Faculty and Staff

Today, when we think of policymaking we think first of the nation-state, the world’s foremost political entity, although other types of entities generate policies as well. Regardless of the source, in practice policy-making often represents the interests of political and other special groups. Far too often, policies purported to support aspects of culture such education, music, and the other arts reflect interests that have little or nothing to do with education or the arts. The process of establishing connections across numerous realms of human discourse and activity, called globalization, is increasing at a dizzying rate.

Educational policies increasingly aim toward training people to think independently and creatively and to work productively in small groups, both necessary attributes in an environment that requires the production, marketing, and distribution of new goods and services to individuals and increasingly numerous and diverse niche groups. Arts education is now seen as an effective means for helping students develop their individual creative abilities and for learning to work together in small groups. An additional reason is that unique, diverse experiences in the arts can be linked to standards of excellence applied to the development of the specialized high-quality goods and services demanded by the global economy.

Many countries are in the process of modernizing, which means, among other things, that their population growth is slowing while education, health care, transportation, and communication are improving. The results of modernization are political, economic, social, and technological. Results of modernization and implications for music, education, and music education include:

1. Increasing political egalitarianism implies less censorship of music, education, and music     
    education.
2. Increasing wealth should lead to more access to music instruction and technology.
3. More formal education will provide more opportunities for music education for children and
    university students.
4. Smaller families could lead to more reliance on institutions for music instruction.
5. Increasing social problems, including weaker community ties, may lead to more reliance on
    institutions for music instruction and less interest in folk music.
6. Greater separation of church and state will result in less teaching of religious music.
7. Technological innovations will lead to more and different electronic teaching of music.
8. More multitasking will require the teaching of music technology.
9. Increasing multiculturalism will require ongoing examinations of which music to teach.
10. Advancing popular culture will result in more popular music being taught.

More egalitarian societies may also require more practice-oriented and less intellectual approaches to music. Professional practice in modernizing countries will tend more toward inclusion and less toward exclusion.

تخضع العديد من البلدان لعملية تحديث، وهذا يعني من زوايا أخرى، أن النمو السكاني ضعيف في حين أن التعليم والرعاية الصحية والنق والاتصالات في تقدم. نتائج التطوير منها سياسية،اقتصادية، اجتماعية، وتكنولوجية. تشمل نتائج التطوير والآثار المترتبة على الموسيقى، والتعليم، والتربية الموسيقية: (1) زيادة المساواة السياسية تؤدي إلى تخفيف الرقابة على الموسيقى، والتعليم، والتربية الموسيقية، (2) ارتفاع مستوى المعيشة يؤدي إلى خلق فرص الحصول على تعلم الموسيقى والتكنولوجيا (3) التعليم الرسمي سيوفر المزيد من الفرص لتدريس الموسيقى للأطفال وطلاب الجامعات، (4) إمكانية الاعتماد على معاهد تعليم الموسيقى من قبل الأسر الصغيرة (5) زيادة المشاكل الاجتماعية، بما في ذلك المجمعات الضعيفة، قد يؤدي إلى مزيد من الاعتماد على معاهد تعليم الموسيقى وقلة الاهتمام في تعلم الموسيقى الشعبية. (6) الفصل بين الكنيسة والدولة يؤدي إلى قلة تدريس الموسيقى الدينية. (7) الابتكارات التكنولوجية ستؤدي إلى زيادة تعلم الموسيقى الالكترونية. 8) تعدد المهام تتطلب المزيد من تدريس الموسيقى التكنولوجية. (9) زيادة التعددية الثقافية يتطلب الامتحانات الجارية منها لتعليم الموسيقى، و(10) تقدم الثقافة الشعبية سيؤدي إلى زيادة الطلب على دراستها. أكثر المجتمعات التي يوجد فيها مساواة تتطلب إلى مزيد من التدريب العملي للموسيقى على حساب النهج الفكري. الممارسة المهنية في البلدان المتطورة تميل أكثر نحو الشمولية وتستبعد الإقصاء.

There are two types of change in music education: widespread, systemic change that we will call paradigmatic; and smaller changes resulting from the day-to-day work of music educators, called praxial changes after the Greek word praxis. Some music educators confuse the two types of change and their causes, and they beseech the profession to bring about system-wide paradigmatic change. In so doing, they are insisting on the profession doing the impossible, as individuals and as a collective. The calling for and then failure to achieve unattainable goals is a part of our heritage that stretches back to the days of colonial singing school masters and the cultural pundits at Harvard.

Those folks strove for paradigmatic change in the form of reforming the public's musical tastes, and they failed completely. Before that, our misreading of Plato's philosophy as history seems to contribute to the modern myth that the music education profession can bring about paradigmatic changes in schooling. At the same time, like the world at large, music education continues to improve significantly, despite the hand-wringing of the doomsayers within the field. As has happened throughout history, future improvements are likely to come from gradual, praxial changes, and in the form of additions to the elective curriculum, not in additional required general music or in the dismantling of existing elective offerings.

Readability formulas are used widely in education, and increasingly in business and government. Over 30 years of research on more than 200 readability formulas has demonstrated moderate to strong predictive correlations with reading comprehension. In this study, five well-known readability formulas correlated highly with each other when applied to selected recent historical articles (N = 22) from two music education research journals. The mean level of difficulty (readability) for all 22 articles was grade 14.04, near the beginning of the second year of college. Since research shows that most people read below their highest completed school grade and also prefer easier materials, this is probably an appropriate level of difficulty for the presumptive readers of these two journals (i.e., holders of undergraduate and graduate degrees). Professors, librarians, and others responsible for guiding students toward reading material at appropriate levels of readability could benefit from these results.

||中文摘要
《音樂教育研究期刊》與《音樂教育歷史研究期刊》中部分文章的閱讀難度水準
Alexandra H. Humphreys
Arizona State University—Phoenix, U.S.A.
Jere T. Humphreys
Arizona State University—Tempe, U.S.A.
可讀性估算公式被廣泛運用在教育領域，而且在商業和政府部門的使用頻率與日俱增。在過去的30 年裏，
研究人員共研發了200 多種可讀性估算公式，這些公式所估算的可讀性指標與實際閱讀理解程度具有中度
或很強的相關性。本文使用了五種著名的可讀性估算公式來評估最近發表的22 篇音樂教育史文章，發現這
五種公式的計算結果有很強的相關性。這22 篇文章的平均閱讀難度水準是14.04， 接近大學二年級初期的
閱讀水準。由於先前的研究结果显示大部分人喜歡閱讀難度水準低於本人學歷水準的文章以及比較容易理
解的文章，這兩種期刊中文章的閱讀難度水準非常適合預計的閱讀對象（有學士學位和研究生學位的人）。
本文研究結果可能會對那些大學教授，圖書館員和其他負責指導學生閱讀的人員有所幫助。

Strong relationships exist between modern popular music and the democratic societies that produce and consume it. Some of the music may sound revolutionary, and much of it does advocate changes in the status quo. Nevertheless, it is the music of the masses, the music of democracy, music that could not and did not exist in anything like its modern forms prior to:

1. The evolution of democratic societies.
2. Massive capitalism-driven economic improvements for the proletariat.
3. The invention and evolution of electronic technology.

It is the music of, by, and for the great masses of us. Music educators should persist in teaching this music in all its contexts, some of which are not easily accessible through performance alone. This article cites numerous examples of social and political meanings of popular music in democracies.