Jackie Wiggins is an Oakland University Professor of Music Education and Chair of the Department of Music, Theatre and Dance. Now, she can add being the author of the third edition of her very successful book, Teaching for Musical Understanding, to her resume. The book has become a manual used by music educators around the world.
Ideal for introductory music education, philosophy and psychology of music education courses, and music education methods courses, Teaching for Musical Understanding explains current research-based theories of how students learn in order to show prospective and practicing music teachers how to teach effectively.
Wiggins draws on her twenty-two years of experience teaching K–12 music and twenty years of teaching in higher education to demonstrate how theory applies to music education. The text is deeply grounded in the work of social constructivist theorists and researchers in both education and music education.
The third edition takes a cultural psychology perspective, giving more attention to sociocultural influences and to the roles of learner agency in learning process. It includes in-depth examples of assessment practices in music classrooms, stories “from the trenches”, and more extensive use of endnotes and citations to support the work of graduate students.
“This book explains how people learn and how they learn music, and from these understandings, develops a perspective on how one needs to teach and teach music,” says Dr. Wiggins. “It offers a clear explanation of current understandings about learning and about the approach to teaching these understandings imply.”
Wiggins adds that the book offers glimpses into learning in actual music classrooms, ways of thinking about learning and teaching music and sample lessons and unit plans with explanations of how to carry them out
Many of the lesson plans include samples of work done by real students engaged in the very same lessons.
The third edition of Teaching for Musical Understanding is published by The Oxford University Press. 