TEACHER PRACTICES AROUND REPERTOIRE LEARNING AND SELECTION IN THE ELEMENTARY GENERAL MUSIC CLASSROOM

Abstract

In music education, it is sometimes said that “the repertoire is the curriculum.” This research seeks to study the ways that elementary general music teachers select repertoire for use in their classrooms, and how the repertoire that they choose in turn influences what students are taught. By interviewing four elementary general music teachers about their practices around repertoire selection, with a focus on one specific lesson, I attempted in this research to answer the following questions:What resources (textbooks, digital resources, etc.) do teachers report utilizing when seeking repertoire for use in their classrooms? When selecting repertoire for their classrooms, what musical and extra-musical factors do elementary general music teachers consider? How do teachers describe the influence of repertoire selection on the concepts taught in elementary general music classrooms? After conducting these interviews and analyzing the data collected, I have determined that the teachers in this study report drawing repertoire from a variety of different resources, including digital resources, print books, and their colleagues. From these resources, they select repertoire based on a variety of overlapping selection criteria, including content-based, aesthetic, functional, and repertoire that provides opportunities for learning about different cultures. The repertoire selected has impacts on the remainder of the lesson, whether through pedagogical or structural impacts. Finally, this paper discusses the impacts of teacher pedagogical approaches on repertoire selection, and the ways in which repertoire is transmitted between colleagues within the world of elementary general music education.