Fall 2023 Pedagogy Fridays

The Pedagogy Study Group warmly invites all teachers of music history to attend “Pedagogy Fridays,” held approximately every-other week during the academic year. At these virtual gatherings, we discuss varied teaching-related topics, share resources, and provide support to each other. There’s no need to register in advance; all are welcome to attend, even if only for part of a session. This fall, Pedagogy Fridays will take place on the dates below from 4 to 5 p.m. EST via Zoom at this link. Topics include:

September 22: “Crip It, Flip It, and Reverse It: Implementing Accommodation and Accessibility in the Music Classroom,” workshop led by Alexandria Carrico, Katie Grennell, and James Deaville. (See notes here.)

Within higher education the terms “accessibility” and “accommodation” are often presented within a narrow framework that mandates institutional compliance to legal statutes such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), and Section 504 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Coupled with an historically ableist culture that equates accessibility with compliance, it is no wonder that many of the people working in higher education have a limited understanding of what constitutes accessibility and accommodation. While this could be said of most academic fields, it is especially pertinent to music history, a discipline that has historically privileged hearing-centric engagement with sound and has centered the white, middle-class, Euro-American, heteronormative, ablebodied and able-minded, and male experience as normative. So what can music instructors do to challenge these narratives that mandate adherence to established normativity and create accessible environments for all students? In this presentation we will share some recommendations that address practical applications for implementing accessibility measures in the music history classroom, both in terms of course structure and design and curricular representations of disability.

October 6: Collaborating Across Disciplines (theory, recording tech, composition, performance, dance, etc.)
October 20: How can we successfully guide discussion of controversial subjects?
November 3: What do new adjunct faculty need to know? How can department leadership support them?
November 17: Encouraging Close Listening Outside of the Classroom
December 1: ChatGPT – Where are we now?