MIENC Music Learning Leadership Institute
2008-2009 Team Certificate Program

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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