Chapter 7: Creating Music Videos: Teachers and Students Working Collaboratively Across the Arts

Democratic practices abound in education; yet, the implementation of these practices is far from uniform. Teachers interested in the democratic practice of planning alongside students, often called teacher-pupil planning, must shift their ways of thinking about the role of the student and teacher. In music, the preexisting dynamic of teacher-conductor and student-ensemble naturally places the teacher at the head of the classroom as the musical decision maker. In music education, those who advocate for democratizing learning often refer to some variation on the idea of decentralizing the podium or informal music learning (see Green, 2008; Sindberg, 2014; Woodford, 2005), concepts that challenge many music teachers’ core conceptualizations of musical learning in the ensemble classroom.