JOELLE L. LIEN
Joelle L. Lien teaches courses in music education, advises graduate student research, and serves as Associate Dean of Arts Education and Community Engagement at the University of Utah. She holds DMA: Music Education and MM degrees from Arizona State University and a BME from South Dakota State University. Lien’s involvement in interdisciplinary arts education includes service as a faculty mentor for numerous ArtsBridge projects in Utah schools and chairing the University of Utah's Arts Education and Youth Arts Committees. Lien is co-Principal Investigator on the Professional Development Program Contract for the State of Utah's Beverley T. Sorenson Arts Learning Program.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants:
Maintaining Balance by Engaging your Core
Maintaining Balance by Engaging your Core
From my perspective as a person who identifies as a professional music educator, an arts education advocate and administrator, and only recently (and somewhat reluctantly) an arts education fund-raiser, my presentation will include an exploration of the challenges and opportunities inherent in interdisciplinary collaboration within the arts (i.e., music, theatre, visual arts, dance, media arts) at all levels.
The MayDay Group's Action Ideal V is, "We commit to fostering ongoing engagement with fellow music educators of all traditions, seeking knowledge from disciplines other than music, and collaborating with practitioners of those disciplines." Many music educators are familiar and comfortable with the idea of interacting with, and collaborating in, the disciplines listed in the Call for Proposals for the upcoming colloquium (i.e., "ethnomusicology, arts-based therapy, neuroscience, sociology, gender-sexuality studies, critical race theory, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural psychology"). I believe that, despite the likelihood that doing so could improve and advance music teaching and learning at all levels, far fewer music educators are prepared to engage, interact, and collaborate with their counterparts in the other artistic disciplines.
University retention, promotion, and tenure processes, funding models, and administrative and curricular organizational structures are often cited as challenges to effective interdisciplinarity and collaboration across traditional art forms in higher education. In K-12 settings, existing structures related to teaching licensure and endorsements, high-stakes testing, and curriculum are often blamed for blocking efforts to taking an interdisciplinary approach to the arts in education.
I believe that many of these structures and traditions have simply been used as excuses for resistance to interdisciplinarity, and that it is not in music educators' best interest to allow routine educational system processes or other perceived barriers to impede our and our students' growth and learning (about, in, and through) the other arts.
Expanding engagement to disciplines and knowledge beyond music compels music educators to address important questions of ethics, and loyalty and alignment. To whom or to what are we most loyal in our professional actions? How can we sort out the relative worthiness of competing loyalties? Should we decide how and when to collaborate or work inter-disciplinarily based on long-held standards of professional conduct, or might there be reasons to reject traditional professional expectations?
In this session, I will share my perspectives on barriers that inhibit collaboration in interdisciplinarity in the other arts, as well as personal, political, and ethical challenges I have experienced working with arts educators, administrators, and philanthropists from various arts disciplines. Finally, I will offer recommendations for ways in which music educators might build creative and meaningful collaborations with professionals in other disciplines while maintaining an appropriate measure of loyalty to traditional expectations and standards of the music education profession.
The MayDay Group's Action Ideal V is, "We commit to fostering ongoing engagement with fellow music educators of all traditions, seeking knowledge from disciplines other than music, and collaborating with practitioners of those disciplines." Many music educators are familiar and comfortable with the idea of interacting with, and collaborating in, the disciplines listed in the Call for Proposals for the upcoming colloquium (i.e., "ethnomusicology, arts-based therapy, neuroscience, sociology, gender-sexuality studies, critical race theory, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural psychology"). I believe that, despite the likelihood that doing so could improve and advance music teaching and learning at all levels, far fewer music educators are prepared to engage, interact, and collaborate with their counterparts in the other artistic disciplines.
University retention, promotion, and tenure processes, funding models, and administrative and curricular organizational structures are often cited as challenges to effective interdisciplinarity and collaboration across traditional art forms in higher education. In K-12 settings, existing structures related to teaching licensure and endorsements, high-stakes testing, and curriculum are often blamed for blocking efforts to taking an interdisciplinary approach to the arts in education.
I believe that many of these structures and traditions have simply been used as excuses for resistance to interdisciplinarity, and that it is not in music educators' best interest to allow routine educational system processes or other perceived barriers to impede our and our students' growth and learning (about, in, and through) the other arts.
Expanding engagement to disciplines and knowledge beyond music compels music educators to address important questions of ethics, and loyalty and alignment. To whom or to what are we most loyal in our professional actions? How can we sort out the relative worthiness of competing loyalties? Should we decide how and when to collaborate or work inter-disciplinarily based on long-held standards of professional conduct, or might there be reasons to reject traditional professional expectations?
In this session, I will share my perspectives on barriers that inhibit collaboration in interdisciplinarity in the other arts, as well as personal, political, and ethical challenges I have experienced working with arts educators, administrators, and philanthropists from various arts disciplines. Finally, I will offer recommendations for ways in which music educators might build creative and meaningful collaborations with professionals in other disciplines while maintaining an appropriate measure of loyalty to traditional expectations and standards of the music education profession.