AS AT APRIL 27 - PUBLICATION
The Quality Music Education Framework is published!! Please see the link to the framework below.
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/arts/Pages/QMEF.aspx The document is dense, and you have to hyperlink it with other documents that DET provides to support professional practice.
AS AT APRIL 17
In
summary, committee members have met with the AEU leadership team, briefed the
newly appointed Education advisor for the Hon. Mr. Merlino, held a forum in
Geelong, and written numerous letters.
On top of a regular full time job, these voluntary efforts make a big
difference to the whole community. Well
done to those who have invested this time!
Our
collective work continues ……….
Music Education Expert Reference
Group
During
Term 1, members of the MEERG did not convene.
We have become concerned that substantive work around the VCAA Music
Education Guide, and the Melbourne University Quality Music Education Framework
has occurred yet we have not heard about publication dates. With the release of
such substantive documents, the music education community would reap great
benefits. We look forward to these
publications and will carry the news to our readers when we are informed of
dates.
sMAG Events: Public Forum Geelong
We
were welcomed to Deakin by Sue Buchan, and conversed around a beautiful
boardroom.
We
heard discussions from each delegate on the challenges and successes in their
own contexts. Thank you to everyone who
made an effort to be in Geelong for the afternoon, and thank you to all those
who responded to the Survey Monkey.
Based
on the collective feedback, we finalized the key Inquiry recommendations to
write to the Minister around future funding in the May 2018 budget:
The main targeted recommendations
requested for 2018 funding outlined in the letter were as follows:
STRATEGY: Chapter 4
Recommendation 4: Developing a new Victorian Strategy for School Music Education (p77)
Fund the development of a Statewide Music Education Strategy;
STRATEGY: Chapter 4
Recommendation 4: Developing a new Victorian Strategy for School Music Education (p77)
Fund the development of a Statewide Music Education Strategy;
Fund
a promotion plan for music education; Recommendation 5 (p.78).
TERTIARY
SECTOR: CHAPTER 5 – Supporting Victorian teachers to
deliver Music Education
Fund breadth and depth in teacher education ( both pre service and professional development) for long term, rich transformational change in Music Education; Recommendation 9.
Fund breadth and depth in teacher education ( both pre service and professional development) for long term, rich transformational change in Music Education; Recommendation 9.
SECONDARY
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PROGRAM (SIMP) CHAPTER 6 –
RECOMMENDATIONS 13 – 17 Fund the
STRENGTHENING of the SIMP in Victorian schools
Fund and instigate the inquiry
Recommendation 17: Review the base school model for employing instrumental
music teachers (p.142)
If you wish to receive a copy of
sMAG's letter to the minister, please send an email to
smag.schoolmusicactiongroup@gmail.com
Further,
we wrote to the Federal Minister for Education, Mr. Simon Birmingham, and
requested Federal funding towards the Tertiary Sector, to improve
outcomes/numbers of teachers graduating with a Music Specialism. We cited the Music Australia delegation in
Term 3,2017, evidencing the strong support Music Education improvement outcomes
has throughout Australia.
FUTURE EVENT: PUBLIC FORUM – ELECTION.
Future date: July School Holiday break – Most likely July 11 or
12.
VENUE:
The University of Melbourne, Conservatorium of Music.
FOCUS: Victorian Music
Education Charter
The forum
will review the proposed Charter for everyone to put to all political
candidates.
For ease of
distribution, it will be loaded onto Change.org and then people asked to
sign. Individuals may then use the
volume of signatures as a basis for writing to all election candidates in your
own electorate.
SIMP.
sMAG
Vic has focused significant attention towards the Secondary Instrumental Music
Program (SIMP) in Term 1, 2018. The new Permission
to Teach (PTT) policy came into effect on October 1, 2017. The policy is
publicly available on the VIT website: http://www.vit.vic.edu.au/news/news/2017/permission-to-teach-policy-changes.
sMAG is dismayed that the outworking of this
policy has not yet resulted in the outcomes we were looking for. We have continued the conversations with the
VIT and the AEU around the interpretation of the new policy. We anticipate the
work will continue into 2018; and continue to be somewhat intensive.
The VIT Review, Report and Government response
was published in Term 1, 2018.
The
report and the Government response is available online here: www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/Pages/vit.aspx
We wrote to Minister Merlino to convey a sMAG
response with a clear focus on the SIMP.
You can read a summary of our letter here: http://smag-schoolmusicactiongroup.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/smag-response-vit-review-report-and.html
Furthermore, Professor Gary McPherson has made
a public statement:
STATEMENT FROM PROF.
GARY MCPHERSON
“Instrumental
music education within Victorian public schools is now, sadly, well behind
other Australian states.
Nowhere
in Australia is instrumental music treated so poorly within the system, and
music teachers provided with so little support and recognition for the valued
work they undertake in our schools. I’m alarmed that highly qualified musicians
and music teachers are currently devalued to a point where
the system is willing to push the classification of Education Support
Staff - with a pay cut - at the expense of VIT registered
teachers who have equal status with other teachers within schools. Not only is
this short-sighted, but it will impact on the education of a whole generation
of students who are interested in music as a school subject.
Unless addressed, the current situation will reach a point whereby music education within Victorian public schools will in no way compare with what students in independent schools are able to experience, and students in other state public systems are offered to enhance their overall education. While the recommendations from the VIT review and report are encouraging, unless the salary and status of instrumental music teachers in government schools is immediately addressed, we stand to continue to lose good professionals to the independent schools system.
The
situation must be addressed soon so that Victoria is no longer regarded in
music education as the sad cousin of all other Australian states.”
Professor Gary
McPherson
Ormond Chair of
Music and Director
Melbourne
Conservatorium of Music
The University of
Melbourne
Should anyone have concerns with any SIMP
position employment conditions, we advise you bring the conversation to the
attention of Erin Aulich at the AEU: Erin.Aulich@aeuvic.asn.au.
Erin has supported the conversations around resolving
matters SIMP teachers face at every level. The AEU schools bulletin carries a
clear article written by Erin.
If you wish to receive a copy of the article, please email your request to smag.schoolmusicactiongroup@gmail.com
sMAG FACEBOOK GROUP.
Networking
and supporting one another on Facebook provides for rich sharing at times. Please join the group, and join the
conversations: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1101931139911842/
EVENT: AUSTRALIAN MUSIC VAULT.
The Australian Music Vault welcomed
a few of us with a personal tour. We had
a great time, and it is well worth attending.
The Vault has an associated
learning program for schools including new choir arrangements of Australian
songs, teacher professional development, hands on
workshops in lyric writing, music remixing and poster design and online
resources in the areas of music, design and music journalism. Be aware that
Australian Rock ‘n’ Roll includes subjects that are not permissible for student
viewing by DET policy. Ring ahead if you
arrange an excursion! Check it out here
- https://www.australianmusicvault.com.au/learn For
more information please email schools@artscentremelbourne.com.au
sMAG Committee Structure
After
4 years as Co-Chair and then Chair of sMAG, a substantial investment of my
personal time has been contributed. As
seasons in life change, my personal time focus now needs to be around
family. As such, I intend to step down
as Chair in the not too distant future.
Leadership will now move into a transitional phase. The committee has
accepted nominations of Fiona Phillips and Sue Buchan as Co-Chairs into the future.
Formalities will take place at the July public forum.
I want to thank the committee for the support, experience and
expertise. The last 4 years have been
invested in significant work, with significant gains. Most hard fought are
those matters around the SIMP. We have
much to celebrate; for the instruments in schools, for the free PD, and all the
new interest in music education – we have A LOT to celebrate. As sMAG moves forward, there needs to be a
clear investment in the tertiary sector, rural and regional access/equity and
continue to fight for the SIMP.
I have made many friends, and developed significant collegial
relationships in role. I want to thank
everyone in the sMAG community for the support over these last 4 years, and
hope that you would all bring your trust and support around the new leaders as
the community looks to grow in the future.
I will continue to support sMAG in a minor role, and happy to talk to
people as we move forward.
Recently, Dr. Robin S. Stevens published significant works on
Music Ed-Net. Dr. Stevens is held with
great regard amongst sMAG colleagues, both for his tireless service to Music
Education, and for his service as Vice Chair of sMAG for many years. Thank you, Robin! Your work is deeply appreciated.
Kind
Regards,
|
Attachments:
1.
Proposed new sMAG leadership structure
2. Brief from Dr Robin S. Stevens on
Music Ed- Net
Strategy Working Party
SIMP Working Party
Tertiary Training Working Party
Special Needs Working Party
Future Co-Chair Introductions:
Sue Buchan
I am looking forward to the
opportunity to contribute to the work of SMAG.
Much has been achieved under Catherine’s leadership and I thank her for
her time and energy.
My career has predominantly
involved teaching classroom music to children in early learning contexts and
from Foundation to Year 6. I have taught
in both government and non-government schools.
As part of my doctoral thesis, I sought to understand how music learning
could be implemented and developed by primary school generalist teachers. I am continuing to build on this in my work
with pre-service teachers at Deakin University.
Currently in Australian education, disadvantage is the single biggest
factor influencing educational outcomes.
The 2013 Victorian parliamentary inquiry into music education in
Victorian schools has identified the need for improved opportunities for
students in rural and regional areas to access music learning. By working to address this and other issues
identified in the inquiry, SMAG is well placed to contribute to the lives of
some of Victoria’s least advantaged children.
As we move through a transitional period, I look forward to
hearing from music educators.
I can be contacted at: smagsue@gmail.com
Fiona Phillips
Fiona has been teaching and educating in and through music
for over 25 years. She has taught in Early childhood settings, Primary and
secondary settings as both Generalist and Performing Arts / Music Specialist.
Fiona has had extensive experience in working with voices of all ages and spent
some time as Director of the Geelong Youth Choir. Fiona has conducted choirs in
many community and educational settings and has also worked in Musical Theatre
and Church organisations. Fiona has held positions in both the Government and
Private sector and has for the last 15 years has taught and mentored at the
tertiary level at Deakin University where she is currently completing her
doctorate. Fiona is particularly interested in building capacity and confidence
in primary and early years educators. Fiona holds certificates in Orff and
Kodaly and is comfortable with technology.
Her compositions for voice and instrumental are simple and
open with layers that reference environmental or emotional sounds and focus on
interactional rhythms and harmonies.
Fiona will
be an artist in this year’s Mountain to Mouth celebration at Geelong.
As we move through a transitional period, Fiona also looks
forward to hearing from music educators.
Contact: smagfiona@gmail.com
-->
New online music
education resources at music-ed.net
Robin Stevens[1]
The music-ed.net series of websites has been developed to
provide information on several aspects of music education, particularly those
dealing with the historical background of music education, as well as links to
other websites of interest to Australian music educators. The objectives of this series of websites are
to provide a resource for both music education professionals and the wider
community and to act as an archive of information that may otherwise be
unavailable in the future. Links to the
series of websites are included in the following order on the main index page at
http://music-ed.net/.
The Bibliography of
Australian Music Education Research (BAMER) website
Begun in 1989 as a collaborative project between the
Australian Society of Music Education (ASME) and Robin Stevens (then Research
Editor of The Australian Journal of Music
Education), BAMER is a database of music education research studies
undertaken at Australian universities or by Australian music education
researchers at overseas institutions covering the period 1936 to 2012/13.
There are over 570 entries of ‘completed’ and ‘in progress’ research studies
that include not only masters and doctoral theses and dissertations held in
university libraries, but also smaller research studies such as research papers
and other research reports undertaken for MEd, MMusEd and MMus degrees that are
generally held only in departmental libraries or by the individual researchers
concerned.
Given that the National Library of Australia’s Trove website
at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ now lists
all Higher Degree by Research studies undertaken by postgraduate students at
Australian universities, it was decided to discontinue the updating of the
BAMER database. Many of these Trove
listings have links to a digitised version of these research studies which may
be downloaded from university websites as PDF files. Accordingly, the BAMER listings of research
studies on this website covers a period of seventy-seven years from 1936 to
2012/13. The BAMER website will continue to be available through both the
dedicated music-ed.net website at http://music-ed.net/bamer
and will also be available for access through the Music in Australia Knowledge Base—http://musicinaustralia.org.au/—which
is a project of The Music Trust (http://musictrust.com.au/).
The History of Music
Education in Australia website
This website at http://music-ed.net/History/
includes an overview of the development of music education in Australia, a
listing of bibliographic sources on Australian music education history, and a
‘gallery’ featuring brief biographies of and references for ten notable early
Australian music educators.
The Curwen Method (Tonic
Sol-fa) website
This website includes a general summary of Curwen’s Tonic
Sol-fa music teaching method, and pages providing a more detailed history of
the development of Tonic Sol-fa, a detailed summary of the Tonic Sol-fa
pedagogy, and details of the Tonic Sol-fa system of music notation. There is also a link to The Curwen
Bicentenary 1816–2016 which celebrates two hundred years since Curwen’s birth
on 14 November 2016. The URL for The Curwen Method website is http://music-ed.net/Curwen/.
The International
History of Music Education website
This extensive website is a project of the History Standing
Committee of the International Society for Music Education. Initiated in 2011,
it is an attempt to
provide
music educators and music education researchers with a series of
country-specific histories of music education that will represent a source of information, references and
additional resources. Each of
the national profiles—which will be progressively added to over time to include
as many ISME-affiliated countries as
possible—will
include an historical overview (a summary of the major developments, some including a
timeline of significant
events), or
one or more key reference(s) (published article or book chapter sources), or
an external website for
each country. In
addition, several
of the national profiles also include a listing of representative bibliographic
sources including theses, journal articles,
conference papers
and other documentation of the history of music in educational settings in the
various countries. Some national
profiles
may also have information about prominent music educators (including portraits
and brief biographies) for the particular
countries.
To date, thirty-two countries are represented on the website
together with other relevant information on historical research in music
education and links to relevant website such as The Journal of Historical Research in Music Education. This website
site can be accessed via the ISME website URL at https://www.isme.org/our-work/standing-working-committees/history-standing-committee-hsc or via
music-ed.net at http://music-ed.net/ihme/.
Some lesser-known
Australian Musicians and Music Educators website
The purpose of this website and its constituent webpages is
to provide an internet resource that celebrates the lives and work of
Australian musicians and music educators whose achievements have often gone
largely unrecognised. The lives and work of many such people may not qualify as
being well known and therefore nationally prominent. Nevertheless, they have made a contribution to
the nation in their particular spheres of influence and to a greater or lesser
extent have left a legacy of new knowledge, artistic achievement and/or
exemplary practice as musicians – composers and/or performers – and as music
educators.
This website attempts to document and celebrate the lives
and work of these musicians and music educators. Aside from biographical summaries,
the respective webpages for these individuals include (where possible) downloadable
PDF copies of relevant research reports, articles, books, compositions, etc. or
links to these where available at other websites. The direct link to this
website is http://music-ed.net/aust-musns/.
The John Curwen
Bicentenary 1816–2016 website
This website aims to promote and celebrate the life and work
of John Curwen, the developer of the Tonic Sol-fa, and to recognise the
contribution of Sarah Ann Glover (1785–1867), inventor of Norwich Sol-fa upon
which Curwen based his music teaching method and its notational system. Aside
from celebrating the bicentenary of Curwen’s birth (14 November 2016), the
website records some of the special events that were organised as well as
including listings of Curwen’s publications and major secondary references
(with downloadable documents where available) and a summary of the contemporary
applications of Curwen’s method. The direct link to this website is http://music-ed.net/curwenbicentenary/.
The Australian Online
Journal of Arts Education website
The Australian Online
Journal of Arts Education was established as an internet-based, open-access
scholarly journal in 2005. It aimed to
promote the arts at all levels of education as well as to encourage research,
discussion and debate regarding the role, development and implementation of
arts programs in both formal and informal educational settings. The journal
provided an avenue for the publication of articles by both individual
researchers and research groups as well as arts education practitioners. One of
its aims was to support the work of undergraduate and postgraduate students as
well as practicing arts educators by providing a freely-accessible source of
information about and research findings in arts education. The journal was
established as fully peer-referred by a panel of international referees (the
Editorial Board) and was managed by an Editorial Committee appointed annually
from members of the former Arts in Education Faculty Research Group within the
then Faculty of Education at Deakin University.
With the retirement of the founding editor—Robin Stevens—in 2008, the
journal ceased accepting articles for publication. The Australian Online Journal of Arts Education is no longer hosted
by Deakin University but in order allow on-going access to its published
articles, this music-ed.net website will host the AOJAE archive. The direct link for AOJAE website is http://music-ed.net/aojae/.
Music in Action: An archive
of issues of the magazine 2003-2009
Music in
Action was published by the Australian Music Association as an educational
resource that aimed to enrich, empower, inform and support Australian educators
in their work as music teachers. Its regular features covered five major topics
in each issue: Advocacy (how to promote music in schools), Technology (using
technology in new classroom environments), Profile (the opportunity to learn
from curriculum initiates of colleagues, Nitty Gritty (practical suggestions
for curriculum implementation) and Project (showcasing activities beyond the
classroom, often involving community music making). Most, if not all, of the
articles published in Music in Action
are still relevant to present-day educational settings. The direct link to this archive of
downloadable PDFs is http://music-ed.net/music-in-action.
Links to
selected music education podcasts and documents
This webpage includes links to ABC radio programs
which focus on music advocacy and its benefits to the education of young
people. In addition, there are links to important documents – mainly government
reports – that advocate for music education in schools. Included in this list of document resources
is the only current link to a downloadable PDF of the 2005 report of the
National Review of School Music Education.
The direct link to this webpage is http://music-ed.net/podcasts/.
All of the above websites are accessible from the main index
page at http://music-ed.net and all the
constituent websites at this URL will be progressively updated. Comments and suggestions are most welcome –
please contact Robin Stevens at .
[1]
Robin Stevens was formerly an Associate Professor of Music Education at Deakin
University and is now a Principal Fellow in the Melbourne Conservatorium of
Music, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne. His email
contact is robinstevens@music-ed.net.
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