Developing Policy Knowledge in Preservice Music Teachers

Carla Aguilar (Metropolitan State University of Denver) and Christopher Dye (Middle Tennessee State University) explore how music teacher educators can prepare undergraduates to navigate the policy landscape that shapes their professional lives.

What is policy, and why should teachers care?

Policy, in the broadest sense, encompasses the governmental and organizational decisions, rules, and processes that affect practice in a given context. Because policy touches nearly every aspect of a music teacher’s work, preservice teachers need tools to understand their teaching environments and the levers through which they can influence those environments.

Jones (2010) distinguished between “hard” policies—compulsory requirements such as government mandates—and “soft” policies, which are institutional-level decisions like accreditation rules that vary from one college to the next. Preservice teachers encounter hard policies when they satisfy state licensure requirements or embed state standards into lesson plans. Soft policies determine, for example, whether a program requires coursework in elementary general music alone or in both elementary and secondary settings.

These categories extend into K–12 classrooms. When a state mandates a fine-arts credit for high school graduation, music programs may need to expand their offerings and enrollments rise. If a district requires all teachers to integrate literacy strategies, music teachers must adapt their instruction. Field experiences themselves are governed by hard policies when schools enforce background checks and visitor ID requirements. Clearly, there is room in the music education curriculum for students to seek out and analyse policy-oriented media while discussing political issues and perspectives in class.

How politically aware are music education students?

Carpini and Keeter (1996) argued that informed citizens make better citizens. Burton, Knaster, and Knieste (2015) surveyed undergraduate music education majors on their political knowledge: most could not identify then–Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, did not know whether their home state had received a Race to the Top grant, and were unfamiliar with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The researchers found that such students typically learned about policy issues only through their music education methods courses.

Dye and Richerme (2015) investigated inservice music teachers in Indiana and documented wide variation in policy awareness. Respondents were well-acquainted with state standards and teacher evaluation models but far less familiar with STEAM initiatives, legislation affecting licensure and evaluation, and federal education programs. This gap likely arises because teachers become aware mainly of policies they use daily—how to cite standards or what rubric will assess their teaching. As a result, teachers tend to pay attention only during the implementation phase of the policy cycle, not during the legislative or administrative processes that create the policies, reinforcing the feeling that policies are “done to them” and undermining their sense of agency.

Civic engagement figures compound the picture. Among Burton et al.’s preservice respondents, nearly ninety percent rarely or never took part in advocacy. Dye and Richerme found that inservice teachers voted in presidential and local elections at far higher rates than the general population, but most had not contacted any federal, state, or local official in the previous year, suggesting that civic involvement beyond the ballot box was limited.

The way today’s college students consume information shapes their political participation. Lee, Shah, and McLeod (2012) studied adolescents and discovered that reading political content online and debating civics topics face to face both contributed uniquely to political socialization. Online media and social forums were the primary sources of political information, but in-person conversations with peers had the strongest effect on whether students sought out further information and became politically engaged. This finding supports the inclusion of, in the music education curriculum, both exposure to political media and classroom activities that facilitate real discussion of controversial issues.

Where policy fits in the undergraduate degree

The typical music education degree is dense, with few electives and many required courses in musicianship, leadership, pedagogy, and professional knowledge. While individual institutions vary in the specific courses and performance levels expected, the general shape of the degree is codified by the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM).

NASM’s handbook (2019) sets out general and technical competencies for music education, including musician-centered skills, history, and repertory, along with guidelines for pedagogical coursework and field experiences in varied school settings. Notably, NASM states that “institutions should show concern for the development of arts and arts education policy, and should prepare professional musicians to participate in policy development.” Yet the handbook does not list policy understanding or political engagement as professional competencies for undergraduate music education majors. Responsibility falls on each institution to decide how those topics are addressed — whether in dedicated courses or spread across the curriculum.

Richard Colwell (2011) called for a fundamental rethinking of the one-size-fits-all curriculum that focuses narrowly on practitioner preparation. He proposed that universities create pathways for select students to train as “musician-scholars”—music education completers whose degrees emphasize a complementary field such as arts administration, educational research, or policy studies. Such overlapping curricula, Colwell argued, would ensure that those fields draw on music-education perspectives and that graduates pursuing advanced research have appropriate grounding.

David Labaree (2006), in The Trouble With Ed Schools, examined how practicing teachers, when they enter graduate studies, can struggle to shift from highly localized to systemic ways of thinking. He described the challenge of “accommodating potentially conflicting professional worldviews between teacher and researcher” while preserving “teacherly values and skills.” The same tension arises when preparing undergraduates for policy work. Offering interested and capable students the chance to undertake research or policy projects during undergraduate study could ease later transitions to graduate work or professional policy roles while keeping their classroom commitments intact.

Strategies for building policy engagement

Within existing coursework

Lee and colleagues’ idea of “communication competence” suggests that teacher educators can cultivate policy interest simply by steering preservice teachers into substantive discussions about the hard and soft policies they will encounter as professionals.

A natural home for such content is the senior seminar, often taken alongside student teaching. For example, Heil and Berg (2017) studied students completing the edTPA and found that participation in the assessment generated a “heightened political and social consciousness about the status of education”—awareness that participants might carry into their careers.

At Middle Tennessee State University, the senior seminar covers one topic from each of four domains: pedagogy and philosophy, job search, preparation for summative assessments (edTPA portfolios and teacher evaluation rubrics), and school law/policy. Policy topics include the structure of public school governance, school finance, teacher evaluation, and the legal rights and responsibilities of employees—contracts, due process, liability, discipline, church-state issues, and public employees’ free-expression rights. Short readings introduce preservice teachers to resources like the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Education Policy Center, and the Rutgers Education Law Center. Foundational questions guide discussion: “Who do teachers work for?” “How should rights vary depending on whether you act as a citizen or an employee?” “How do we judge whether schools are succeeding?” “What would fair school funding look like?”

Asking students to explore the websites of their state department of education, the U.S. Department of Education, state-level teacher associations, and the National Education Association helps them understand where to find policy information and which issues receive attention. Discussions of music education’s history can naturally extend to today’s public school landscape, including charter schools and their policy implications. Case studies from local districts—for example, effects of charter-school flexibility—allow students to speak concretely about unfamiliar terrain, such as the fact that charter schools are generally publicly funded but often not required to hire licensed teachers in every subject.

Teacher evaluation provides a vivid real-world case. In Colorado, the state Department of Education developed an evaluation model and rubric to satisfy a Race to the Top application. The rubric assumed all teachers could create lessons emphasizing literacy and mathematics, creating an inequitable evaluation for teachers of nontested subjects. Introducing the rubric into an existing methods class empowered preservice teachers to analyse its construction and argue for a more valid appraisal of music pedagogy.When such political information is discussed in the classroom through guided conversation, students gradually develop a sharper professional awareness of how policies affect their classrooms.

Education news as a teaching tool. Outlets like Education Week, the New York Times Education section, and the NEA’s Education Votes publish daily articles on policy. These sources cover both hard policies (state statutes, licensure rules, the Every Student Succeeds Act) and soft policies (professional development requirements, specific curricular initiatives). They also operate active social-media presences, making them easy to follow. Introducing these outlets in music education coursework helps preservice teachers build a habit of staying informed once they are in the classroom — something we argue is a professional responsibility.

Beyond existing coursework

Adopting the musician-scholar model that Colwell (2011) proposed will require context-specific adaptations based on an institution’s mission and existing resources. With that in mind, we suggest three concrete avenues: undergraduate thesis projects affiliated with honors college programs that examine policy implementation; internship experiences with arts advocacy groups; and a dedicated education-policy track within the music education degree.

Professional internships with arts advocacy organizations offer another avenue for giving preservice music teachers policy experience. These can supplement a traditional degree program, replace some field experience, or be integrated into an extended program like a fifth-year master’s. Music schools with existing internship infrastructure from music industry or business degrees may be well positioned to facilitate such opportunities. As with service-learning experiences (Iverson & James, 2010), internships can foster student development across multiple citizenship dimensions, including valuing education policy and committing to civic engagement.

Internships focused on policy and advocacy with state music education associations (MEAs) could be especially valuable. Interns might develop advocacy materials, help organize state hill days, and expand MEAs’ capacity for action, given that many MEA leaders are inservice teachers balancing organizational service with professional and personal commitments. Such internships could also create a pipeline to identify and mentor future leaders within music education organizations.

A more ambitious model for embedding policy in music education degrees involves creating a dedicated educational policy studies track, with the goal that graduates would pursue graduate work in the area. Many departments may find this challenging given NASM curricular requirements and teacher licensure constraints tied to most education programs, frequently housed in separate colleges of education. Colwell (2011) raises this issue, referencing James Fraser’s (2001) idea that universities might need to exit the teacher licensure business. In music education, Asmus (2003) similarly suggested that the growth of alternative certification paths outside higher education could let music programs design their own degrees, allowing students to seek licensure independently. While this shift might be unworkable for some institutions, others in states with affordable licensure options or in places like California—where licensure occurs through postbaccalaureate study—might pursue that flexibility.

The Vanderbilt University Peabody College program in Human and Organizational Development offers a track that could serve as a strong model for an educational policy track within music education. Students on the Educational Policy pathway take core courses in public policy, school finance, and policy analysis, along with electives in public policy or selected topics. A music education graduate with such substantial policy preparation would be ready to act as an effective musician-scholar, bringing the music community’s perspectives and approaches to public policy considerations.

Civic Engagement and Professional Practices

We contend that music education students must encounter a variety of political practices relevant to music teachers to develop their civic capacity. Without this, preservice music teachers may think active citizenship is limited to voting. Below are several approaches to bring these practices to the forefront:

* Encourage membership in C-NAfME (Collegiate National Association for Music Education) and state and local arts advocacy groups. As teacher educators, we can prompt our C-NAfME groups to include policy topics in their agendas. For example, Tennessee’s annual state C-NAfME conference has featured recent presentations on implementing new standards, developing the state fine arts teacher evaluation portfolio, keeping up with education policy, and summarizing the state MEA’s advocacy and legislative work.

* Promote participation in state and federal legislative advocacy events, such as Hill Days for music education. Music teacher educators can coordinate with music school colleagues to ensure students are excused from classes to attend and help them find funding as needed.

* Use departmental communication channels to share opportunities for digital advocacy through resources like NAfME’s Advocacy Groundswell and selected Americans for the Arts forums.

* Ask panelists and guest speakers at music education forums about their political engagement.

* Read texts and chapters addressing policy issues, sharing information with students and colleagues. These could include Paul Woodford’s (2018) Music Education in the Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth or Michelle Kaschub and Janice Smith’s (2014) Promising Practices in 21st Century Music Teacher Education.

* Inform students about policy learning opportunities through groups like the Society for Music Teacher Education Policy Area of Strategic Planning and Action (Policy ASPA; Society for Music Teacher Education Policy, 2019a). This ASPA provides a policy e-kit that could help students understand policy and related topics (Society for Music Teacher Education Policy, 2019b).

* Ask students to reflect on intersections of music and political events, including programmatic elements of on- and off-campus performances and the presence and purpose of music at political rallies and protests.

As prospective public employees, students must also understand tensions between their free speech rights as citizens and limitations or potential consequences stemming from their employment. Topics warranting in-class discussion include church-state separation in public schools, policies on using public resources for political activity, school district policies on teachers’ social media accounts, and the current judicial climate regarding public employees’ freedom of speech and expression.

Modeling Political Engagement

Beyond outlining resources and discussing civic engagement, we advocate modeling political engagement for our students. We both have attended Arts Advocacy Days at state and federal levels, then shared these experiences with our students. Our involvement in advocacy events serves as a tangible model. We hope students, tied to specific advocacy events, will be motivated to contact their representatives about the importance of arts and arts education or communicate more broadly with legislators.

At the local level, teacher educators can model civic engagement by voting in elections—especially those with ballot issues on school funding—and attending school board meetings and district events relevant to policies affecting music programs. They might also collaborate with inservice music teachers to prepare school board presentations or craft position statements supporting music education in P–12 schools. At the state level, they could attend “tours” or other events hosted by the state Department of Education to gather public input or disseminate policy decisions.

Music teacher educators could also take on national leadership or service roles, such as being a state representative to NAfME’s Advocacy Leadership Force. In that role, they can update students on advocacy efforts and policy initiatives from the national organization. Students could then be encouraged to participate in open webinars, join collective advocacy actions, or help craft advocacy documents—including policy asks for state advocacy days.

To demonstrate how modeling civic participation can translate into student policy engagement, we offer examples from students in a recent music education seminar. Participants were given a statement written on behalf of the state MEA executive board to the school board of a district that had announced it would eliminate its high school band and middle school general music programs. Through class discussions, students examined which arguments supporting the programs drew on existing hard and soft policies, including state law ensuring access to music education and the school board’s own mission statement.

Conclusion: Adding Policy Expectations to the Scope of Preservice Education

In their daily work teaching students, music educators may be completely unaware of hard policies at governmental levels or soft policies operating in schools. This likely stems from policy knowledge not being seen as an essential competency for educators. As a result, many educators react to policies rather than enacting them. We propose that integrating policy education into music teacher preparation curricula will help future teachers become more astute or “wonky” regarding policy, advocacy, and civic engagement. This can be achieved by embedding policy discussions, activities, and assignments within existing courses or by creating specialized pathways such as education policy tracks, internships, or thesis projects. Music teacher educators play a crucial role in policy education by modeling policy awareness and political advocacy for students. By showing how policies intersect with music teachers’ professional lives and highlighting the importance of active participation in policymaking, we can empower our students, as scholar-musicians, to critically examine how things are and feel greater agency in imagining how things could be.