A practical guide to how making music a cross-curricular priority can re-engage youth in school.

Music continues to be a powerful motivating process and resource for adolescents in their daily lives. Student disengagement is a serious and complex challenge for teachers and schools, which can significantly impact a young person’s well-being and sense of belonging. Children who have disengaged from school may face long-term consequences, including an increased risk of unemployment, incarceration, and poverty. Jason proposes integrating music across all learning areas as a cross-curricular priority to re-engage youth. Here, he will share with us a case study of a small Australian independent senior secondary school that has done exactly this.

This school is for Year 11 and 12 students who have previously disengaged from their education. Music is used as a strategy to get students back on track and help them complete their schooling. In this webinar, Jason reveals the stories, drawings, and music of re-engaged students who are now flourishing at school through and with music in all aspects of their day. We will also hear about the need for accreditation requirements to include mandatory arts pedagogy units in all teacher education courses, as Jason advocates for a new vision for school music education.

Dr Jason Goopy is a Lecturer in Music Education at Edith Cowan University and coordinates secondary school and instrumental music education at the School of Education. His research investigates how music education positively transforms lives by examining the nexus between music, education, and psychology using arts-based and mixed methods. His monograph, Teenage Boys, Musical Identities and Music Education, is published by Routledge. He is leading funded research projects investigating how music education supports the well-being of young people and the contributions of Australian Kodály Certificate courses to music teacher growth and development.