MIENC Music Learning Leadership Institute
2008-2009 Team Certificate Program

• The MIENC Guiding Principles
  Re-forming education practice through music, Site-based change, Music invokes change in school and community, Developing artist-teacher-scholars as agents of change, Differentiation & synthesis as underlying principal for curriculum, Develop diverse teaching & learning strategies, Employ multiple documentation & assessment methods, Insist on both equity & high standards, Value reflective practice, Support participation in professional community

• Artist-Teacher-Scholar Framework as “Agent of Change”
• Four Strategies for Advancing Learning Laboratory School Scale Out Dissemination:
  Music Learning Leadership Certificate Process, Guided Intern Programs, Digital Portfolio Systems & Web Publishing, Guided Practice Consultant Teams

• RUBRICS CUBE Action Research Process/Eight Program Outcomes Accountability Framework
• Music Plus Music Integration Program Development Principles:
  • Music serves as a fundamental mode and model of learning that engages cognitive, aesthetic, kinesthetic, neurological, and social-emotional development in all participants at all ages.
  • Comprehensive musical literacy skill assessments serve as fundamental measures of musical understanding for all students.
  • Music and Music Integrated Learning is optimized by teaching and assessing through multiple representations, contexts, genres, and cultures.
  • Teaching for Learning Transfer is best achieved through explicit investigations of fundamental concepts, cognitive processes, parallel procedures, meta-cognitive strategies shared among music, other academic/arts disciplines, and aspects of social-personal development.

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The Ten Guiding Principles of the Music-in-Education National Consortium

Principle 1: Re-forming Educational Practice
We believe in the continuous re-formation of educational practices to optimize the capacity of all children to learn, and that crucial to this reform process is the rethinking of the essential role of music in education.

Principle 2: Site-based change
We believe that in order for music-in-education to be effective as part of a larger practice of school change, it must be understood in the context of the particular school’s evolution in its quest for excellence.

Principle 3: Differentiation and Synthesis
We believe that a genuine, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary music program assumes its full power in education through the dynamic tension between music as a distinct, authentic subject area, and as part of a rich curriculum integrated with other subject areas.

Principle 4: School and Its Community
We believe that music-in-education changes the culture of a school, supports it in the invention and articulation of its own change, and invokes the school and its community as agents of this change.

Principle 5: Diverse Strategies for Teaching and Learning
We believe in diverse strategies for the implementation of music-in-education practices as a way to improve music and music-integrated teaching and learning throughout the school.

Principle 6: Musicians’ Role as Artist-Teacher-Scholars in Education and Society
We believe that teaching experiences and mentor relationships are an essential part of the developing musician’s growth as an artist, teacher, scholar, and citizen, critical to his/her success as a practitioner, as an agent of change in schools, and as a significant contributor to society.

Principle 7: Equity and High Expectations
We believe that the compelling nature of music generates unique opportunities for music and classroom teachers to provide equitable access to learning while invoking and sustaining high expectations for all students.

Principle 8: Reflective Practice
We believe that teachers and musicians build their capacity as reflective practitioners through a scholarship of teaching that involves documenting, analyzing, and sharing their own work and evidence of student music and music-integrated learning.

Principle 9: Participation in Professional Community
We believe in the creation and expansion of professional networks to generate discourse, share practices, develop new inquiry, and further research as an ongoing extension of the music-in-education process.

Principle 10: Diverse Assessment Strategies
We make a commitment to develop, document, and disseminate multiple assessment strategies of music-in-education programs, adapting both practitioner action research and formal research methodologies in order to illuminate the complexity and scope of the teaching and learning processes, to refine definitions of program quality, and to address a variety of audiences and purposes through new technologies and innovative publishing strategies.

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Music-in-Education National Consortium’s Ten Guiding Principles [Journal I, III].

The site directors of the MIENC met in Boston nearly seven years ago in formulate a set of guiding principles for creating and nurturing the Learning Laboratory School Network (LLSN). Since that time, it has often been said that admittance to the network requires a belief and adherence to these principles. Another policy of the LLSN is that the Ten Principles provide an important conceptual portal into the Learning Laboratory School Digital Portfolios. That is, the documentation of Music-in-Education program outcomes in every school program is analyzed in terms of each of the Ten Principles as a sort of conceptual checkpoint for its validity.

With the certificate program, the Ten Principles take on renewed significance as a set of criteria for building an operational model of leadership that can the tied to the guiding tenets of the Consortium.

The usual order of the Principles can be seen in JLTM II and III [referenced]. For the purpose of forming a conceptual framework for Music Learning Leadership we can apply a new frame of reference.

Thus, the annotated list below is a reordering and reinterpreation of the principles as a basis for understanding to context and application to the practices of the Consortium Laboratory school partnerships. The annotations are based on the definitions of Music Learning Leadership mentioned at the beginning of the introduction and are loosely grouped according to Peter Senge’s five disciplines of learning organizations.