Music Experts' Views of an Ideal Curriculum. Elementary Subjects Center Series No. 28.

This report summarizes and compares the views of six experts in music education concerned with teaching music for students' conceptual understanding at the elementary level. Three music professors and three public school music teachers teaching at the elementary level engaged in comprehensive written exercises and extensive interviews with researchers to address issues related to curriculum, teaching, and evaluation in music education. In this report, experts examined the above issues from the perspective of the "ideal," that is, what curriculum, teaching, and learning ought to be in elementary music. They identified, described, critiqued, and discussed features of an ideal curriculum, goals in music education, key concepts and ideas in music, how these are related, and how to organize and sequence these ideas with sample lessons in an effort to develop students' understanding in music. The report presents a comparative and contrastive analysis of the experts' responses on the above dimensions as well as their expressed or implicit views of music as a discipline and what it means to understand music. The findings then are summarized and discussed in light of their implications for music education and teacher education. (Author)