Collaborative partnerships for experiential education in music: A case study of a higher education School of Music educational outreach program and its K--8 partners

Higher education schools of music are in a position to create collaborative education outreach partnerships with K-8 schools to train future professional musicians and to enhance K-8 music education. Professional musicians typically do not have music education training to prepare participants in sequential music education with relevant hands-on activities. As a result, performance outreach tends to offer exposure to high quality musical examples without lasting educational effects. Partnerships between qualified K-8 music teachers and performers have the potential to create experiences with more lasting results.;This dissertation is a case study of collaborative educational outreach partnerships between the Music Teaches program at the Manhattan School of Music and four of its K-8 partners. Cases were selected to compare K-8 partners with and without full time music teachers, and schools that serve students with a variety of culture and social economic status backgrounds. Document and interview data were analyzed to ascertain what factors influenced four essential elements of collaboration in the four cases: institutional mission and support; educational goals; shared planning, implementation, and evaluation; and sustainability. This was followed by a cross case comparison.;A number of factors found in the literature to influence collaboration in service-learning, higher education, K-8, and arts partnerships were investigated. In addition, a number of new factors were discovered in the course of the study. Across the four cases, time, communication, and resource dependence were found to be the most influential factors. Also important for collaborative partnerships was the alignment between the missions of the higher education school of music and K-8 schools and the support of administrators. Students' cultural and social economic backgrounds influenced how the partnership teachers planned and implemented the educational goals of the program. Even successful collaborative partnerships were not found to be effective as substitutes for music teaching specialists in the schools.