“What are the purposes for having artifacts in portfolios? What is the purpose of the portfolio itself?”

Sometimes the obvious answer to a question isn’t the most open-ended response. These questions are just two of many ‘questions of purpose’ raised yesterday in conversation from yesterday’s session of “Music as a Fundamental Medium and Model for Arts and Arts Integrated Teaching and Learning: A Portfolio-based Professional Development Seminar,” which is being taught by Larry Scripp at the Harvard Graduate School of Education this Spring.

The response that I think is most fitting to these questions is one that Larry posed: that ‘we’ (the portfolio’s audience) don’t know what those purposes are yet; at least, not until the portfolio’s author has developed his/her persona and inquiry questions.

Larry’s answer soundly resonated with me, not only because of its open-endedness, but also because it reminded me how much the portfolio process helps to initiate personal growth, in tandem with professional growth. In my article, “Portfolio Documentation in Context” (which will be published in the Journal for Music-in-Education 2007, I write that

Portfolios . . . cannot exist in a vacuum. There must be a community of like-minded individuals who can appreciate the work of the student or professional. Without a supportive environment of peers, mentors, and teachers, the reasons behind portfolio documentation and assessment would be lost on our students.

On an explicit level, this language refers to the Music-in-Education community at the Conservatory and in the MIENC. But on an implicit level, what I am implying is that there is a certain amount of personal investment, commitment, and exploration that must take place when undertaking a project like that of portfolios.

Imagine your portfolio as your work, in dialogue: In conversation with people who know you, and people who don’t.
(Larry Scripp, class lecture, 2/26/07)

My response to Larry comes in the form of the ‘obvious’ questions: How does one engage in constructive dialog with unknown others? What forms can that dialog take?

In order to answer these questions, I must first define for myself who I am.

I can already see that I have multiple roles in the seminar: as a co-teacher with Larry, a mentor from the field of Music-in-Education, and as an active participant in class. Each of these roles translates to a slightly more developed persona, from which I will develop my own portfolio.

These personae are as follows:

• HGSE alum as a module participant and mentor (since I did the Arts In Education program at HGSE –and took Larry’s course then– and am now working as a professional in the field of Music-in-Education);
• Higher-Ed administrator, evaluating my own college’s curriculum (which happens to be a MIE program), and re-imagining the workforce
  (both as music professionals and professional teachers) with Artist-Teacher-Scholars being developed by my MIE program;
• A professional Artist-Teacher-Scholar, crafting my own professional development workshop with themes from this module, and experiences as program evaluator and Information Architect for the MIE National Consortium

A portfolio crafted for each persona could have remarkably different artifacts. I could choose which readings I do for the course based on which articles are more relevant towards my work. For example, Arnie Aprill’s article “Rules for Arts Ed Radicals” might be more applicable to the Higher-Ed or Professional A-T-S profiles, while Gail Burnaford’s “Crossing Boundaries: The Role of Higher Education in Professional Development with Arts Partnerships” might apply to all three. Presumably, more useful readings for the A-T-S persona would be found in the first issue of the Journal for Learning Through Music, because that Journal’s focus has very specific examples of music integrated curricula, whereas the second issue is more philosophical. (Although, it would depend on what sort of professional development seminar I’d be thinking of creating).

Thinking about my portfolio as a conversational view of emergent practices is helpful, not only because of the fluidity it lends towards the collection of documentation, but also because it forces me to always be mindful of the role that context plays in displaying and communicating information. Merriam-Webster defines conversation as “an exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas,” and I think that definition assumes that the parties involved have some sort of mutual understanding of those sentiments. So, in terms of the creation of my portfolio, this means to me that any artifact that I include should only be included if it helps to satisfy the way that I can help others to mutually understand what it is that I’m trying to convey. Melody Marchman, a student in Scripp’s “Graduate Seminar in Music-in-Education” (taught at NEC as the Conservatory’s parallel to the HGSE module), said it best when she paraphrased minimalist composer Phillip Glass:

You don’t truly know yourself until you can see yourself objectively.

Regardless of which persona I choose to focus my efforts toward, I believe that by contributing to the HGSE module (in the aforementioned roles/personae), and by creating portfolios to showcase various aspects of my work at New England Conservatory and the MIENC, I will be exploring an emergent world: that of professional development geared towards Artist-Teacher-Scholars.

-Randy

Randy Wong is Program Coordinator for the Center for Music-in-Education and Information Architect for the Music-in-Education National Consortium.

Laura Umbro’s portfolio exhibits are excerpts from her Music-in-Education Cumulative Portfolio required for earning the MIE Concentration from New England Conservatory as a Performance major. Her portfolio was given exemplary portfolio status because of its thorough documenation of her work and its relevance to the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards of portfolio content coded into NEC’s digital portfolio assessment system.

These portfolio excerpts will be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal for Music-In-Education, and are being featured here in our first installment of the MIE Portfolio Showcase.

–Randy Wong,
MIE Program Coordinator

As MIE Program Coordinator, I am often asked what advantages the MIE Concentration Program sees with using portfolios to help students keep track of their learning. While the answer to this is long, and varied, I thought I’d take the time in this post to list some very specific applications for portfolio use as career-building tools.

For starters, sometimes it helps people to think of their portfolio in the same way that they would think of a press kit. More than a business card, and often more ‘official’ than a website, artists use press kits all the time to show off their accomplishments, repertoire, references, media reviews, and etc. An MIE Portfolio can be used the same way – it’s like a press kit for teaching artists. A well-organized portfolio is like currency, when it comes to applying for teaching jobs or artist residencies! Prospective employers, whether they are at music schools, youth symphonies, or even parents looking for a private teacher for their child, can look at your MIE portfolio and get a very good glimpse at who you are as a teacher. Most likely, your MIE portfolio will include at least a learning narrative, rationale towards teaching, or a statement of self-assessment; and many peoples’ portfolios also have sample lesson plans, article responses, and pictures or video of past teaching experiences. This collection of documents says far more about who you are, and your experience as a teaching artist, than just a resume could.

While the sharing of some types of artifacts may be more relevant to some jobs than others, it’s important not to overlook the potential that ALL artifacts can have, if they are presented in an appropriate fashion. For example, just because you may be being considered as a private instructor for a young instrumentalist (as opposed to an assistant at a research center), I would encourage you to include some reading responses in your portfolio. If you chose articles (i.e. from the Journal for Learning Through Music) that are relevant to your teaching approach with young students, and included thoughtful reading responses, then prospective parents would see that you are not only familiar with current research in music-in-education, but that you strive to let that research inform who you are, in your own practice, as a teaching artist.

Another example of this deals with MIE alums who apply for jobs in arts administration. On occasion, one might find a community organization who wants to start a music program at their site, but isn’t sure what would be an appropriate approach. In an interview for such a job, the organization might ask its applicants what approaches similar organizations have taken. Or what trends are current in the field. Or if there might be an already-established program somewhere that could be replicated at their site. For the uninformed applicant, this could be a daunting question. However, for the MIE alum, who has done readings in national music-in-education journals where the journals report on similar programs across the country, the question becomes very easy. In fact, some of our Guided Interns at the Research Center have decided to focus their internships on gleaming that kind of information from sites across the MIE National Consortium, and their portfolios will reflect these trends.

Finally, I wanted to address some concerns that making an MIE Portfolio is a “daunting task,” especially for non-native English speakers. Portfolio work, like most types of homework or class assignments, is meant to be done in stages. This means that, along the way, students have the time to edit, proofread, and adjust their writing so that they can get it to the most professional standards. Working with an experienced English coach or writing instructor can have profound, and long-lasting, positive effects. Luckily, students of any degree program at New England Conservatory have the services of Patrick Keppel and the Writing Center at their disposal. (Patrick Keppel is the Editor of the Journal for Learning Through Music and the soon-to-be-published Journal for Music-in-Education, and is very familiar with the portfolio strategy used by the MIE Concentration Program).

Anyways, those are some specific ways that MIE portfolios can be applied to career-building situations. If you can think of any others, or have some questions, please post comments below!

-Randy,

P.S.: I cannot stress enough how effective a well-written and organized portfolio can be.

Randy Wong is Program Coordinator for the Center for Music-in-Education and Information Architect for the Music-in-Education National Consortium

We’d like to draw some attention to the links listed in the side panel on the right of this page. We have listed links to other Internet resources for those interested in the emergent field of music-in-education; in particular, portfolios and teaching blogs that our MIE alums started while they were students and have continued in their professional careers. We regularly hear from our alums that reflective writing, collecting documentation, and keeping portfolios of their work is extremely helpful as they apply for jobs in education. Many alums, in fact, bring their portfolios to job interviews to help showcase their work and rationale towards music-in-education. We will be sharing links to the work of our alumni, and also are more than willing to help current students publish their work on our website.

Links to MIE Alumni Teaching Blogs:

Links to MIE Alumni Sample Portfolios:

–Randy Wong,
MIE Program Coordinator

From the article abstract by editor Drew McManus:

Nearly all orchestra musicians are familiar with in-school education programs implemented by their respective education departments. But what options do players have if they want to become more active with in-school education programs or are not satisfied with their current options?

Dr. Larry Scripp, Executive Director of NEC’s Center for Music-in-Education responds to this charge in an article at www.polyphonic.org!

I’m watching “Ice-T’s Rap School” on VH1 again. This time, the episode is putting its emphasis on the business/entrepreneurship aspects of being a hip-hop artist: show promoting, making business decisions, deciding what kind of music/rhymes are appropriate for a show, and also the social pressures that come with being an artist. Ice-T is confronting the students and trying to reinforce that he thinks that the quality of the music should reinforce how much effort the students put into their work.

I see Ice-T’s response as a real-world example of the need to look at student work from an objective point of view. In other words, if student work is at the center of the conversation, rather than the relationship the teacher has with the student or the context of the work (i.e. previous work the student has done), one can really pay attention to what the student is learning.

Harvard Project Zero researcher and Arts In Education program director Steve Seidel has done a lot of work in the area of how to evaluate student work, and in fact, we take a similar approach when evaluating MIE student portfolios. Seidel runs an occasional conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Education known as ROUNDS, in which educators and researchers of different backgrounds come together to discuss student work and learn various conference protocols (the most “successful” of which is known as the Collaborative Assessment Conference) that Project Zero has developed to help facilitate reflective discussion.

Although Ice-T’s approach to evaluating his student’s work seems to be pretty effective, what I have noticed is that the show doesn’t really give the viewer much idea about what other students think about their peers performances or lyric writing. Because of the age of the students (middle school?), and the nature of the project (fairly informal), I suppose it might be awkward to show students engaging in lengthy reflective practices — though in the reality-cutaway sequences, we do see snippets of students reflecting on their work. We also see students practicing for their performances and engaging in both group and individual work. In a way, each episode ends up working as a mini-portfolio of Ice-T’s residency. [Note: Could this be a model for documenting internships? Perhaps... ] Anyways, this makes me wonder how a tool like Seidel’s Collaborative Assessment Conference could be used to help faciliate student reflection, and what effects it would have on student learning.

Finally, and on a separate note, I find myself raising the following questions (now that I’ve seen a couple episodes of the program):

Although ‘entertainment’ is probably what the main focus of Ice-T’s show is, I would urge other MIE advocates to look closely at the world that surrounds them, and see how they might find other environments or situations that could fit within the context of our world: though the field of music-in-education may seem specialized upon first glance, programs like “Ice-T’s Rap School” help to show how ubiquitous, and closely-connected, the world of interdisciplinary music education really is.

-Randy

The MIE Guided Internship Program at New England Conservatory is more than a resume-furthering, experience-garnering entry point into teaching. Through the MIE Research Center’s process for planning and evaluating student-initiated Guided Internships, Conservatory students find opportunities to explore the merits of action research, curriculum planning, data collection, and administrative responsibility.

In her article, “Crossing Boundaries: The Role of Higher Education in Professional Development with Arts Partnerships,” MIENC Site Director and educator Dr. Gail Burnaford writes:

We have found that Gardner’s four roles for students who are engaged in the arts (Gardner, 1973) are useful frameworks for professional development of teaching artists, music teachers, and classrooms teachers. The four roles, composer, audience member, critic, and performer give artists and teachers a frame or empty outline to use in order to ask the inquiry questions, “Why is the child doing this? What is she learning? What is he expressing? What did I as the teacher or artist do to help? What can I be doing next?” (Burnaford, 2003)

I would like to suggest that what Burnaford is describing is at the heart of MIE Guided Internships: that at any given point in time, Conservatory students conducting internships can pause from their work, and choose one of Gardner’s perspectives from which to analyze their work. That it’s in the synthesis of these types of roles, such as in the Artist-Teacher-Scholar model, from which the MIE Guided Internship takes form.

In my work (as MIE Program Coordinator) with current MIE students and recent alumni, I find myself explaining the merits of the Guided Internship Program from this very perspective. Even after students have completed their Internships, they can find ways of understanding their experience from x different role or persona, despite having focused their documentation (most often a process-portfolio) from the perspective of y. (This take-away is yet another reason why we, as MIE Faculty & Staff, are explicit about the importance of rich documentation in student work).

Burnaford goes on to write:

Teacher learning is the way in to student learning; teachers need to experience all four of those roles too. In a professional development context, teachers need to compose; teachers need to practice those roles — even music teachers, because they haven’t done that in the professiona setting all of the time.

Again, I wholeheartedly agree with Gail; and in fact, our MIE Guided Internship Program helps to support the point she is making. Larry Scripp sometimes refers to the Artist-Teacher-Scholar framework as being an entry-point into entrepreneurship, and the proof of this is in the Guided Internships that our students initiate. Some of our students’ more ambitious projects have included: Teaching Solfege via hip-hop beats; coaching (and arranging for) quartets of violin/viola/2 cellos; exploring connections between poetry and rhythms with kindergartens; and a whole host of students conducting various research projects in the MIE Research Center.

–Randy