November 4, 2015

I had an interesting conversation recently with a music educator from academia.  We were talking about musical and social outcomes from music education programs.  If I said that program X has a great outcome, she would ask:  “what lens or you putting on for this outcome”.  This begs the question of definition for outcome.  How can we truely measure a multifaceted outcome in a meaningful way.  There are logic models we can contruct.  There are measuring tools we can make and adopt.  But how can we “define” in a “moment in time” the impact of our teaching and resultant learning.  I think we need to continue to hold the tension between our observations and the questions we haven’t even thought of yet!