Last modified: Wednesday, November 16, 2011
IU Jacobs School of Music professor offers fresh perspective on music education in latest book
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 16, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Estelle R. Jorgensen, professor of music education at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, breaks new ground regarding the meaning and practice of music education in her latest book, Pictures of Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2011).
Jorgensen's latest work is an exploratory look into the ways music education is practiced and represented through the metaphors and models that appear in everyday life. These metaphors and models serve as entry points into a deeper understanding of music education that moves beyond literal ways of thinking and doing, and allow for a more creative embodiment of musical thought.
Seeing the reader as a partner in the creation of meaning, Jorgensen intends for the conjunctions of art, philosophy, metaphor and model in her book to impact the reader in ways that words alone could not accomplish. Pictures of Music Education is meant to be experienced imaginatively through metaphors, word pictures and commissioned illustrations from Millicent Hodson, and worked through analytically as models of music education.
"Writing this book was often an exhilarating experience as I mined the metaphors and developed their associated models for the many different ways in which music education writ large can be conceived," Jorgensen said. "None of them turned out to be the one best way of seeing things, but I found myself wanting to keep the best of them while avoiding the worst.
"Of course, the best of books open more questions than answers. As soon as I made an end of this one, so many compelling questions emerged that I must make a beginning on another! I became convinced that music education cannot continue its business as usual, but that music teachers, students and those interested in their work need to envisage the task differently in the future."
About Estelle R. Jorgensen
As a teacher of graduate courses in the foundations of music education, Jorgensen also serves as editor for Philosophy of Music Education Review and general editor for the Counterpoints:
Music and Education series at Indiana University Press; is the founding chair of the Philosophy Special Research Interest Group of the National Association for Music Education; and is the founding co-chair of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education.
Jorgensen is author of In Search of Music Education (University of Illinois Press, 1997), Transforming Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2003), The Art of Teaching Music (Indiana University Press, 2008) and Pictures of Music Education (Indiana University Press, 2011), and she is a frequent contributor to leading research journals in music education internationally. She is an author and speaker on a broad array of themes in the philosophy of music education.
Jorgensen taught music in grade schools in Canada and at McGill University, Montreal, and has lectured in Sweden, Finland, Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Australia. She has led or contributed to eight international symposia in the philosophy of music education, held in Bloomington, Ind. (1990), Toronto, Canada (1994), Los Angeles, Calif. (1997), Birmingham, U.K. (2000), Lake Forest, Ill. (2003), Hamburg, Germany (2005), London, Canada (2007) and Helsinki, Finland (2010).
She is a fellow of the Philosophy of Education Society and holds an honorary doctorate in music from Andrews University.
