Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.
The "schoolification" of popular music refers to adapting popular music to align with the formal structures and requirements of educational institutions. While music educators widely acknowledge popular music's musical, social, and engagement benefits, resistance to its inclusion in traditional music education still persists. This reluctance often stems from limited exposure to popular music in music educator preparation programs, a lack of diverse professional development opportunities, and concerns about declining enrollment in traditional ensembles. These challenges raise a critical question: how can educators integrate popular music into formal educational settings in a way that is both educationally robust and authentically inclusive? As popular music education continues to grow, it is essential to identify, explore, and critically evaluate innovative approaches to teaching and learning through popular music. This presentation will provide strategies for fostering student-centered and culturally relevant performance- and creativity-based popular music programs. The ideas presented are drawn from experiences with a university-level pop ensemble called Versatile. Established two and a half years ago, the ensemble comprises music and non-music majors who excel as musical code-switchers. By embracing more flexible and authentic practices, educators can ensure that popular music education remains vibrant, engaging, and meaningful for students.
Researchers have found that popular music ensembles can increase participation in school music programs and often produce increased student engagement and motivation. Yet, as the number of ensembles grows, there is no standard format for how popular music ensembles operate, and teachers often lack training in popular music pedagogies. Little is understood about why students are motivated in these classes, and teachers can often conduct these groups in controlling ways that harm students’ motivation. Self-determination theory posits that students who experience support for their basic psychological needs will be more motivated in their classes, have increased well-being, and be more likely to continue engaging with music. Using the self-determination theory as a framework, I examined student motivation in three popular music ensembles in the Northeast United States. Qualitative data was collected through interviews with students and observations of each ensemble. Findings suggest that students enroll in these ensembles because of intrinsic desires to play music and learn to play instruments in a way that differed from their previous school music experiences. Classes incorporating more in-formal and non-formal music learning techniques better satisfy students’ basic psychological needs, thus helping students develop intrinsic motivation for making music. The psychological need for relatedness was the most common contributor to student motivation, yet students with less relatedness support often had lower competence satisfaction. More autonomy-supportive teachers had more high-quality engagement from students, whereas controlling teachers thwarted student motivation in popular music classes.
Popular music is authentically learned in a non-formal environment among peers (Green, 2002), so it is important to consider that student success in non-formal music learning environments can be influenced by the interactions and interpersonal relationships among peers and their teachers. It is important for teachers to understand the relationship nuances that can impact learning. Therefore, the purpose of this multiple instrumental case study was to examine the dynamics of interpersonal relationships both between teachers and students, and also among students and their peers within non-formal music learning environments rooted in popular music pedagogy. More specifically, how did participants describe the influence of interpersonal relationships on students’ musical achievement? This multiple case study consisted of four cases of modern music programs including teacher and student perspectives. Data collection included teacher interviews, classroom observations with field notes, student focus groups, individual student interviews, artifacts, and a researcher’s journal. Student autonomy, interpersonal relationships, and musical achievement were topics explored from both student and teacher perspectives within each popular music program. A cross-case analysis was completed to highlight each program's similar and unique features and address the specific research question. The four teachers each utilized varying degrees of student autonomy within their program, but all had a strong focus on building relationships with and among their students. Emerging themes were empowerment, negotiation, authentic learning, and how relationships impacted musical achievement within those domains.
This presentation will explore the importance of incorporating racial trauma-informed strategies into music education, particularly in the context of popular music. By drawing on the rich cultural histories of Memphis and Chicago—two cities that have been at the forefront of racial integration and musical innovation—this session aims to equip educators with the tools to create a more inclusive and supportive learning environment.
Culturally responsive teaching is thought to connect student’s cultures, languages, and life experiences with what they learn in school. The human brain is wired to make connections between the known and the unknown, and it’s easier for our brains to learn and store information when we have a hook to hang it on. The hook, for most students, is the knowledge they bring into the classroom. Unfortunately, music educators have tended not to recognize what students know about music, and far to seldomly, do they champion student’s prior musical understanding in the classroom. This has been an ongoing issue in traditional ensembles such as band, choir and orchestra, where students encounter “quality” styles of music. These musics tend to be those that the teacher enjoys and values. On the surface it would seem that teachers of popular music classes and ensembles wouldn’t suffer from the same issues. After all, many students have significant understanding of popular musics and enroll in these courses for that reason. However, I suggest that too often popular music teachers bring their traditional ensemble roots with them when teaching popular music ensembles. They fail to allow students to make use of what they know, and as a result miss out on many culturally responsive opportunities. In this session, I will examine issues that limit culturally responsive teaching in popular music courses/ensembles, and I will suggest a strategy that approaches teaching and learning, in these classes, that can result in a deeper level of cultural responsiveness.
