Journal of Music Teacher Education 21(2) 10–13 © 2012 National Association for Music Education Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1057083711434694 http://jmte.sagepub.com 434694JMTE 21 2 10.1177/105708371143469 4KillianJournal of Music Teacher Education 1 Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA Corresponding Author: Janice Killian, School of Music, Texas Tech University, Box 42033, Lubbock, TX 79409-2033, USA Email: jmte@ttu.edu Teaching for Change Janice Killian 1 From the Editor We will not succeed in navigating the complex environment of the future by peering relentlessly into a rear view mirror. To do so, we would be out of our minds. So begins a thought-provoking book by Sir Kenneth Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (2nd edition, 2011). And that book, and my students’ reac- tions to it, informs my thinking as I write. Change is a complex and conflicting issue. On one hand, as a culture we seem to be enamored with change. Products and services are advertised as faster, smaller, bigger, brighter, and trendier. Newer appears to equal better, at least within the advertising world. But another part of us seems to crave stability and to resist changing the familiar. We are invested in the status quo, even if we do like our technological baubles, bells, and whistles to be new and cutting edge. Particularly difficult, at least from the perspec- tive of those involved in teacher preparation, is the challenge of changing entire schools, either our own universities or the K–12 settings in which our students teach. Whether this challenge is viewed from a micro or macro level, it is a thorny issue. On an individual teacher level, how do we teach our students to use teaching strategies that differ from the ones with which they were taught? Those models appear to be so ingrained that, as we all know, it takes enormous, concerted effort for students to revert to the model they choose rather than the learned and practiced ones that seems to be playing continually in their heads. And that’s a relatively small change. On an institu- tional level, how do we change the direction schools are going, assuming that we think that direction could use some modification? Schools are supposed to remain stable, to conform to the status quo. One of the stated purposes of public education is to pass on the culture to the next generation. So how do we balance forward-thinking while still passing on the culture of the past? And, while we’re at it, exactly what culture do we attempt to pass on? Individual states make concerted stabs at maintaining the status quo for all students, emphasizing uni- formity through established curricula and the development of tests to verify that