An Interdisciplinary Quest to Improve Pedagogy
Presenters: Dr. Suzanne Burton, Dr. Philip Duker, Dr. Maria Purciello, Dr. Alden Snell, and Dr. Daniel Stevens (all from the University of Delaware)
As music faculty, we often engage in pedagogical discourse surrounding our teaching practices. We hear student murmurs of exciting lessons learned in other music courses. Curious, we wonder, What can I learn from my colleagues that will help me improve my own teaching practice? These conversations and questions provided the catalyst for five faculty members representing theory, musicology, and music education to create a pedagogy study group to explore teaching and learning from an interdisciplinary perspective. Building on our initial discussions, we developed a plan to look closely at one another’s teaching practices to improve our own, strengthen connections among our various courses, and provide our students with sustained quality instruction. In this session, we share the results of our project and provide suggestions for implementation in a variety of disciplinary settings.