Music Education in America's Public Normal Schools: Celebratory and Troubled Beginnings of Music Teacher Education
By (Author) Danelle D. Larson
Edited by Jill M. Sullivan
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
19th February 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Hardback
432
Width 152mm, Height 229mm
This book provides a history of music education and music participation in America's public normal schools (18391960). The collected chapters capture the beginning of music education and music engagement in many of the 213 public universities that started as normal schools. Each institution had its own identity, curricular policies, networks of stakeholders, music education coursework and collaborative-performing opportunities. The authors argue that arts education, specifically music, was part of the curriculum in the first public normal schools in America, which provided rich democratic arts experiences to its teacher-education students. Their embodied music experiences would live on to impact music teaching and learning curriculum not only in the k-12 schools where they taught, but nearly two centuries of music education in the colleges and universities from which they stem.
Danelle D. Larson is Professor of Music Education and Music Education Division Director at Eastern Illinois University, USA.
Jill M. Sullivan is a professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, School of Music, Dance, and Theatre, at Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.