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.
Whatever the content, or the curriculum, perhaps the most important aspect of teaching regards HOW we teach. Music teaching, across the history of music education, has been dominated by teacher centered approaches. In a teacher centered classroom, the teacher tends to be in-charge of most, if not all, aspects of teaching and learning. This normally involves selecting music to be studied and performed, planning rehearsals/practices, teaching students correct pitches and rhythms, correcting performance issues, making creative decisions, planning concerts and designing assessments. This model of teaching is not the only choice. During this session, a specific learner-centered pedagogical approach, that features collaborative creativity, will be detailed. Learner-centered educational practices have roots back to John Dewey and Jean Piaget. In this setting, students are tasked with many of the duties traditionally reserved for the teacher. Thirty years of neuroscience, biology and cognitive psychology research findings, on how humans learn, offer one conclusion: It is the one who does the work, who does the learning. Included in the session will be an explanation of the elements that allow students to do the musical work, how to involve students with collaborative creativity, and real world examples. Time will be reserved for questions from attendees.
