Beyond Diversity: Designing Culturally Responsive Music Instruction

We can all agree that music is for everyone. The question is: what are we doing as music educators to make equitable access to high-quality, rigorous music programs—where learners not only develop musicianship skills, but skills that prepare them for our diverse and ever-evolving world—the norm and not the exception?

In this session, K-12 music educators will learn key moves they can make in order to shift music curriculum and instruction beyond simple facts and skills to a robust approach that engages learners in deep understandings by centering culturally relevant and responsive contexts of engaging with music. You will learn the key principles of culturally relevant music curriculum design, how to connect learning tasks to your learners’ cultural frames of reference, and how to unpack and connect music standards to culturally relevant learning tasks resulting in music learning experiences that engage all learners in high quality, rigorous music instruction they are excited to learn.

Ashley Cuthbertson, Nationally Board Certified Teacher (she/her), is the Founder and CEO of A. Cuthbertson Consulting, LLC, a national educational consulting firm committed to shifting the landscape of music education by helping music educators make culturally responsive and equitable music teaching and learning the norm, not the exception. A Nationally Board Certified Teacher, she holds a Master of Education and certifications in the Kodály approach and arts integration, and has 14 years of experience in music education. As a passionate advocate for music education, she currently serves the National Association for Music Education as a member of the Music Education Policy Roundtable and the Virginia Music Educators Association as chair of the DEI Council.

NAfME presents this live virtual event at no charge to all as a service to the music education profession. To register, you must enter your NAfME member information or create a nonmember account.  After registering, check your email for instructions. A recording of this program will be available to all registrants for one week following the live event. Members can also view archived NAfME webinars in the NAfME Academy.

The views expressed are those of the presenter; they do not necessarily reflect the views of NAfME.