Disciplinary Literacy as Curricular and Instructional Practice in Music Teacher Education

Abstract

Disciplinary literacy focuses on subject-specific practices, vocabulary, and texts for P–12 students to better understand, interpret, and apply their knowledge within a discipline. This type of literacy invites students to actively take up the roles and processes established in the content area. Early experiences are essential in shaping preservice teachers’ understandings about disciplinary literacy; yet, few opportunities exist for learning about disciplinary literacy as an instructional approach, particularly from a musical and sociocultural perspective. In this article, I explore disciplinary literacy as curricular and instructional practice in music teacher education. First, I outline competing views of literacy and define disciplinary literacy in music education. Then, I provide examples of disciplinary literacy—through projects, assignments, and instructional techniques—to support preservice teachers in their development and generation of lessons and curriculum. Within these examples, I propose recommendations for music teacher educators as they cultivate positive, sustainable experiences for disciplinary literacy instruction.

Keywords

disciplinary literacy literacy curriculum music teacher education

Introduction

Practice serves as a core tenet of the work of music educators and a central element of the work of Journal of Music Teacher Education (JMTE). Music teachers—and music teacher educators—are most effective when they embody the connection of theory to practice through their curriculum and instruction (Abramo & Campbell, 2019). Perhaps, now more than ever, it is critical to return to practice to examine and address social and cultural issues in music classrooms and to actively respond to students’ diverse ways of knowing and doing (Ladson-Billings, 2021). Disciplinary literacy may serve as one way to connect theory to practice.

Disciplinary literacy focuses on subject-specific practices, vocabulary, and texts for P–12 students to better understand, interpret, and apply their knowledge within a discipline. In music, disciplinary literacy encompasses practices, habits of mind, and ways of using language to do the work of the discipline (Gabriel & Wenz, 2017; Moje, 2008). As students engage in this work, they take on a musical role (arranger, composer, critic, producer, choreographer, etc.) and apply it in action, gaining independence and flexibility in the content. Taking on multiple roles in the learning process invites students to see themselves in settings and disciplines they may not have previously, opening opportunities for future, continued exploration in and beyond the classroom. In addition, this literacy practice may enable students to move beyond predetermined skills and outcomes in favor of more context specific connections and diverse ways of musical doing.

While there have been discussions about how to best support preservice teachers’ disciplinary literacy teaching (e.g., Rainey et al., 2020), disciplinary literacy development does not happen unintentionally (Moje, 2008). Rather, as a pedagogical practice, it requires “scaffolding and mediation by teachers who know the content well and understand the role that language and literate practice play in producing knowledge within it” (p. 103). Early experiences are essential in shaping preservice teachers’ understandings about disciplinary literacy (Colwell et al., 2021; Scott et al., 2018). By observing and experiencing effective models of disciplinary literacy instruction in action, preservice teachers can gain practical insights to confidently apply these strategies in their own classrooms. These strategies may help teachers respond to the increasingly diverse learners in their classrooms in content-specific, sustained ways (Wilson, 2014). Yet, there are few opportunities for learning about disciplinary literacy as a concept and approach to instruction, particularly from a musical and sociocultural perspective. While a literacy course is often a requirement for preservice teachers in their programs, these courses often fall short of providing ample opportunities for situating disciplinary literacy in music; or, the courses do not focus on music- or arts-specific content, nor are they taught by music faculty.

Furthermore, the study of disciplines such as the arts and physical education—including ways to decode and analyze images and objects, comprehend various artistic texts, compare and contrast works of art, and interpret art that is created, produced, or performed—has not been as prevalent as other disciplines (e.g., science, writing, history) in disciplinary literacy research, both within P–12 and teacher education settings (Andrelchick, 2015). This emerging body of research in other disciplines invites an exploration of how music teacher educators can best support preservice teachers in their disciplinary literacy teaching, a practice that many music teacher educators are unlikely to have experienced as students or preservice teachers themselves.

This article serves as an example of practice. In this Programs, Practices, and Policy article, I explore literacy as a curricular framework and practice to prepare preservice music teachers for disciplinary literacy teaching. First, I outline competing views of literacy and then define disciplinary literacy in music education. Then, I provide examples of disciplinary literacy as a framework for curriculum and instruction in music teacher education through projects, assignments, and instructional techniques, drawing from my own methods and curriculum courses. Within these examples, I propose recommendations for music teacher educators to consider as they develop positive, sustainable experiences for disciplinary literacy instruction.

Disciplinary Literacy

Defining Literacy

While literacy is a term often discussed in music and music teacher education, there is little consensus on what, exactly, constitutes literacy. As a result, literacy often becomes oversimplified or ambiguously defined. Coiro et al. (2014) posited that literacy “has now come to mean a rapid and continuous process of change in the ways in which we read, write, view, listen, compose, and communicate information” (p. 5). This view of literacy, which originates from the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), outlines that students demonstrate their knowledge beyond defining, summarizing, and initial response, through synthesis, discussion, interpretation, and independent and collaborative application and skill.

In P–12 schools, literacy is often conceived in functional ways, commonly associated with students’ reading comprehension and written composition (Gabriel & Woulfin, 2017). Many music teachers (as well as general teachers) do not see a place for a literacy of reading and writing in the music classroom, nor do they think it is their job to teach such literacy (Bernard & Abramo, 2019). Instead, they want to focus on musical content and skill, in particular reading notation. As a result, notation literacy—one’s ability to read and write music—regularly drives one’s curriculum and instruction (Benedict & O’Leary, 2019). This functional approach, often full of practices that yield one correct answer, “uncovers” literacy through careful sequencing, memorization, and the reiteration of information (Benedict, 2020). Functional literacy has been critiqued as a practice where educators and learners are “summoned to speak, listen, act, read, work, think, feel, behave and value in particular and specific ways” which are often divorced from the musical discourses artists use daily (Gee et al., 1996, p. 10). Such practice “serves the productive purposes (i.e., maintaining the status quo) of the dominant interests in society” (Gutstein, 2006, p. 5) and thus narrows the possibilities of what it means to make and create music.

Others have argued that literacy encompasses more than reading and writing (Gutstein, 2006), situating practices through critical thinking, meaning making and problem-posing learning (Bernard, 2023; Bylica, 2023; National Coalition for Core Arts Standards [NCCAS], 2014). This understanding of literacy—or critical literacy—recognizes that literacy is relational to life outside the classroom and invites students to “move beyond regurgitating facts and ideas and begin to use texts to understand their world” (Hall & Piazza, 2010, p. 91). I bridge these competing concepts of literacy and situate the literacy experience within music from a sociocultural perspective, wherein all literate practices occur within discipline-specific social and cultural contexts (Lee, 2011). In other words, reading, writing, and reasoning are never divorced from the purposes, practices, norms, and communities of the discipline in which they occur (Gee, 2007). Through this lens, then, disciplines can be viewed as distinct communities bound by socially constructed (and somewhat normalized) sets of literacy practices. This view, regarded as disciplinary literacy, encompasses shared ways of reading, writing, thinking, doing, and reasoning within specific discipline-based fields (Moje, 2007; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012).

Defining Disciplinary Literacy in Music

Musical engagement “inherently entails inquiry into the language and processes of the discipline, work that demands the development of habits rather than skills, such as openness to changing contexts and a willingness to accept critical feedback” (Logsdon, 2013, p. 55). Disciplinary literacy allows one to build an understanding of how knowledge is produced in the discipline (Moje, 2008). Through subject-specific practices, vocabulary, and materials, students can “better understand, interpret, and apply their knowledge within a discipline” (Bernard & Abramo, 2019, p. 117). In instruction, music educators utilize discipline-specific practices and strategies that can be applied within and across disciplines (Fang & Coatam, 2013; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). In other words, students create, respond, and build skill for real purposes rather than prefabricated products contrived for classroom activities only (Hackney & Newman, 2013; Tobias, 2014). Drawing from Bernard and Abramo (2019), disciplinary literacy in music encompasses four characteristics as follows:

a focus on varied objects, or “text”;

taking on particular roles and identities as one focuses on a text;

working with others within a role through dialogue, practices, and discourses, and

using the above to pose problems, make decisions, and solve problems. (p. 118)

A focus on an object of inquiry is called a text (Moje, 2008). Anything that could be interpreted, or “read,” may constitute a text, such as a movie or photograph. A text does not need to be something concrete or written. In fact, “disciplinary texts are unique and contain highly specialized language and text structures” (Gabriel & Wenz, 2017, p. 1). In music, a text may be a score, lyrics, instruments, movement, facial expressions, a music video, a conductor’s gesture, photographs, paintings, letters, or the layout of a stage, among others. Of course, musicians—as all artists—never work with one text alone, but often engage with multiple texts as once. For example, a score and body/facial expressions are two texts that are often used together and rely on one another in a chamber music setting, often to assist in a more meaningful understanding of an experience by using one to enhance (or “read”) the other.

As musicians engage with text, they take on musical roles and identities central to the use of the text itself. A musical role can include composer, arranger, musicologist, conductor, choreographer, lyricist, producer, sound engineer, listener/audience, rapper, and/or theorist. Students take on these roles and see themselves in said roles as they learn, use, and value the knowledge. Similarly to texts, one may take on multiple roles within a subject area or weave in and out of them. For example, students may take on the role of an arranger and critic to add dynamics to a folk melody, discerning their choices and if/how they were effective, and what to change.

Taking on different musical roles is one way to push beyond an overreliance of the performer role in music classrooms, a role often based on functional literacy practices (Tobias, 2014). A disciplinary literacy approach can provide spaces for students to think of themselves not as performers, in the traditional sense, alone, as that role may not fit their comfort level, interest, or background. And, within the performer role, students may notice that being a performer encompasses other identities. For example, a performer often becomes a musicologist to gain historical and cultural background about a piece as they apply specific performance practices. In other words, a large part of learning to “read like musicians” is engaging in the specific practices, or discourses, that are central to being a musician. These practices often occur in a hands-on way, and in collaboration with others (Bernard & Abramo, 2019; Moje, 2008). For example, as students compose a pentatonic melody to a poem, they debate how many stanzas they should use. To make these decisions, they problem solve through dialogue, a central component of artistic work. They are also preparing and practicing to engage in this type of conversation and in established practices out of the classroom and into the larger artistic community, with other artists or teachers/mentors.

Disciplinary literacy—sometimes called artistic literacy (NCCAS, 2014)—allows for more process-based ways of doing, creating, and thinking that are central to the discipline. As a practice, disciplinary literacy lends itself well to the tenets of the National Common Core Arts Standards as it invites students to engage in artistic processes of creating, responding, and connecting through different perspectives. It supports student investigation and inquiry into a content topic, often posed as a socially relevant problem or question, to arrive at an understanding based on evidence (Moje, 2015). When students try on different roles—such as the role of an arranger—and engage with multiple texts—they experiment with a different set of values that may not have been previously part of their lived experience, or they add lived experience to their music studies in a way they may never have seen as connected and relevant. When integrated, Moje (2007) argued, a disciplinary literacy approach can move from functional, classroom-based knowledge and skill toward equipping young people to cooperatively think through why certain realities, dynamics, or practices exist in their world, and how they might work together to change them. Such dynamics might be inherent competition in the classroom, or inequities in their school or community, or larger society. Rather than work (or even compete) with one another for a predetermined outcome, students working together can help them become more aware of their own world views as well as others’ (Freire, 2000).

Developing a Disciplinary Literacy in Music Teacher Education

Disciplinary literacy serves as an approach to expand the role of literacy in P–12 teaching school subjects, shifting the focus of literacy as reading and writing or notation comprehension to practices specific to each discipline (Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008, 2012), thus embracing the unique structures and aims of each discipline. Still, P–12 teachers have found the transition of disciplinary literacy methods to their respected content area difficult and divorced from their values of cultural relevance and sustainability (Colwell et al., 2021) as they often do not have a working language for teaching through such a frame (Johnson et al., 2011). Once an understanding of disciplinary literacy in the content is established—namely, that that a text can qualify as many different objects besides a book or printed material—teachers can more easily design experiences that are relevant to students, helping students to become more independent musical beings (Shanahan et al., 2011).

In what follows, I draw from my own university teaching experiences to provide examples of how music teacher educators might employ a disciplinary literacy approach to curriculum and teaching. The program where I work is structured as a 5-year, integrated bachelors/master’s program in music education. As one of two music education faculty members in the program, I work with the preservice teachers in multiple courses, from Introduction to Music Education in the first year, continuing in the third year with Choral and Elementary Methods courses, then Student Teaching Seminar, and ending with a graduate Curriculum course. Throughout the 5 years, I scaffold disciplinary literacy as an overarching curricular arc, moving from experiencing and building vocabulary related to disciplinary literacy; to observing, naming, and applying disciplinary literacy strategies; to creating and implementing disciplinary practices in P–12 teaching settings. In each setting, preservice teachers engage in practices to develop and apply their literacy as I frame and model ideas and experiences. As a result, practices are spiraled throughout the curriculum to prepare teachers for being disciplinary literacy experts rather than in one off settings. Of course, many of these practices may transfer to different contexts and settings, even if music teacher educators teach different courses or have fewer touch points with students throughout their university experience. These practices, coupled with reflections at various transition points in the program, may help emphasize disciplinary literacy in a way that would ensure it is addressed throughout a program even if a faculty member has limited courses with students.

Some of these projects or activities might seem familiar to the reader, as they are common within the field. Yet, when framed through disciplinary literacy, they may invite multiple, deeper engagements with content. Preservice teachers are continually building disciplinary literacy skills and using vocabulary within the discourses attached to them. As such, music teacher educators may feel encouraged to reframe their practices rather than introducing new content for the sake of disciplinary literacy. In addition, while pedagogical texts such as articles, podcasts, and videos are often assigned for class, for this purpose of this article, I focus solely on the pedagogical practices of disciplinary literacy. Of utmost importance is the use of particular language and modeling, which can have lasting effects on how preservice teachers engage with and create their own discipline-specific curricula. In the following sections, I offer instructions that the preservice teachers are given and then examine them to demonstrate how such experiences serve as pedagogical opportunities to practice disciplinary literacy.

Experiencing and Building Vocabulary: Introduction to Music Education

The first engagements with components of disciplinary literacy occur during the first year in Introduction to Music Education. Preservice teachers experience the components of texts, roles and practices; they develop basic vocabulary through instructor modeling. In the first week of class preservice teachers complete an assignment—Who am I? Musical Portraits—that highlights musical roles. In this assignment, they consider their own musical journey:

Become a writer and reflect on your own musical experiences. Tell your personal narrative of how you came to be so passionate about music. Are there significant moments and memories that led you to pursue music? How has your musical identity taken shape as a result? What different musical/artistic roles have you done the most in your journey (arranger, freestyler, performer, producer, conductor, choreographer, sound engineer, etc.)? What did you do in these roles? Which roles do you want to explore more? Share your story in a 3–5 minute video.

This assignment helps first-year preservice teachers consider different musical roles beyond performer and locate if/how they have taken on those roles. In these introductory moments, some preservice teachers may bring awareness that there are multiple roles even within the performer role (e.g., performers often become musicologists to learn about the historical background of a march or analyze the poem of an art song). Furthermore, there are many preservice teachers who may not have had a disciplinary literacy experience in P–12 because they did not have teachers who invited them to do this, thus why they may not come into their teacher education program possessing a disciplinary literacy. Prompting preservice teachers to “become a writer” and not “just write” encourages them to take on the role of writer, seeing themselves as a writer who engages in the practice of writing, thus becoming acquainted with the language and vocabulary central to disciplinary literacy.

Similarly, in Introduction to Music Education preservice teachers learn and remix the folk song “Ghost of John.” In my role, I teach the song and facilitate the activity the way I would in a P–12 setting, modeling musically and pedagogically. Preservice teachers learn the song by rote learning using a whole-part-whole model of teaching a folk song. I then set up the activity with specific language about musical roles to provide context, such as:

we were just performers as we sang. Now, let’s become arrangers to arrange—or remix—this song. What are some of the things an arranger does? What do you think it means to remix something? What are some things to keep in mind in your arranger role?

Then, as arrangers, preservice teachers work in groups to remix the folk song.

Following the remix performances, the class reflects on the process of becoming arrangers; what were some challenges, how did they work through them? Did they notate things traditionally using a score, or did they use a different way of organizing and communicating the remix? Guiding questions such as these allow preservice teachers to name the discourses and practices they used, although they are not yet conscious of these terms. I then ask the class what materials or objects they used during the process (giving some possible examples). This is intended to be a purposeful question to introduce text. Responses often include body language and eye contact to begin/end the piece; physical space to add movement to the remix; and technology used to create a loop. The term text is then introduced and together, we consider other examples of text that move beyond lyrics or a score.

In this first year, the term disciplinary literacy is not explicitly named, but rather it is experienced while also naming key components as vocabulary (e.g., text, roles). The ways in which language is used and labels are assigned help preservice teachers decenter the role of performer, an important first step in seeing multiple roles, ways of knowing and doing. It is important to note that the language used is not script-based; rather, specific language allows students to bring awareness to—and name—the arranger role, the characteristics of an arranger, as well as the practices of an arranger, allowing themselves to then take on the role on their own.

Observing, Naming, and Applying: Methods Courses

In the junior year, preservice teachers begin their methods courses, taking choral and elementary methods. While these are not the only methods courses preservice teachers take, I highlight these two as examples. In these courses, we build upon our introductory disciplinary literacy through experiences “reading” like musician-teacher, engaging with texts like a musician but also as a teacher who will facilitate and teach their students using particular texts and practices. Preservice teachers begin to name components of disciplinary literacy as texts, roles, and discourses/practices through projects and activities where they take on roles and use texts. Through this process of naming practices as disciplinary literacy, they observe and experience how it is employed within the music classroom. Then, they attach and connect elements of disciplinary literacy to their own lesson planning and teaching.

Lesson Planning/Peer Teaching

In my role, I regularly model a choral rehearsal or elementary lesson, inviting preservice teachers to take on different musical roles, such as musicologists to research the background of The Beatles’ “Let it Be”; choreographers to show the expressive elements of the gospel piece “Walk in Jerusalem”; or improvisors to perform a three-note melody. Throughout, I carefully utilize discipline-specific language and questioning (“let’s become musicologists”; “what are some things a musicologist would look for in a piece? Where might they look?”). Simultaneously, I draw attention to the ways the preservice teachers—in the role of P–12 students—used texts, collaborated, and made decisions in content-specific settings. Then together, we consider how to apply this new knowledge and vocabulary in lesson planning.

A central part of the methods courses includes “reading” particular texts—including repertoire—as both musician-teacher in discerning ways. As preservice teachers examine these texts, they ask questions about who is being invited into which roles, what roles or practices are missing, as well as who is missing. This intention is not a check the box for students to merely take on roles for the sake of it; rather, it is regularly framed in an artistic way that musicians are sometimes both, say, arrangers and critics, or arrangers and lyricists, or arrangers and conductors. This invites the observation that roles are not always fixed to consider how to provide all students with opportunities to play any role.

One way we realize these roles is through the development of a wraparound—a planning template that provides a varied, discipline-specific approach to a piece of music or musical concept.¹ As preservice teachers read a score or musical concept, they consider the following constituents that musicians engage in:

Music Making—technical and expressive skills, including the activities and practices musicians do (e.g., playing an octave in tune, setting a beat on a loop, playing pizzicato, singing a melisma on the breath).

Notation Literacy—language of musical terms and vocabulary regularly referenced by musicians; these terms would be seen on a word wall (e.g., crescendo, trading fours, largo, MIDI, unison, improvisation, tablature).

Making Connections—to socio, cultural, and historical (composer background, historical background/what was going on at time of piece), possible interpretations (lyrical, emotional, political, personal), and connections to other texts (paintings, sculpture, photographs, letters, videos, newspaper articles, etc.).

Community and Cultural Resources—engaging with professional and local artists and arts organizations that represent varied approaches to music (in style and genre), including community centers, arts, or cultural organizations (concert halls, museums, cultural centers), places in nature (parks), and culture bearers or other sources (songwriters/composers, crafters, producers, stage managers, etc.).

Careers and Lifelong Ways to Music—looking at different musical and nonmusical roles that might be inherent or adjacent to the text of inquiry. This provides a glimpse for students to see how music and other professions can support one another and how they may participate in music throughout their lives.

This template helps preservice teachers read like musicians-teachers in an organized way. The categories look at multiple angles of being a musician to ensure that the norms and practices of the musical/cultural community are not divorced from the work being done, a hallmark of disciplinary literacy. Preservice teachers fill in pertinent information under each category as it may relate to a piece or concept, deciding how various texts, roles, and practices can be utilized. For example, in Elementary Methods, they may consider ways for students to make meaning to a topic relevant in their lives by becoming composers and performers to create an AAB Blues song; within this experience, they may highlight ways students may sing their song (with bent notes in the melody, soft and then loud); introduce pertinent vocabulary (AAB form, call and response); make connections to prominent Blues artists and their performances (BB King, Bessie Smith, Susan Tedeschi, Joe Bonamassa); or access community resources (a blues musician or poet in the area). Preservice teachers then use the wraparound as a basis to create lesson plans, choosing certain aspects to focus on—such as working on singing a passage with a leap of a Major sixth in tune—and writing objectives and lesson procedures around the focus. I provide an example of a wraparound from a preservice student teacher in Supplemental Appendix A.

As they lesson plan, preservice teachers practice teaching their lessons to one another. As is typical of a methods course, they receive feedback from me as well as their peers. We reflect on what types of texts were used, how practices could be refined (often I will model how that might look to help them), and tweak discipline-specific language and questions. Since preservice teachers serve as learners for the lesson while simultaneously observing their peers, they note the ways in which disciplinary literacy is enacted, while also considering how they would implement components into said lesson.

Field Experience

Field experiences serve as a both a laboratory setting as well as a reflective space for observing discipline-specific practices while contemplating how such practices might be applied in specific contexts. Preservice teachers concurrently take methods with corresponding fieldwork courses, spending 8 hr per week in a choral or elementary setting (depending on the methods course) observing and teaching short lessons/activities. Each week preservice teachers journal/voice memo about their experiences, often guided by a prompt; in these prompts, they look for the ways in which the P–12 students use varied texts, musical roles, and practices, as well as if/how the teacher sets up these learning experiences with specific language, vocabulary, and materials. At the beginning of the semester, the prompts look similar to the one given in the Introduction to Music Education Musical Portraits assignment: “what materials—or texts—do you see the students using?”; “Do you see students taking on roles other than performer? Which ones? If students are performing, are they conducting, improvising, interpreting lyrics, or critiquing (and other -ing verbs!)?” One preservice teacher’s reflection to this prompt in choral methods was as follows:

When students did more than sing from the score—like when they conducted and sang—they were more connected. But they only conducted cuz the teacher told them to. So when I did warm-ups one day, I asked the students to “become conductors” and just create gesture for a legato exercise—not a perfect four pattern, just move their arms how they thought made sense for a conductor to do for the vocalise.

Within these observations, preservice teachers consider how the teacher sets up learning moments. They also reflect upon how they themselves might set up the same activity using and naming multiple texts, roles, and practices. These weekly questions invite preservice teachers to utilize the components of disciplinary literacy as they observe others, and then brainstorm ways they might utilize them in that same moment. The brainstorms/reflections then become ideas for students to create and teach their own lessons in class and in their field placement.

By the second methods course in Elementary Methods, preservice teachers begin prompting themselves about observing roles, texts, and practices in their settings and acutely notice the juxtaposition of musical roles between elementary and secondary settings. They often cite the prevalence of performer role in secondary and more varied texts and roles in the elementary setting. A preservice teacher journaled,

In my choral placement, texts were score based, the literacy process was notation based. Students performed using the text but never created new texts, it was all about traditional performer and score. In elementary, literacy was more conceptual, thinking about ideas like high/low and the ways in which composers, arrangers, conductors, performers use the concept. The kids made decisions to create and express in childlike ways (even though they didn’t have awareness of the musical roles).

Reflections such as the above provide opportunity for preservice teachers to observe how, specifically, students engage in their learning. They may note changes in curriculum, planning, and instruction among grade levels, questioning why such practices occur more than others in certain settings. This awareness might signal the need for preservice teachers to begin implementing discipline-specific language and practices into their own daily teaching to more effectively center students in the music making and learning process.

Implementing: Student Teaching

During student teaching, disciplinary literacy becomes foundational to preservice teachers’ planning and instruction, as the work moves from observing in methods classes and teaching individual lessons through peer teaching or in their weekly fieldwork placements to daily engagement in a real-life teaching setting with P–12 students. Preservice teachers plan for and apply their literacy language and practices in a multitude of musical settings, including choral and instrumental ensembles, guitar and piano class, music technology, unified/adaptive music, general music, and theory. In these settings, they plan for and implement phrases such as “let’s become choreographers” or “how might a historian look at this piece?” to draw their P–12 students to the practices and texts central to these roles.

During the student teaching experience, there is also the expansion of reading like musician-teachers from a professional lens. These experiences aim to build preservice teachers’ professionalism through disciplinary literacy. Preservice teachers begin to “read” feedback from teaching observations (both written and verbal) as text and practice how to respond to it using specific language and strategies used in their teaching.² In addition, each week during student teaching seminar, preservice teachers watch a short teaching clip and discuss how they read the lesson. These videos represent a range of settings, teacher background (early, mid, late career), topic of inquiry (elementary students playing a singing game; middle school students creating loops in groups on GarageBand; or high school orchestra rehearsing a portion of repertoire), and texts/roles/practices used. These videos are not intended for preservice teachers to make value judgments on the teaching quality, but rather to consider how the teacher utilizes (or could utilize) tenets of disciplinary literacy and ways they might draw upon said tenets if they were teaching the same lesson.

Creating: Curriculum

Finally, in the graduate year, preservice teachers become more independent in applying their literacy in their professional life, in real-time in their daily internship teaching. They also craft their own arc for disciplinary literacy through curricular planning. Together, we refine reading as musician-teacher, using different curricular and professional texts as examples for interpretation, analysis, and critique. For example, the preservice teachers read curricular texts, including method books and texts like An American Methodology and Standard of Excellence, and look for ways to break from the methods and apply disciplinary literacy components. They also read curricular documents (including teacher evaluation rubrics) at the school, district, or state level, noting the ways in which standards and discipline-specific practices are situated or possibilities for them to be applied.

In addition, as they are simultaneously preparing for jobs during this class, preservice teachers read potential schools as texts, giving close observation to the school’s published curriculum, website, social media, and online school ratings and reviews. This helps to name the school’s values and how they are realized and communicated; in what ways these values may/not align with the preservice teachers’ own values; and potential questions to ask in interviews or ways to answer possible interview questions. We also continue to practice ways to read an administrator and communicate with administrators about one’s practice, particularly with one who does not have a music background, and use disciplinary literacy as an anchor to help administrators contextualize how the discipline-specific discourses and practices occurring are being taught pedagogically.

Unit Plans

Preservice teachers create a unit plan on a topic of musical idea or text that they will teach in their graduate internship setting. This is intended to help preservice teachers plan an arc of learning in a curricular way over time, moving from creating daily lesson plans in student teaching (that may or may not sequence one another) to building lessons within a unified idea or text. This also allows them to bring the practice to the conceptual—merging theory to practice—as they consider specific characteristics of disciplinary literacy and how they can be used to scaffold students’ learning experiences. Part of the “end game” of the unit plan is to demonstrate how students will gain independence as they do the work of musicians, how students might see themselves as musical beings in the world as well as how this view—and the norms, discourses, and practices associated with it—may extend outside the classroom into the larger community. These units also serve as curricular documents in their job portfolios that can be shown to potential employers.

Using the wraparound templates from their Methods courses (with the categories of Music Making, Notation Literacy, Making Connections, Community and Cultural Resources, and Careers and Lifelong Ways to Music), preservice teachers choose texts, roles, and practices specific to the topic of inquiry and create a series of lessons—often paying attention to how discipline-specific language or practices will be introduced over a period of time, and how they might utilize community and cultural resources to help students make connections. They also connect these plans to the National Common Core Arts Standards in Music or other prevalent pertinent standards (such as standards for English Language Learners) in their teaching placements.

This I Believe

In this final course during the fifth year, preservice teachers complete a This I Believe assignment. This is an assignment that is introduced the first year in Introduction to Music Education, and then returned to at the end of year 3 in Elementary Methods. Preservice teachers revisit their previous statements, comparing and contrasting them to build and edit their beliefs, noting how their beliefs have changed or have refined. This assignment serves as a reflective component for preservice teachers to state beliefs and helps them see how they (may) realize them in their teaching through specific musical and pedagogical practices.

In this final revisit, preservice teachers often center their talking points in disciplinary literacy, where students take on different musical roles, texts, and practices beyond performer, and discuss how they have seen this in their teaching and learning. They draw upon their own teaching to provide examples of how they have done this in their teaching placements and how they plan to implement it in their own future classrooms. In addition, they connect disciplinary literacy to other frameworks discussed throughout their courses, including culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and participatory music making. This final statement can then be used as a philosophy statement when applying for jobs. One preservice teacher wrote,

Whenever possible, I must offer opportunities to take on different musical roles, such as performer, conductor, composer, arranger, producer, evaluator, etc. In this way, students are exposed to the realities of musical processes. This may look like thoughtfully selecting repertoire, pondering the possibilities of sound from natural and artificial sources, combining their knowledge across disciplines, and speaking intelligently about their experiences as musicians. I have witnessed children skillfully engaging in these musical practices in various settings, and I believe such engagement places them in the center of their learning, something which is crucial to an equitable education.

Such reflections help preservice teachers articulate the ways in which they have developed their own disciplinary literacy as both students and teachers and how disciplinary literacy now guides their curricular planning and instruction toward diverse ways of doing and connecting.

Putting it Together

While I have presented a framework of disciplinary literacy as an arc for clarity for the reader, it is important to note that the processes and practices are not linear. Rather, literacy practices continuously spiral, unfold over time, are returned to, and experimented with over the course of the preservice teachers’ university experience. They are experimented and applied while observing, articulated in speaking, creating, playing, writing, and reflecting. Music teacher educators should carefully create experiences for preservice teachers to both take on different artistic roles to engage in multiple texts, discourses, and practices as well as to prepare such experiences for their future students. This allows P–12 students and preservice teachers to utilize language, critical thinking, and make meaning of their worlds in ways musicians (and teachers) do, expanding the view of what it means to be a musician (Benedict & O’Leary, 2019). Furthermore, it can allow for transfer of knowledge outside of the classroom for more independent, sustained, and sustainable literacy development (Bylica, 2023; Moje, 2007), an important factor for preservice teachers to consider.

While there are multiple (and useful) ways of naming and supporting teaching practice within music teacher education, I urge others to consider ways of more explicitly focusing on how teachers may be prepared to support preservice teachers to develop their own critical stances toward disciplinary norms, conventions, and practices even as they learn to engage them in student-centered and intellectually rich work. Providing experiences for preservice teachers to try on different roles, texts, and practices can help them locate one’s own musical and pedagogical values and realign them through a disciplinary literacy framework. These experiences, coupled with preservice teachers’ planning of such experiences for their students, allow for preservice teachers to connect music making and learning to more sustained, context-specific practices in their curriculum and instruction.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-jmt-10.1177_10570837241279021 – Supplemental material for Disciplinary Literacy as Curricular and Instructional Practice in Music Teacher Education

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jmt-10.1177_10570837241279021 for Disciplinary Literacy as Curricular and Instructional Practice in Music Teacher Education by Cara Faith Bernard in Journal of Music Teacher Education

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Cara Faith Bernard

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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