MIENC Music Learning Leadership Institute
2008-2009 Team Certificate Program

The MLL School Reports distill, describe, and present evidence of the most significant processes and program outcomes that (1) reflect each LLSN school’s growing capacity as a research-based professional development center for music-in-education program development and (2) reflect on that capacity in terms of the school’s plans to scale out. The reports are generally divided into sections as follows:

I. story of the creation of the llsn school and the context for its inquiry questions

The reports begin with a narrative that describes the school; establishes the “problems” or “needs” the school had which eventually led the school to a relationship with the LLSN project; identifies and tells the story of the key persons who saw these needs and problems and together began to seek solutions; establishes what it was about the LLSN project that seemed promising as a way to help the school get on track to meet its “needs” and solve its “problems”; and describes how the school came up with Inquiry Questions that would guide the investigation.

This opening section is thus a narrative that attempts to describe the initial process of change, ending with the establishment of (or a commitment to establish) a research plan. By presenting itself as a useful Case Study of how a research-based professional development center for music-in-education programs can come about, each school not only addresses other schools in the network but also those schools outside the LLSN project which might find aspects of the school’s transformation relevant to their own present needs and problems.

II. story of the growing capacity of the school to investigate its inquiry questions

This section describes the process of change in the areas of Curriculum Design, Teaching Practices, Assessment Tools, Evaluation of Student Work, and Professional Development Outcomes.

Again, the idea of this report is to tell a story, with the main thread or focus being the Inquiry Questions. As in a story, the areas listed above develop during the course of the report just as they developed during the course of the action research. In other words, the reports attempt to notice exactly what the participants learned through the process of action research, addressing how the Inquiry Questions changed over time and why, the challenges the school faced in attempting this research and how these challenge were dealt with. The reports are interested in both what did work and what didn’t (and how the researchers adapted), so that other schools in the network can recognize similarities in their own stories (and share their strategies for dealing with the problems, etc.) and so that schools outside the network can get a sense of what they might face if they joined the network.

In this section the reports were challenged not only to describe the process of the research (exactly how the curriculum was planned, implemented, and assessed) but also to help the readers see and hear the project itself— i.e., the administration, the consultants, the classroom teachers, the teaching artists, and the students in action. At times the reports feature extended embedded narrative pieces that tell the story of one particularly interesting or successful curriculum example or of one particular teacher’s or student’s transformation during the course of the project. This section is richly illustrated with images, curriculum samples, and data displays that not only help provide visual context for the report but also help tell the overall school story, as do the annotations of the images.

III. a description of the school’s plans for scaling out

This section addresses the question of where the school is now in relation to the dissemination of its work. Are there plans for expansion within the school? District-wide scale out? School partnerships across districts? What areas of refinement will be applied to curriculum, teaching strategies, documentation or assessment practices? What forms of professional development will help the school move forward with their goals? How has or will the process of preparing publication or presentations of work contribute to your school’s work? What challenges lie ahead?

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