Beginning Band

This chapter discusses a robust research base on beginning band instruction; however, it highlights a lack of literature on preparing preservice teachers to teach band. Topics addressed include organizational responsibilities, recruitment, instrument selection, method books, repertoire, performances, assessment, teaching audiation, and singing in beginning band. Implementation strategies for beginning band teachers and higher education instruction follow. The chapter also suggests nontraditional techniques for beginning band instructions and how to prepare teachers to implement them. These strategies include improvisation, adopting an aural-first approach, and a balanced approach between aural and executive skills. The chapter concludes with a lesson plan template that provides a research-based organizational tool for preservice music educators to incorporate traditional and expanded techniques within their classes.

An Overview of Trends and Challenges in Higher Education on the Worldwide Research Agenda

Being a crucial part of the JLE scope, higher education is witnessing an era of supra-national, national, and institutional changes, including massification via massive online open courses (MOOC), politically launched or influenced trends like the Bologna process, increasing academic mobility spurred by globalisation and continued development of internationalised education, interculturality and multiligualism, worldwide innovations in higher education and teaching approaches (deep active learning, blended learning methods, gamification, storytelling, alignments of higher education and work, translanguaging in higher education instruction). Further, the JLE editors dwell upon other relevant issues, including transformation of universities, student-teacher relationship, social equity and access to higher education, students’ engagement and commitment to learning, university excellence factors.The editorial entails some guidelines for potential authors regarding priority themes JLE is going to promote within its scope.

Emerging themes in creative higher education pedagogy

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore emerging themes in which creativity, or creative pedagogy (CP), is aligned with the practices of higher education instruction. The componential theory of creativity (Amabile, 2012) was used as the lens for examining CP of the study’s participants. Design/methodology/approach Using an exploratory case study of institutionally recognized effective teachers at a flagship university in the upper mid-western region of the USA, researchers sought to see which themes emerge and align with the four components of CP. Researchers used semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and artifact data to support thematic development. Findings Four themes emerge from the study to align with CP: administrative support; praxis and environment; content learning; and student independence. Of the four themes, praxis and environment are found to be most dominant in the study. Within each theme, surrounding environment and creative-relevant components of CP emerge as the most dominant. In all, it can be concluded that effective teachers position themselves toward themes and components that offer the most impact for students. Originality/value Applying Amabile’s (2012) components of creativity to analyze the pedagogical practices of institutionally recognized teachers of excellence encourages deeper observation of pedagogical practices on higher education faculty and institutional impact on pedagogy. Recommendations are offered for both institutions of higher education and its faculty.

Using Social Media to Facilitate Instruction and Increase Marketing in Global Higher Education

The technological revolution of the past two decades has changed global higher education, particularly with the impact of social media. There are two primary functions of social media in higher education: instruction and marketing. Social media offers higher education students an array of options to socialize, network, stay informed, and connected, but technology proficiency may not be the same for instructors. As social media use by students becomes more established, educators in higher education pursue methods to parlay expertise in instruction into increased opportunities to advertise and market higher education institutions. Social media's impact of instruction in higher education is undeniable. The next major focus is on social media as a robust recruiting instrument to increase enrollment in global higher education.

Promoting Critical Thinking Through Service Learning

As stated in APA Learning Outcomes 2 and 3, two central goals of higher education instruction are promoting students’ critical thinking skills and connecting student learning to real-life applications. To meet these goals, a community-based service-learning experience was designed using task value, interpersonal accountability, cognitive dissonance, and guided reflection, and was implemented to motivate and promote students’ critical thinking skills in a human development psychology course. Students in this course served as home visitors or support-group facilitators to vulnerable families and reflected on their experiences in class assignments. Qualitative evidence from class discussions and journal entries, and quantitative data from the analysis of student essays, suggest that the majority of students engaged in critical thinking skills across the semester, particularly in using a broader locus for understanding and addressing issues experienced by their client families.

Learn, Expand, Engage: A Model for Teaching Clinical Skills in the Helping Professions

Drawing upon foundations in constructivist philosophies, learner-centered and flipped-classroom pedagogies, the Learn, Expand, Engage (LEE) Model for teaching clinical skills across the mental health helping professions is presented. Utilizing and incorporating strengths of multiple helping professions, the goals of this model is to enable postsecondary instructors to create environments for learning which empower students to reach the highest levels of learning described in the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Implications for use of the LEE model include developmentally appropriate instructional strategies based on mastery of clinical skills, active learning activities, and flexibility to respond to individual student learning needs. The LEE model provides a framework for higher education instruction that directly responds to a recently identified need for competency-based student learning pedagogy in the helping professions.

Digital Media Affecting Society

The proliferation of the use of digital media for learning and instruction continues to be investigated and pondered as the advance of a broad range of technologies eclipses currently available traditional text and face-to-face learning modalities for K-12 and higher education instruction. Digital media's affect on educational processes and delivery, an analysis of existing research reviewing whether digital media is benefitting educational outcomes in instruction and learning, and recommendations for the future are the primary goals of this chapter. Investigation into each of the aforementioned topics separately reveals an intersection that is far from being maturely assessed. The topic of digital media affecting how people learn will elicit further research as education continues to call for an increased focus on high outcomes while also increasing the adoption of digital media resources for the transmission and acquisition of knowledge.

Building Competence

A flurry of new instructional approaches has recently emerged in post-secondary education; one approach receiving the most attention is competency-based education (CBE). While many think CBE is relatively new, its roots are deeply seeded in decades-old pedagogical philosophies. The frequency with which CBE is now appearing in conversations about higher education instruction and reform gives the false impression that most practitioners actually know what CBE is, or how it contrasts with other instructional approaches. In fact, the modern dilemma faced by many in higher education is that few institutional leaders have a comprehensive understanding of what CBE is, how it differs from other instructional approaches, the historical significance behind it, and how it might be used to effect pedagogical change and instructional innovation. This chapter explores the historical basis of CBE, its benefits and detriments, and its operational elements.

Digital Media Affecting Society

The proliferation of the use of digital media for learning and instruction continues to be investigated and pondered as the advance of a broad range of technologies eclipses currently available traditional text and face-to-face learning modalities for K-12 and higher education instruction. Digital media's affect on educational processes and delivery, an analysis of existing research reviewing whether digital media is benefitting educational outcomes in instruction and learning, and recommendations for the future are the primary goals of this chapter. Investigation into each of the aforementioned topics separately reveals an intersection that is far from being maturely assessed. The topic of digital media affecting how people learn will elicit further research as education continues to call for an increased focus on high outcomes while also increasing the adoption of digital media resources for the transmission and acquisition of knowledge.