The RUBRICS CUBE System as a Point of Departure Assessment
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Advancing music for changing times requires that the evolving role of music in education must always be considered in the context of current education policy. in this period of mounting pressure on schools to produce documented evidence of meeting ever-expanding accountability benchmarks for success, music is emerging as a strategic entry point and priority for reform and improvement through arts and arts-integrated learning. A select group of schools nationwide and their higher education and arts organization partners have chosen to embrace these challenges by developing new models of inquiry and research as part of the Music-In-Education Learning Laboratory School Network (LLSN).
In this Chapter, music-in-education collaborating practitioners and researchers report on the challenges of developing documentation, assessment, and research practices as part of the process of creating music-in-education laboratory programs in schools. First, Larry Scripp, Director of the Center for Music-in-Education at New England Conservatory, describes how the RUBRICS CUBE framework provides a ‘universal-field’ approach to embracing multi-factored assessment of multivariate program outcomes through both qualitative and statistical analyses. Scripp offers case study portraits and the evolution of the consortium research methods.
Larry Scripp and David Reider team up to offer a detailed examination of the Music Ventures project in Vista, California. This study, commissioned by the NAMM Foundation (formerly the International Foundation for Music Research), indicates that statistically significant, positive links between music and language reading and writing skills exist at the early stages of literacy development, and that these links strengthen considerably, especially with ELL students, as teachers are trained to support music and language-integrated reading and writing instruction through ‘teaching for transfer’ strategies in their classrooms. In this way music reading and writing become an essential tool for creating a broader and deeper understanding of general symbolic skill development.
Read more:
- Scripp, L. Embracing the Challenges of Complexity in Music-In-Education Research: The Evolution of the RUBRICS CUBE System as a Guiding Framework for Program Development and Evaluation in MIENC Schools. Journal for Music-In-Education, 2007.
- Rabkin, N. Introduction to Music Ventures: Linking the Processes of Music and Language Literacy. Journal for Music-In-Education, 2007.
- Scripp, L. and Reider, D. New Ventures in Integrated Teaching and Learning: Working Toward a Model of General Symbolic Literacy Based on the Growing Understanding of Fundamental Literacy Skills Shared Between Music and Language in Grades K-2. Journal for Music-In-Education, 2007.