Coming of Age: Teaching and Learning Popular Music in Academia

The Need for Including Popular Music in the Curriculum

The need for including popular music instruction in school music programs has been a topic of significant discussion and research over the past several decades (Campbell 1995; Green 2003). Society is undergoing rapid sociocultural changes that are influencing and transforming music as well as the ways people experience and interact with the art (Allsup 2008; Kratus 2007; Williams 2011). Young people are drawn to the enormous varieties of popular music genres that have a broad audience, are intended and created for the enjoyment and enrichment of people in their everyday lives (Bowman 2004; Lamont and Maton 2010), and are instantly available through digital media downloads. Although school-age students enjoy music, a relatively small percentage of them participate in music instruction programs on their school campuses (Rabkin and Hedberg 2011). In an attempt to address this issue, a number of music educators are including popular music genres in their teaching, but these efforts are still relatively uncommon. The curricular offerings in school music education programs tend toward classical, folk, and jazz traditions that are not as appealing to young people as the popular forms of music they listen to daily (Kratus 2007; Williams 2007, 2011).

In his historical overview of popular music in American schools, Humphreys (2004) outlines multiple reasons for the narrow focus of school music curriculum, including the desire to improve musical tastes, a cultural bias against American art forms, and a fear of music that appeals to youth culture. However, he suggests that some forms of popular music have always been present in school and were employed for utilitarian reasons, such as supporting church singing, enhancing community relations, and providing a means of recruiting students to study “serious” music. Because most current music programs continue to rely on a narrow repertoire that appeals to a diminishing audience, Kratus (2007) believes that music education in American schools has reached a tipping point, where traditional large ensemble practices must change or become increasingly irrelevant. He calls for curricular changes that incorporate the music young people actually listen to and experience in their lives. This view is echoed by Griffin (2010), who contends that in order for music education programs to provide students with meaningful experiences, the music studied in schools needs to be connected to music that children encounter in their daily lives. Williams (2011) also states that the large ensemble model of music education no longer adequately meets the needs of a majority of students. He suggests creating different instructional models that expand the musical styles studied; employ smaller classes; promote student-centered learning, creative decision making, and aural development; and incorporate technology. These learning approaches are central to popular music and very much in line with the informal learning processes that Green (2001) describes.

Following their investigation of how the introduction of popular music has impacted music education in Australian schools, Dunbar-Hall and Wemyss (2000) conclude that its use is profoundly influencing instructional practices and is “reshaping thinking about music teaching and learning” in the country (30). First, in contrast with the score-reading and notation-focused approaches that are central to teaching art music, the learning processes in popular music include aural-based active music making and improvisation. When score reading is used in popular music, notation tends to be presented in the skeletal form of a lead sheet, which requires that learners master “numerous musical skills” and acquire a working “knowledge of music theory” for effective interpretation and meaningful performance (25). Second, the researchers found that using popular music in schools encourages individualized learning and adds dimensions of music technology, musical sound production, and music creation to the curriculum. Finally, the genre shares attributes with and has contributed to multicultural music education by providing openings for discussions linked to specific ethnicities, ideologies, religions, and sexual identities. Because popular music freely draws from and “exists as a network of styles,” its use can promote many different aspects of music education and offers numerous curricular benefits for the field (26). Herbert and Campbell (2000) and Rodriguez (2004) also provide strong arguments in support of popular music in school. While matching student musical preferences and drawing a closer connection between music activities in and out of school, popular music education can also meet the traditional goals and standards of music education through informal learning approaches that demonstrate best practices in education. Therefore, all the previously mentioned studies indicate that it is beneficial to expand school music programs by including the study of popular music.

Pedagogy for Teaching Popular Music

Green (2006, 2008) argues that introducing popular music in school lessons requires more than just bringing the repertoire into the classroom. The informal learning processes that reflect the ways that popular music is learned must be employed to enrich the authenticity of such experiences. Her research found that informal music learning practices include (1) starting with music that learners know and like; (2) copying recordings of real music by ear; (3) learning alone and in groups with peers without adult guidance or supervision; (4) learning that is not progressive from simple to complex but instead holistic, idiosyncratic, and haphazard; and (5) integrating listening, performing, improvising, and composing throughout the learning process (2008, 178). When applying these principles in the classroom, Green (2006) found that informal pedagogy can be an effective approach for motivating music learning. Additionally, once established, the informal processes inherent in learning popular music can also be used to learn classical music through increasing students’ interest, as reported in Green’s findings (2006). The Musical Futures project that originated from Green’s work on informal pedagogy continues to demonstrate success and has become a “music learning revolution” in the United Kingdom (http://www.musicalfutures.org), thereby benefitting the musical education of many students.

Green’s approach of bringing informal popular music learning procedures into the classroom places responsibility on students to use their existing musical knowledge and experiences in the process of exploration and self-discovery to initiate music learning. Letting students choose the music they want to learn seems inherently self-motivational and results in a successful classroom environment in which students are active learners discovering how to make music in a rock band. Some educators, however, question the use of a purely informal learning paradigm, where teachers remain on the periphery and serve as facilitators who do not intervene with the learning process. Allsup (2008) suggests that this approach undermines the role of the music teacher who has expertise and experiences that can enrich students’ music understanding. He worries that if educators fail to “provide formal spaces in which dialogue and critique can occur,” they actually abandon the responsibilities involved in educating (6). This in turn implies that teacher educators must provide opportunities for future music teachers to explore both formal and informal learning processes and learn to discern the most effective ways to employ each in school settings.

Furthermore, it is overly simplistic to consider classical and popular music as binary opposites that are associated directly with formal (classical) and informal (popular) learning processes. Recent observational studies of exemplary music teachers have shown that these approaches instead function as a continuum, with both processes interacting with each other. Cain (2013) reported on how one music teacher provided effective learning experiences for her students by incorporating both informal and formal procedures in her classroom. McPhail’s (2013) study of six teachers demonstrated that both classical and popular styles of music are supported by varying proportions of formal and informal learning processes and that these processes depend on how the knowledge available becomes recontextualized.

McPhail (2013) adopted a theoretical framework created by educational sociologist Basil Bernstein (2000) to interpret his research findings. In this framework, Bernstein (2000) describes differing ways of knowing as vertical and horizontal discourses, with vertical knowledge being what is required for academic learning and what is developed through systematic sequential instruction, while horizontal knowledge is learned through everyday experience. Bernstein’s theory suggests that educators recontextualize and balance horizontal and vertical knowledge to meet the needs of students in their classrooms. McPhail discovered that although the teachers participating in the study recognized and affirmed students’ musical interests and learning needs, they as educators also felt the need to provide students with access to knowledge that is culturally significant to both the teachers and society. Findings indicate that teachers recontextualize the horizontal discourses of their students’ lived musical experiences into the vertical structures of formal schooling. McPhail concludes that learning in school should not be “simply a reflection of real-world musical practices” but provide “a place where students come into contact with a structured form of knowledge acquisition under the guidance of an expert teacher” (2013, 15). Music learning at school should expand students’ knowledge base and not be limited to simply facilitating their performance practices. In addition to affirming and validating students’ interests and experiences by employing informal learning processes, teachers need to balance this with formally provided knowledge that they think is epistemologically important. The music classroom needs to be “a site for both affirmation and dissonance” (18). Some dissonance is required to inspire learning, while consonance is also required for students to recognize themselves and their value in school. This results in fluctuating boundaries between formal and informal learning processes as teachers recontextualize both musical and pedagogical understandings to meet the interests of students being served in their particular classrooms. It also implies the significance of knowing both how and when to nurture the two instructional modes as well as how to blend these seemingly contradictory learning approaches.

When examining popular music pedagogy, we should not be too focused on whether the instructional approach is formal or informal. Students in music classes should not just aim to learn about music but, more important, learn to become better musicians and develop their lifelong interest in music. As Allsup (2008) has pointed out, rather than adopting “formalist or informalist ideologies” (7), the focus of instruction within the context of a democratic classroom should be on the interactions among teachers and students who freely share ideas with the purpose of maximizing musical learning.

Implications for Music Teacher Education

Wright (2008) correctly points out that when we bring popular music and informal pedagogy into schools, we need to reconsider the types of people who might be suited to become music teachers as well as the kind of music education and teacher education that is required to make such instruction work: “This will require a new type of teacher possessed of the empathy to ‘kick’ their dominant habitus where necessary and enter the musical worlds of their pupils” (400). This “new type of teacher” will not be intent on reproducing the kinds of ensemble programs that have dominated past practices regardless of the social backgrounds and musical interests of students. Instead, an empathetic teacher will examine the cultural milieu within which they become an active participant in designing a music program that will benefit learners and lead to students’ happiness in their musical activities. In this regard, Allsup (2008) feels that the older models of music teacher preparation, which focused primarily on mechanical skills like conducting technique and woodwind fingerings without reference to the context of schools and neighborhoods, are no longer adequate. Modern music teachers will work in schools that might vary greatly in terms of their sociocultural context and status. He questions whether the knowledge and skills that have traditionally been considered as essential to highly qualified music teachers can help them face such new challenges in music education. Therefore, he suggests that preparation programs must equip teachers to comfortably interact in informal learning classrooms, community settings, and diverse populations.

Davis and Blair (2011) echo these concerns regarding music teacher education: “If teachers are to be effective in the world in which we live, we must change the way in which higher education in America approaches music methods classes” (136). They report a threefold process that can help music education students develop teaching skills in popular music. First, there is disequilibrium that is the result of future teachers’ dependence on notation due to their uncomfortable feelings when first encountering the informal learning process central to music learning. Next, students start breaking down existing barriers and discover a new perspective of music teaching and learning. Finally, transformation of students occurs, and they are ready to teach a broader range of musical and learning styles. Therefore, in order to be prepared for the current needs of music education, music teacher candidates with backgrounds in Western classical music need to experience teaching unfamiliar genres in settings that might make them uncomfortable. Because future music educators tend to come from traditional school music backgrounds and often presume that they will spend their careers in similar settings, this task is challenging. Preparing future teachers to work in diverse venues and become open to change requires flexibility and commitment from both the teacher educators and the teacher candidates.

Teaching Popular Music as Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Culturally responsive teaching attempts to provide all children with equitable learning experiences (Lind and McCoy 2016, 20) and suggests that teachers must learn to “recognize, honor and incorporate the personal abilities of students” into their instructional strategies (Gay 2010, 1). These ideas are particularly important as the United States becomes increasingly diverse. Statistics from the US Census Bureau (2010) suggest that states such as California (57.6 percent white, 37.6 percent Hispanic or Latino, 13.0 percent Asian, 6.2 percent black or African American, 1.0 percent American Indian, 0.4 percent Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander) represent a diverse and multicultural population that is increasingly typical in many parts of the country. Because this change in demographics is reflected in many school districts that are located in urban areas throughout the country, it is essential that future music educators are prepared to teach students from diverse cultural backgrounds.

Although public schools are becoming increasingly diverse, the reality is that most educators are white and grew up in middle-class communities (Gay, Dingus, and Jackson 2003). This is particularly true for music teachers whose admission to a university music education program often required a high level of proficiency in musical performance skills (Elpus 2015). The technical skills necessary to participate in tertiary-level music programs are usually acquired through many years of private music instruction, which is affordable mostly to affluent families. Because a majority of music education majors come from relatively privileged backgrounds, they are not prepared to work in environments with diverse students. It is essential that music education programs prepare future teachers to employ the principles of culturally responsive pedagogy in order to be effective when working in increasingly diverse schools (Ladson-Billings 2004; Vavrus 2002).

Culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay 2010) was originally developed to improve the low levels of academic achievement observed in many students of color who attend schools in areas with economic challenges. Gay contends that conventional educational reform efforts have failed because they have a deficit orientation that focuses on what ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students do not have and cannot do rather than building on what the students can bring to the learning environment. Culturally responsive pedagogy acknowledges the legitimacy of the cultural heritages of different ethnic groups that affect students’ dispositions, attitudes, and approaches to learning. It teaches students to know and praise their own as well as others’ cultural heritages.

Teaching popular music can contribute to culturally responsive pedagogical practices in music. This is particularly the case if we include popular music such as hip hop and R&B as well as different styles of Latino pop that are favored by African American and Hispanic students, respectively. This means that elementary and secondary school students who might have much less experience with classical music than many of their Caucasian and Asian American counterparts will not be disadvantaged. Therefore, in order to teach in a culturally responsive manner, it is important that future music educators, who might be more familiar with classical than popular traditions, acquire the knowledge and skills needed to include popular music in their curriculum.

Juxtapositional Pedagogy at UCLA

The music education program at UCLA has provided future music teachers with traditional preparation for several decades. Recently, the curriculum was redesigned to address the demographic changes seen in schools as well as the evolving musical interests of modern K–12 students. The curricular revisions are based on the concept of juxtapositional pedagogy (Heuser 2014), which is a curricular approach that places contrasting pairs of musical learning experiences that would usually be taught in separate method courses together in a single instructional setting (specific examples of juxtapositions are provided later in this chapter). The purpose of these couplings is to create spaces where the nature of musical thinking and learning can be critically examined and understood from multiple perspectives. Such juxtapositions allow traditional and innovative methodologies to be creatively combined for the express purpose of reconceptualizing and revitalizing music teacher preparation. This approach allows the faculty to provide future music educators with the skills necessary to teach the traditional offerings of large ensembles and general music in schools while simultaneously preparing them to function in the areas of popular music and multicultural music education.

In this juxtapositional approach, popular music pedagogy is not studied as a discrete course but instead infused into all music education method courses. This reinforces our belief in the value of studying diverse musical styles from a variety of perspectives and cultures. The approach also supports our contention that experiencing different and sometimes contradictory learning experiences allows one to grow as a teacher. Since it is impossible to provide in-depth knowledge of all the musical styles teachers will need in their careers, this methodology aims to facilitate the development of dispositions needed for future music teachers to become advocates for diversity in music education. The approach also nurtures the flexibility required to adapt to constantly fluctuating classroom environments and student learning needs. Our goal is to cultivate future teachers who can function in diverse school settings and understand that teaching in a musical or cultural tradition other than their own is possible. To achieve this, novice teachers need to be willing to take risks, move beyond a single “methodology,” and construct unique pedagogical approaches by applying excellent formally and informally acquired aural musicianship skills. Helping future educators acquire the skills and dispositions to approach teaching in these ways occurs throughout our undergraduate program and continues as the novices begin their professional preparation.

Laying the Foundations for Diverse Learning Approaches in Music Education

The foundations for achieving our music education program’s instructional goals are established in the freshman year through the course titled “Learning Approaches in Music Education,” in which students explore the philosophical, psychological, sociological, and historical foundations of music education. Additionally, they also learn both clarinet and guitar aurally with a formal modeling methodology employing solfeggio used for the clarinet and an informal “listen-copy-play” approach employed for the guitar. By engaging in aural learning on both the clarinet and guitar, students develop the confidence in nontraditional learning processes. The final course assignment requires forming small ensembles with peers of their own choosing, selecting a popular cover song, and performing it for the class without using notation. To further push the students beyond their comfort zones, they cannot use their major instruments and must create the arrangements by working together, thus avoiding having one of the ensemble members predetermine how the arrangement will progress. This process requires the integration of informal skills, or what Bernstein (2000) would term horizontal discourses with already held formal or vertical knowledge. Furthermore, the assignment provides the foundation for other creative activities, such as making music videos and composing through technology, that the students will be required to do throughout the program to nurture their creative teaching skills.

Interestingly, it is through this process that we as faculty frequently discover our students’ musical identities, which we might not be aware of through observations in formal teaching environments. Working on and presenting popular music seems to encourage a more lively and engaging performance style than what we see when students engage with and teach classical music. All too often, our music education majors seem to conceptualize teaching as a very formal and fairly rigid process, which initially prevents them from actually engaging the students. Discovering that many seem to have a more animated and playful personality when they work in popular genres might allow us to help them be comfortable in their teaching settings. Such findings echo the arguments of Rodriguez (2012), who advocates thinking more broadly about musicality among future music educators. In order to develop the skills and dispositions needed to teach popular music, one needs to examine the conceptions of musicality, which can change over time; develop a broader view of popular music in students’ lives; and overcome the challenges of the changing roles of teachers and students.

We are still in the process of discovering how we can help our students apply their newly emerging musical identities and conceptions of musicality from the engagement in popular music to the formal teaching context. For instance, we encountered challenges in working with a particular student who seemed to have a quiet and reserved personality. He was extremely uncomfortable working with his classmates and unable to interact successfully in a formal classroom setting. However, in a popular music video project that he presented with his peer group, we were surprised to see that this student came alive and had a lot of fun. This suggests that providing music education students with diverse musical opportunities where they learn to express themselves in different ways is important for discovering latent musical skills, developing a teaching identity, and nurturing the confidence necessary to eventually teach in a lively manner that engages and motivates student learning. This also provides different ways for professors to learn more about students and design instructional experiences to best suit their specific educational needs.

By experiencing the power of informal and aural learning while working with popular music, our music education students begin to discover that they can teach in different ways than they were taught. By juxtaposing seemingly incompatible instructional approaches within the same course, students are challenged to think in new ways as they come to understand that pedagogies need not be rigid and that classical and popular music are not incompatible in educational settings. For example, student reflections indicate that they began to understand the power of aural learning. One student reported that such an approach “involves me generating the music internally before translating it into the act of playing, which to me requires more effort than simply reading sheet music to generate a song.” They also discovered the power of aural learning by finding out how singing melodies with solfeggio reinforces learning. One student wrote about learning the clarinet: “One thing I was not expecting to find out was just how effective solfeggio really was in the learning process. The benefits are limitless, from students developing an ear for pitch relations, to internalizing a pulse. One realization I just came upon however is that by having students sing a phrase before playing it, you have effectively disguised an extra repetition of your material without anyone realizing it. You more or less fool them into practicing something twice.”

Although students are initially skeptical of learning guitar informally with the “listen-copy-play” approach, once they experienced success, most echoed the feelings of this student: “My initial reaction to learning guitar using the informal approach was very negative because I had no idea how to learn the guitar without formal instructions of a teacher. I’ve been so used having all the information that is needed to learn anything. I actually had to take the initiative to learn. After a lot of work I’ve realized that it’s easier for me to retain all the information. I think the informal approach to learning guitar, so far, has been successful and I’ve been enjoying learning it this way.”

The final assignment requires students to move beyond their usual range of musical activities by cooperatively creating and performing arrangements of cover songs. Most of them enjoy this process. The reflection of this student typifies the overall reaction to this “final exam”: “I really enjoyed this activity! It taught me a few things about teamwork, but best of all, it was a chance to escape from the ‘UCLA Classical Music School’ and play something enjoyable and contemporary. . . . Overall, I’d say this is a great ending project for us to do, because it lets us have fun playing a song we all want to play, and it forces us to use different means of figuring the song out.”

Although our foundation course in music education is not a course in popular music, infusing aural learning and creating assignments that use popular music pedagogies are central to this course and can serve the purpose of preparing our students to teach popular music when needed in their future careers. Instead of focusing on popular music, the course requires our teacher candidates to think critically about becoming a teacher and nurture the dispositions necessary to generate innovative instructional approaches as they progress in their careers.

Reinforcing Popular Music Teaching Practice Through Student-Teaching Experience

The UCLA music education program provides future music educators with the skills needed to function in traditional classes by having students teach beginning violin. The novices each assume responsibility for a single fourth-grade class, and all the children participate and present a demonstration of what they learned after fourteen lessons. This experience nurtures the skills necessary to manage large groups of students, to analyze and respond to teaching problems in real time, and to sequence instruction in a meaningful manner. Since the new curriculum was introduced in 2014, we now provide a juxtapositional student-teaching experience that incorporates traditional violin and popular guitar instruction in two elementary schools, respectively. Each class consisting of thirty to forty fourth- and fifth-grade students participates in the program over the course of ten weeks.

The violin curriculum that the novices use is carefully sequenced with clearly defined instructional objectives. The structure helps student teachers focus their students’ attention on basic playing skills and classroom management. In contrast, novices teaching popular guitar in the first year of the program were given freedom to construct a creative curriculum using teaching materials of an established popular music program, Little Kids Rock (Wish et al. 2002). Although hoping to teach in an informal manner, the large size (up to forty students) of these classes, the limited physical space available for teaching, and the behavioral expectations of the classroom teacher required the student teachers to adopt a structured approach to instruction. Basic playing techniques through direct instruction and fundamental drills following the type of protocols in the violin class were employed because the relatively freer learning environment of the guitar class often resulted in noise and management issues. In Year Two, learning from the experience of Year One, we decided that a balance of formal and informal pedagogy was necessary, as illustrated by Cain (2013) and McPhail (2013). Therefore, student teachers received additional support through a sequential guitar instructional guide that provided curricular structure. Through this formal pedagogy, the new teachers were able to enhance the beginning students in developing playing techniques through a progressive approach. At the same time, due to the nature of popular music, informal pedagogy of learning by ear instead of reading notation was implemented.

Once the guitar teaching was on track, some attempts were made to transfer aspects of popular music pedagogies (e.g., aural learning, rhythmic movement, improvisation) to violin teaching. It was interesting to observe that at the final concert of the violin class, a student teacher experimented with bringing in elements of their popular music concert, which involved the audience (parents in attendance) as active participants. This student teacher invited the audience to participate by singing the songs that the violin students played. That caught us, the supervisors, by surprise. Yet it was a pleasant surprise because it livened up the concert and received nice responses from the parents. For the student teachers who moved beyond the comfort zone of their classically focused training, these “cross-fertilization” field experiences provided important insights that transform both novices and teacher educators alike into more flexible music educators. However, because such processes happened during the early stage of learning how to teach and due to the limited amount of classroom time available to the novice teachers, the results of such “cross-fertilization” seemed somewhat limited. Additional efforts will be required for faculty to learn how we can benefit from such mutually valuable interactions between popular and classical music learning experiences.

Feedback collected from the student teachers provides insights into their thoughts and feelings of such juxtapositional field experiences. The threefold process of developing popular music pedagogy (Davis and Blair 2011) has been illustrated particularly well in this reflection: “I learned how to be a bit more loose with the students and open up with them. In the beginning I was very hesitant about moving and making myself look a little silly in front of the class; however, once I was able to break this barrier it really did become fun to be able to work with the students.”

Moreover, it is clear that the student teachers believe in the value of popular music education: “Popular music in the form of guitar lessons is a great way to get students interested in music. Students love to be able to play their favorite songs and with instruments like guitars, which is very easily possible.” This echoes the argument of Griffin (2010), who stresses the significance of connecting school music to the music of students’ daily lives.

Student teachers were able to draw connections between teaching popular and classical music and found the commonality between teaching music of two different styles. This is a strong support for the advantages of juxtapositional pedagogy (Heuser 2014) as discussed previously: “Teaching popular music yields an overall positive response from students because they can easily identify with the genre. That being said, it is the planning and how you engage students in learning that creates the interest, not solely the music itself. For this reason, I think teaching Western Classical Music, for example, would have been just as effective, but the course would need to be much longer to accommodate the technical demands.”

They also felt the significance of their work, which has made a difference in children’s lives. It is very rewarding for new teachers when they witness the positive impact that music education can have on students and discover how meaningful the teaching profession can be: “I learned by the end that I had more of a positive influence on my students than I thought, and I hope to continue to discover this in the future of my music-teaching career. I was happy to learn that I made a child feel special in his achievement with music and that I created a special place and experience for them in this guitar class that they may not have otherwise gotten the opportunity to have during the school year.”

It became evident that beginning teachers will require more in-depth preparation to effectively teach popular music in schools. They need to question their understanding of what music teaching and learning are and put aside preconceived ideas of how a teacher should function in front of a class based on their own music education experiences. Classical and popular music are not just distinct musical styles but also different musical experiences requiring musicianship of a different nature. Classical music training stresses accuracy and prescribed techniques that are usually taught through formal pedagogy. Popular music allows more freedom in expression and creativity in performance and promotes aural skills, which are usually developed through informal learning. Experiencing music, particularly rhythm, through the ear and body—expressing musical understanding through the freedom to move and improvise—is the essence of the popular music experience. Although Green (2006) promotes informal learning practices in the music classroom, it appears that adding some formalized procedures is essential for beginning teachers in classrooms with large numbers of students, even when teaching popular music. This is especially important for new teachers who still need to acquire a wide range of instructional and management skills. Helping novice educators learn how to balance popular methodologies and traditional classroom protocols in popular music teaching and understand how to transition between these different approaches are essential parts of a music teacher education program.

Reflections on the Role of Popular Music in Music Teacher Education

Preparing future music educators to teach in twenty-first-century schools is a particularly daunting task. University mentors must provide an undergraduate environment that helps future music teachers prepare for the current job market and provides experiences that will enable educators to creatively redesign curricula as music programs evolve in response to societal changes. The juxtapositional approach used at UCLA was created specifically to meet this challenge by pairing formal with informal learning, notation-based instruction with aural music learning, and classical traditions with popular genres. By infusing popular music pedagogy within the courses in this curriculum, music education majors develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to explore ways to include those genres in K–12 classrooms. The focus is on approaches rather than exact methodologies so that educators develop the capacity to analyze the music learning needs of school communities and use their broad musical knowledge to design curricula that are responsive to the students in their classrooms.

In most university settings, both music teacher educators and future music teachers tend to have backgrounds based on classical rather than popular music practices. Additionally, the school settings in which preservice teaching experiences take place are most likely to offer traditional general music and large ensemble classes, where informal- and constructivist-based instructional practices cannot be employed. Understandably, the master teachers who provide initial professional induction are reluctant to introduce alternative instructional approaches that might result in classroom management problems. Because the majority of school music instruction takes place in such traditional settings, future educators need to develop the skills required to manage student behavior in conventional classrooms. This in turn suggests that although informal learning practices are central to popular music, newly emerging educators might need to modify those practices as they begin working in traditional classrooms. Mentors and novices will need to be flexible as they adapt popular music pedagogies for use in schools. The important issue will be developing ways to include popular music in the teacher education process so that novices begin to understand that using popular music can be a powerful means of motivating students and reaching young people who might not otherwise participate in music classes.

Emerging music teachers can be hesitant to try teaching in ways that differ from the practices through which they were taught. Children, however, are often very accepting of different musics and different approaches to instruction. For example, while planning an elementary general music lesson on Japanese culture, one of our students was asked why she did not include some significant traditional musical culture of Japan, such as Noh theater. Her response was that she was afraid that the children would find it too slow and too boring. After careful discussion, she designed an activity in which the children listened to the music of Noh theater and an upbeat Japanese pop song alternatively, and their task was to dance according to the music they heard. A paper mask that looked like one used by Noh theater performers was made for each child in the class, and he or she had to use it while dancing to the Noh theater music. The children enjoyed both genres and had no problem identifying and switching between the two very different styles of music. It seems that the beauty of slow music and movement of Noh theater can be highlighted when it is contrasted with exciting and rhythmic feeling of fast music and movement of the Japanese pop song. Thus we observe that traditional and popular music become increasingly engaging to students when presented in this fashion.

Furthermore, popular music can be used in the teacher preparation process to help faculty discover aspects of their student teachers’ personalities that might be suppressed. As these new teachers establish their own teaching identities, many of them attempt to adopt the behaviors of their former teachers rather than meet the learning needs of their current students. Because the model of the very serious ensemble director has been so firmly imprinted into the consciousnesses of most music education majors, learning to bring amusement and joy into the teaching process in order to motivate students can be quite difficult. Providing future educators with opportunities to move away from classical music by creating cover songs with peers of their choosing offers a nonthreatening way for music education majors to explore and discover aspects of their own personalities that they might not be aware of. In our program, we have discovered that when asked to create a music video during a music technology class, students will often surprise us and reveal aspects of their personalities that are anything but the reserved presences they portray when trying to teach as music directors from the podium. Using the mediums of popular music and video, we are better able to understand our music education majors and encourage them to include aspects of their “popular musician identities” in their teaching personas.

Black is not black without white, and white is not white without black. Moreover, what makes black and white more interesting is combining the two in ways that become different shades of gray. Although both classical and popular music share many commonalities, the instructional practices central to each genre are often thought of and treated as opposites that must not be combined. Our work at UCLA suggests otherwise. When thoughtfully paired, both styles offer music teacher educators ways to understand the novice teachers who are studying to enter the profession and provide future music educators with ways to adapt to changing curricular needs in schools and motivate their own students.

Conclusion

The field of music education experiences constant calls for reform. In the mid-twentieth century, Mursell (1956) suggested that by focusing on large performing ensembles, school programs were ignoring the basic tenets of music education, and House (1958) encouraged deep examinations of the ways curricula might be constructed. The Tanglewood Declaration (Choate 1968) paved the way for jazz, world music, and popular genres to be taught in schools and encouraged attempts to develop comprehensive instructional approaches such as the Manhattanville Music Curriculum Project (Thomas 1970; Walker 1984) and other efforts to help music educators develop meaningful lessons for use in large ensembles (O’Toole 2003; Sindberg 2012). However, as both Kratus (2007) and Williams (2011) insist, learning in large ensembles might no longer appeal to modern students because of the ubiquitous presence of popular music throughout the culture. As the research cited in this chapter suggests, popular music is both a legitimate and an effective means for providing music instruction in academic settings. When it is thoughtfully employed, popular music can motivate students to participate in school programs and learn different styles of music.

Preparing future music educators to employ popular music in schools presents many challenges for university programs where the curriculum is usually based on twentieth-century instructional practices. This means that music teacher educators must develop ways to include popular music making experiences throughout undergraduate coursework and create avenues for student teachers to engage in teaching popular music during their preservice practice. Providing novice teachers with experience in popular music instruction will also challenge university faculty members who might not be fluent in popular music pedagogy. By working with novice educators, curricular change can be nurtured and encouraged throughout the entire teacher induction process, providing opportunities for growth to both new teachers and teacher educators alike.

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