Teaching Music – Teaching Culture

With our attention focus on providing a more inclusive education, we will offer avenues for reshaping curricular content and method in ways that are culturally connected to the wider world. We will describe and illustrate the dimensions of World Music Pedagogy for use in K-12 schools, and will likewise introduce the curricular initiative, Smithsonian Folkways Music Pathways, as means of diversifying and expanding the music curriculum in a time of societal transformation.

Music educators will learn how music education teaches not only musical skills and understandings but also leads to knowledge of people, their languages, histories and cultures. This webinar is for music educators who care to explore how diversity, equity, and inclusion come together in curriculum and instruction that is oriented toward musical and cultural objectives as well as local and global goals.

 Patricia Shehan Campbell is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where she taught courses at the interface of education and ethnomusicology for 33 years. With three Fulbright awards (in India, China, and Canada) and grant-funded projects in Bulgaria, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Myanmar, and Tanzania, she frequently lectures on the topic of music as a pathway to intercultural understanding. Her work is in world music pedagogy and children’s musical cultures, with multiple publications that include Global Music Cultures, Teaching Music Globally, Songs in Their Heads, Music, Education and Diversity, the Oxford Handbook on Children’s Musical Cultures, Oxford’s 28-volume Global Music Series, and the Routledge World Music Pedagogy Series. Campbell is recipient of the 2012 Taiji Award and the 2017 Koizumi Prize for work on the preservation of traditional music through educational practice and was named an Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2021. She is an educational consultant for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Association for Cultural Equity, and the Global Jukebox, and serves as chair of Chamwino Connect, a non-governmental organization in support of the sustainability of music, arts, and culture in a Tanzanian village.

 Jennifer M. Mellizo is the Education Specialist at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (SFR) in Washington, DC, where she writes interdisciplinary educational materials that utilize audio tracks from the SFR collection and primary resources from across the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to this position, she was a successful K–8 general music, band, and choir teacher at the University of Wyoming Laboratory School in Laramie for 22 years. Jennifer was a Wyoming Arch Coal Teacher of the Year in 2014, the Albany County School District #1 Teacher of the Year in 2016, and a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Spain in 2021. She is a member of the Journal of General Music Education editorial board, publishes research and practical articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, and frequently presents her work at regional, national, and international conferences. Jennifer recently published a book entitled Re-Imagining Curricula in Global Times: A Music Education Perspective.

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.