Popular Music Pedagogies: An Approach to Teaching 21st-Century Skills

Changes in the world economy and U.S. educational policy present music educators with the challenge of reassessing traditional pedagogy to ensure they are instructing and assessing in ways that contribute to students’ development of 21st-century knowledge and skill sets. Educators are responding by incorporating pedagogical approaches that challenge students to think critically, problem solve collaboratively, and use technology and media efficiently. Popular Music Pedagogies (PMPs) invite students, music teachers, and music teacher educators to take risks, learn alongside one another, and address 21st-century knowledge and skills through engaging with the music that students choose and create. In this article, we define PMPs and discuss how music teacher educators can incorporate PMPs into music teacher education programs to better prepare preservice and inservice music teachers to function within a Partnership for 21st Century Learning framework.