Michael L. Mark

Bio: Michael L. Mark is an academic researcher from Pacific Lutheran University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Music education & Musicology. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 16 publications receiving 890 citations.

A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the Vision:

Abstract: 1. From Philosophical Concurrence to Diversity: Problems and Opportunities. 2. Several Alternative Views and a Synergistic Proposal: An Experience-Based Philosophy of Music Education. 3. The Feeling Dimension of Musical Experience. 4. The Creating Dimension of Musical Experience. 5. The Meaning Dimension of Musical Experience. 6. The Contextual Dimension of Musical Experience. 7. From Theory to Practice: Musical Roles as Intelligences. 8. Advancing the Vision: Toward a Comprehensive General Music Program. 9. Advancing the Vision: Toward a Comprehensive Specialized Music Program.

A History of American Music Education

Abstract: Part 1 Foreword Part 2 Part I: The Western Heritage Chapter 3 The Ancient Jewish Tradition Chapter 4 The Age of Antiquity Chapter 5 Music Education from the Early Christian Era to the Reformation Part 6 Part II: The New World: America Chapter 7 Early Music Education in the New World Chapter 8 The New England Roots of American Music Education Part 9 Part III: Early American Education Chapter 10 Education for A New Democracy: Building a Nation Chapter 11 The Pestalozzian Education Reform Movement Chapter 12 The Beginnings of Music in American Schools Part 13 Part IV: The Growth of Music Education Chapter 14 Music Education in an Industrializing America Chapter 15 The Development of Professional Education Organizations Chapter 16 The Beginning of the Music Educators National Conference Chapter 17 The Broadening Music Curriculum Chapter 18 The Music Educators National Conference Matures Part 19 Part V: Music Education after 1950 Chapter 20 American Education after 1950 Chapter 21 Government, Foundation, and Not-for-Profit Support for Arts Education Chapter 22 New Foundations of Music Education Chapter 23 New Curricular Foundations of Music Education Chapter 24 The Twenty-first Century Chapter 25 Reflections

Contemporary Music Education

Abstract: List of Illustrations and Exhibits. Preface to the Third Edition. Preface to the First Edition. PART I: SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC EDUCATION. 1. Historical Foundations of Music Education. 2. Pivotal Events of the Contemporary Era. 3. Intellectual Currents in the Contemporary Era. 4. Advocacy: Connecting Public Policy and Arts Education. PART II: THE MUSIC CURRICULUM. 5. Music Education Methods. 6. Materials and Tools of Music Education. PART III: AREAS OF CONCERN FOR MUSIC EDUCATION. 7. Music Education for Special Needs. 8. The Education of Music Teachers. PART IV: FINALE. 9. The Assessment of Music Education. 10. Contemporary Music Education: Conclusion. Bibliography. Index.

Music Education : Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today

Abstract: Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today is an anthology of thematically organized essays that illustrate why music education has been valued by cultures and societies from ancient times to the present. Writings by societal leaders – civic, political, royal, religious, education, intellectual – present views from many historical and current points of view. The third edition has been expanded to include such topics as feminism, diversity, cognitive psychology and the No Child Left Behind Act. This edition also includes writings about music education in countries on every continent. The global view of music education makes this book timely in a world of cultural fusion.

A History of Music Education Advocacy

Abstract: ormer Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, \"Knowledge is a form of capital, much of it formed by government investment in education. ... Politics has become a process that deliberately seeks to effect such outcomes as who thinks what, who feels how.\"l In this statement, Moynihan verbalized the reason why music education needs to be its own advocate. Advocacy is the way that we as music educators can explain to policy makers, as well as to the general public, the reasons why our profession is important and why we need their support to continue serving the needs of society. As advocates, we need to tell the nation that music education is vital and dynamic. The apparent simplicity of this message belies the expertise and sophistication required to ensure ongoing support for the profession. Because many important developments, curricular and otherwise, result from public policy-laws, government policies, and regulations-advocacy is indispensable to music education. For as long as music has been a curricular subject in the United States, its direction and focus have been subject to controls imposed by public policies created by local school boards, state education agencies, and the federal government. Advocacy must ensure that such policies are crafted by informed judgments based on knowledge.

Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education

Abstract: Edwardsville are not liable for any legal actions that may arise involving the article's content, including but not limited to, copyright infringement.

The metaphysics of improvisation

Abstract: and general in order to be able to be performed on a wide variety of new inputs. The inputs may be an inventory of notes based upon key, style, et cetera. (Pressing’s cognitive model calls this the “referent.”) My taxonomy is a way of making those inputs clear. 184 Since improvisation (and composition) is fundamentally cognitive and motor selection, then this presupposes a set of things from which to select. One can only select if there are options, choices. Now, it seems that whether a person (agent) is aware (conscious or cognizant of the options (all or even some)), one may always post facto reconstruct the set of choices which were available or present to the agent at the time of selection. By this I mean the set of choices that were available to the agent from an objective point of view. This set has little to do with the actual, individual conscious states of the agent; however, it does involve many specific conditions of the agent and the agent’s environment. For example, a musician S may say that “it never occurred to me to play that B-flat after the A,” even though objectively that choice was available to S. Sometimes, however, we describe others, and even ourselves, as just doing something—no other options presented themselves to consciousness. So, “selection” may seem like an inappropriate term or concept for what is going on in improvisation. It may, however, seem more accurate in composition. When humans perform actions in quick succession, consciously it does not seem like a choice or decision is being made for each separate action. In fact, in some cases it may be difficult to individuate the rapid succession of actions into discrete units. It seems to be a unitary flow of movements. These are half-intentional actions. Beside the (SCI) case, examples of this kind of phenomenon are playing sports, talking, and just mundane actions like walking to the market. From a phenomenological perspective, in some moments the choice or decision aspect can be discerned, while other moments “feel” automatic. Consequently, it is in these seemingly automatic moments that selection may be an erroneous description. But there are several pieces of evidence that suggest that in both cases similar or the same processes are realized. First, it would be impossible to account for talent and skill if some sense of choice or selection or decision was not involved. Indeed, psychologists and others 185 indicate that some people are better than others (usually in some specific domain of behavior) in their speed of thinking, choosing, and moving in situations that require rapidity. In other words, if we cannot attribute responsibility to selection or choice, even in an attenuated sense, training and effort would be diminished or demolished. Why would one train if one could not control the automatic thinking or moving? What would be our understanding of talent and expertise? Second, there is reductio ad absurdam argument that can be given here, analogous to the one Thomas Nagel presents in the classic “Moral Luck” article. One could argue that artistic agents are never responsible for anything they do; they have no agency because all novel thoughts impinge. Humans do not cause their thoughts and selection. My only response is that creativity is still a mystery, and we are not yet epistemically entitled to run this argument to the point of absurdity. Furthermore, cognitive science has informed us that even in these moments sub-conscious motor and kinetic programs or mechanisms are running. Some of these were delineated for improvisation above. This is one reason why a phenomenology needs to be appended to cognitive models and the like. One should also be interested in what is present to the consciousness of the agent, and what is consciously occurring while playing (if anything), not only the underlying processes posited by a cognitive theory, nor what could be going on as argued for in a philosophical theory. David Sudnow is perhaps the best example of a phenomenological approach to improvising. By introspecting on his improvised piano playing and his learning how to play 62 For example, see Sian Beilock, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To (New York: Free Press, 2010). 63 Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck” in Mortal Questions, Canto Classics Series (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24-38. 64 David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), and David Sudnow, Ways of the Hand: A Rewritten Account, foreword by Hubert L. Dreyfus (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 186 paino and improvise, Sudnow gives excellent descriptions of the process and actions. One of the most important insights he gives is that selection in jazz piano improvisation is in large part about fingering and the way one’s hands and fingers move across the keys. I can attest that the same is true for stringed instruments, like guitar. Often, when I improvise, my attention is on finger patterns that I know work (with embellishments) over certain “changes.” How strongly the phenomenology of playing an instrument comes to play in thinking about creativity and improvisation in particular comes to the fore in this extraordinary account of a conversation with the famous, brilliant pianist Bill Evans. ... I [Gene Lees] kidded him [Bill Evans] about his rocking a finger on a key on a long note at the end of a phrase. After all, the hammer has already left the string: one has no further physical contact with the sound. ‘Don’t you know the piano has no vibrato?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ Bill responded, ‘but trying for it affects what comes before it in the phrase.’ Evans reveals that there are motor selections that do not enter into the perceivable product (in this case sounds) but yet affect properties of that product. Not all selections will be perceivable in the final product (e.g., performance, recording). One should also be aware that selection may be coerced in both a literal and metaphorical sense. External factors such as authorities may constrain what artists do, thereby eliminating or reducing choices. I may only have the resources to learn one instrument. If I only know how to play saxophone, I am not going to pick up a trumpet. At any given time t, the agent (improviser, player, performer) has twelve pitches available in the range physically determined by the instrument. This range is vague because 65 Gene Lees, “The Poet Bill Evans,” in Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now, ed. Robert, Gottlieb (New York: Pantheon, 1996), 424. 187 given certain techniques, which some musicians are able to do and others not, and physical enhancements to instruments, the range can be extended, both to the top and bottom of the frequency or pitch range. But it would wrong to suppose that this complete selection options set is fully available every time, in every context to an improviser. What decreases the possibilities of the selection options group are the constraints that are given and/or accepted by the player, the genre, context, et cetera. Now, the agent may at any point deviate from these constraints (intentionally or otherwise), but she may not deviate from the complete selection options group, unless she changes instrument or technique. The idealized selection options group is coextensive with the set of all physically realizable pitches and all possible durations. This set may be expressed in many ways. For instance, one could simply give the Hertz (Hz) cycles (frequency) of the pitch indexed to a timed duration, such as eight seconds or two seconds. Obviously, this is an infinite set, because the duration of a produced pitch could be infinitely long, and the sound waves, although severely limited by human audibility capacity (even non-human animal audibility) could be infinitely low or high, although there are frequencies which we cease to call sounds. Practically, in Western music theory, the accepted range of pitches is the human audition range (called audio or sonic), 66 I am assuming the agent is using the Western Equal Temperament (ET) tempered system. On the drawbacks of the exclusive use of the ET system that was more or less codified in the eighteenth century, see Ross W. Duffin, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007). Scholars have identified at least 150 different temperament tuning systems in Western art music. Of course, ET does not apply to many non-Western music systems. The locus classicus is J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey, Dover Books on Music Series (n.d., n.p., 1951; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 2004). 188 which is approximately from 20 50 Hz (the lowest pipe organ sounds) to 20,000 30,000 Hz; while the accepted range of durations caps out at 128 notes. Selection is the process of choosing an output. The output may be physically realized or produced sound, or a notation for a realizable sound, or both. A single selection is actually an array of various factors as explicated in Pressing’s cognitive model. In using the term “choosing,” or “choice,” again I make no commitment to a theory of free will. This theory and taxonomy may remain neutral. If free will is false, then the selection process will be a product of some set of causal laws. Those causal laws will still have to operate within the taxonomy. Moreover, ideally a selection may be viewed as a choice of each discrete unit with relevant arrays, even though phenomenologically one may not be aware of all of the arrays. A musical phrase or lick may be played wherein the agent chose to play the lick as a whole. The entire phrase, then, which may consist of several pitches of different durations, dynamics, rhythms, and attacks, is the unit of selection—not each discrete pitch et cetera. Following are the selection options sets for musical sound generation (

Transforming Music Education

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements 1. Setting the Stage 2. Justifying Transformation 3. Transforming Education 4. Transforming Music 5. Creating Alternatives Notes Index

The Role of Arts Participation in Students' Academic and Nonacademic Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of School, Home, and Community Factors.

Abstract: This longitudinal study draws on positive youth development frameworks and ecological models to examine the role of school-, home- and community-based arts participation in students’ academic (e.g., motivation, engagement) and nonacademic (e.g., self-esteem, life satisfaction) outcomes. The study is based on 643 elementary and high school students from 15 schools conducted over the course of 2 academic years. Structural equation modeling showed that beyond sociodemographics, prior achievement, and prior variance in outcome measures, school predictors of academic and nonacademic outcomes were arts engagement and in-school arts participation; home predictors were parent–child arts interaction and home-based arts resources; and community arts predictors were participation in and attendance at arts events and external arts tuition (the latter, a negative effect). Implications for theory, policy, funding, and practice are discussed.

The New Bloom's Taxonomy: Implications for Music Education

Abstract: Academic programs use objective and standardized assessment criteria. Music education programs have avoided such objective assessments via the assertion of subjectivity and aesthetics in music learning. In this article, the author introduces the revised Bloom's taxonomy as a tool to translate music education outcomes into objective educational criteria. The author analyzes cognitive processes and knowledge domains that address more complex forms of musicianship using achievement standards from the nine national standards in music education as examples. The author also introduces four new knowledge domains to describe procedural and metacognitive knowledge that are integral to music learning. In addition, the new taxonomy elevates creativity as the most complex of the cognitive processes, which has positive implications for the field of music education.