleagues teaching music theory and aural skills at all institutions.  As we move forward in this research, I would like to mention that it is not the goal of this panel to endorse the CMS manifesto nor is there any hidden agenda.  The ideas presented in the manifesto are those of the seven members of the task force and do not represent the entire membership of the College Music Society, the Society for Music Theory, all members of this panel, or, most importantly, the current trends of every university. The large-scale recommendations from the CMS document ask faculty to consider new ways of thinking about creativity, integration, and diversity in the classroom. In order to start the discussion, the panel felt we needed to better understand the current teaching trends from as many universities as possible. It is the belief of the panel members that many members of the music theory community may already integrate the three pillars outlined by the CMS task force into their classroom approaches, but there is no way of knowing this without conducting research into the matter.  This survey is illuminating some of the fine teaching practices as well as some of the challenges presented in the field.  Let's keep the discussion going and many thanks for your participation.