Educational Philosophies
Updated 15 October 2004

The following are educational "truths" that I have come to on my own from experience and research; a set of "take-aways," if you will, from my study of teaching and learning. Each of these statements is in bold; underneath many I have described further either some background information, how the statement informs my own practices, or how I came to believe the statement as true. For those statements whose descriptions I have included excerpts from my own writings, I have included a link so that you can request a copy of said document. (Additionally, you can request any document from me via my Contact Page).

As an educator, I personally believe that:

• The acts of teaching and learning are often one and the same.


• Music assumes its richest role in education when it is studied and taught as both an art form with its own identity, and a dynamic collaborator in a richly, and tightly-woven interdisciplinary curriculum.
  
  
  
  • The need for programs that believe in the statement above comes at a time when, as esteemed researcher in arts education Charles Fowler says, “By and large the American people do not hold artists in very high esteem” (Fowler, 1996, p. 29). But this is not just about turning classrooms of students into artists. The initiative for a program like the one that I am suggesting is really about making communities of learners, expanding learning boundaries for professional artists, classroom teachers, and students alike, and teaching all about the exciting opportunities of interdisciplinary learning.

    How can this be accomplished? The first step is to recognize that the arts have a unique way of presenting both meaning and identity in the same go. In terms of identity, Fowler writes,

    The arts are a set of ways in which people achieve cultural identity and cohesiveness . . . Music exudes its culture. It brings us together. It solidifies the group . . . The arts are ways in which we construct our reality and give representation to our lifestyle (Fowler, 1996, p. 28)

     

    Researchers and educators alike believe that this is true. David Perkins, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, agrees:

    Looking at art invites, rewards, and encourages a thoughtful disposition, because works of art demand thoughtful attention to discover what they have to show and say. Also, works of art connect to social, personal, and other dimensions of life with strong affective overtones. So, better than most other situations, looking at art can build some very basic thinking dispositions (Perkins in Efland, 1996, p. 53).

   

  These are not new ideas. And, in fact, they are too easily cited, and the arts become the next gee-whiz gadget from which we can fix our social problems. The key, however, is to recognize that learning how, and being able to do all this with the arts requires some serious training and thought; as Fowler later writes that ‘deciphering” the meanings of the arts (the example he uses is as symbol systems like in math and science) “requires study, it is not something we can take for granted” (Fowler, 1996, p. 28). Again, this is where I believe that a program, like that that I am suggesting, comes in: Instead of plunking artists down in schools and asking them to give outreach concerts to youth, we believe that these artists first must undertake serious study of what it means to be an arts educator. And vice-versa. Instead of using teachers as mediators for classroom behavior problems during artist visits, we instead prefer to think of teachers and their teaching artists as collaborators in a unique partnership.

  • Order a copy of this paper, "Funding & Political Issues for the Arts In Education," here.
  • Learn more about the concept and framework of Learning Through Music at www.NEC-MusicInEd.org
  
  
  • Check out the Music-In-Education National Consortium website at www.music-in-education.org



• Flexibility with teaching strategies, familiarity & fluency with research-based frameworks (i.e., Arts Propel and Teaching For Understanding), and the use of multiple-entry points in teaching are the best ways to engage all learners.
  
  
  
  • Teaching For Understanding is an educational methodology developed by researchers at Harvard Project Zero that presses educators to ensure that students really understand what they are learning, via the use of creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. The TFU framework has four main ingredients to its success:
    
    
    • Learners explore material through the use of “generative topics” that encourage open-ended investigation and inquiry, and invite a multiplicity of entry-points for teaching and learning;
      
    • Learners have the opportunity to define and work towards explicit and implicit “understanding goals” that help to focus their learning processes and outcomes;
      
    • Learners exhibit what they’ve learned and understand via “performances of understanding,” and that these performances take place throughout their entire learning process;
      
    • Learners receive, interact with, and engage in “ongoing assessment” throughout the duration of their learning process (Blythe, 1998, p. 17-22).
  
  
  • Order a copy of this paper, " Improving Performance Through Online Learning and The Use of E-Portfolios," here.


• A teacher’s content delivery must be equally balanced between knowledge-centered and learner-centered perspectives.
  
  
• Documentation and assessment of students’ learning through portfolios (process-based and best-practice) help to not only inform teachers of students’ progress, but also as tools for teachers’ own professional development.
  
  
  
  • WHAT ARE PORTFOLIOS? From a strictly utilitarian perspective, a portfolio is a repository for one’s work. Portfolios commonly come in two flavors: They can be used to showcase examples of one’s best-practice work, or as reservoirs that hold one’s work from beginning to end of a given period – the latter are sometimes referred to as processfolios, because they exhibit the process undergone throughout their creation. (FYI: Generally speaking, I will use the term “portfolio” as an overarching term that means “a compilation of artifacts that document a student’s learning,” and will use the labels “best-practice” and “process” as qualifiers). Educators like to use portfolios because they are useful tools that help to organize and make visible a learner’s thoughts, goals, products and outcomes, for teachers and students alike.

    When learners create their portfolios, they make active decisions on which artifacts of learning they want to include and why; each artifact is a significant part of a learner’s portfolio and provides valuable insight into how, and to what extent, learning is taking place. The dynamic nature of the portfolio – that learners are actively responsible for documenting, exhibiting, and conducting their own learning – is an inviting prospect for any educator, and is a good reason for educators to pursue the possibility of including portfolio use as a method for assessing student learning in almost any context. 

    [Note: I’m not sure exactly where the term “processfolio” originated, but am fairly sure that it had its origins somewhere at Project Zero – possibly with Arts PROPEL. We used the term in the Arts In Education (AIE) program, and in fact the AIE website (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/aie/corecourse.html) says that “processfolios are collections of learning over time which document process,” however no citation is present.]

• Teaching from one’s own experience, and through the use of generative topics helps to engage both student and teacher in the content.
  


• Direct engagement with student work is often a critical starting point for further investigation of the work itself. (In other words: What effect does knowing the context of the work have on the reader's interaction, appreciation, interpretation, and understanding of the work?  What are the effects of not knowing the work’s context? )
  
  
  • My interests in this belief (first proposed by Harvard Project Zero Director, Steve Seidel) stemmed from commonalities my colleagues and I noticed between several of our own experiences and those that Steve Seidel mentioned in our classes at the Harvard Ed School; particularly the idea that student work comes as a result of the many and varied processes (whether artistic or intellectual) that one undergoes. For example, theater directors and music conductors all directly engage in the work processes of their students when preparing works for performance. This type of collaboration is unique because it requires both parties to be open to mutual teaching and learning; for example, if a musician’s interpretation of the music isn’t in line with the conductor’s, then the conductor has to quickly learn “on the spot” what the musician is doing that’s inconsistent with the conductor’s own interpretation, and then offer suggestions to help the musician align his/her interpretation with the conductor’s – a terrific example of how “direct engagement with the work itself is a critical starting point for further investigation of the work.”

    After much discussion, we eventually came to the conclusion that our own personal experiences play major roles in first defining what context “is,” and thus led to the following questions:

    • How do other people define what “context” is for themselves?
    • To what extent are their definitions different from ours?
    • To what extent does this proposition presuppose that these definitions be equivalent?

    As we combed through our readings and notes from class discussions, we found that many scenarios, though seemingly different, actually shared several commonalities. We were able to identify these commonalities as different types of context, and eventually settled on eight main types. These are in order, from “most impersonal” to “most personal”: 1) Standards & Requirements; 2) Classroom & School Culture; 3) The Assignment/Work; 4) Reader’s Engagement with the Work; 5) Student – Teacher Relationship; 6) Student’s Culture; 7) Family; 8) Individual Student.

    After deciding on these types of context, we decided to create a visual representation of our thoughts, thereby unpacking our discussion for our peers and helping us to make more connections. Based on a series of French children’s books that use transparent overlays to explain “how things work,” we decided to also make a book from transparencies, in which each transparency represents one of the layers of context we identified. By using several transparent overlays to create one image, we created a unique opportunity to explain how the presence of each layer of context influences the work’s reader. Because these layers can be peeled away, like onion skin from an onion, different viewpoints and perspectives can be easily presented. The full image (all contextual layers present) is shown below:

    

  • (My thanks to Steve Seidel, Michele Hong, and Jacqueline Ruben for their help on this point).

Research-based frameworks and educational theories with which I am familiar and with whom inform my own practices:

• Learning Through Music (Research Ctr. at New England Conservatory; Larry Scripp, Lyle Davidson, Rhoda Bernard, Andrea Norton, Andreea Pauta & Randy Wong)
• Teaching For Understanding (Harvard Project Zero; Tina Blythe & Stone Wiske)
• Project Co-Arts (Harvard Project Zero; Jessica Hoffman Davis)
• Project MUSE (Harvard Project Zero; Jessica Hoffman Davis)
• ROUNDS (Harvard Project Zero; Steve Seidel)
• Practical Intelligence For Schools (Harvard Project Zero; Howard Gardner)

My Current Research Projects in Education: (updated Fall 2004)
See my schedule for Academic Speaking Engagements.

• "Improving Performance Through Online Learning and the Use of E-Portfolios".
  (Article, co-written with Larry Scripp and Andreea Pauta, to be published in the Winter 2004 issue of the Journal for Learning Through Music).
• "Direct Engagement and the Context of Student Work"
• "Artists Working In The Community and in Community Institutions: Enrichment and Disruption … a.k.a. Arts Education and Social Responsibility: Exploration or Exploitation?"

Publications:

• Self-Published in 2002: You Too Can Be A Solfege Superhero: A Comprehensive Guide and Workbook For Fixed-Do Solfege Study (© Randy Wong, 2002)

All original compositions © by their respective owners.

To contact me (Randy Wong), e-mail me directly.