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Workshop: Rethinking Aural Skills Through Backwards Design
Session Topics: Alternative: 90 minutes session length, SMT
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Presentations | ||
Workshop: Rethinking Aural Skills Through Backwards Design Scholars reviewing the state of aural skills education over the past 30 years have noted—and lamented—how little it has changed. Recent scholarship suggests a desire for new directions: urging new attention to equity and access, promoting new tasks, and rethinking the purpose of aural skills. Yet so long as aural skills pedagogies are defined by what we bring to and do in class (particularly sight singing and dictation), curricular reform will not progress. Instead of defining aural skills according to inputs, we can follow the principles of “backwards design” to focus on outputs, starting with a vision of what a successful aural skills graduate is able to do. The process of starting with real-world, relevant outcomes, designing authentic assessments for these outcomes, and creating related classroom activities to serve these will increase the relevance of aural skills instruction and provide a rationale and mechanism for impactful curriculum reform. In this workshop, we will lead participants through the process of rethinking their aural skills curriculum and instruction in ways that support valued, “real-world” objectives. Participants in the workshop will leave with a model of how to approach reform of curriculum and teaching in aural skills, as well as a number of concrete examples of student outcomes, assessments, and classroom activities. Presentations of the Symposium Workshop: Rethinking Aural Skills Through Backwards Design Scholars reviewing the state of aural skills education over the past 30 years have noted—and lamented—how little it has changed. Recent scholarship suggests a desire for new directions: urging new attention to equity and access, promoting new tasks, and rethinking the purpose of aural skills. Yet so long as aural skills pedagogies are defined by what we bring to and do in class (particularly sight singing and dictation), curricular reform will not progress. Instead of defining aural skills according to inputs, we can follow the principles of “backwards design” to focus on outputs, starting with a vision of what a successful aural skills graduate is able to do. The process of starting with real-world, relevant outcomes, designing authentic assessments for these outcomes, and creating related classroom activities to serve these will increase the relevance of aural skills instruction and provide a rationale and mechanism for impactful curriculum reform. In this workshop, we will lead participants through the process of rethinking their aural skills curriculum and instruction in ways that support valued, “real-world” objectives. Participants in the workshop will leave with a model of how to approach reform of curriculum and teaching in aural skills, as well as a number of concrete examples of student outcomes, assessments, and classroom activities. |