| The purpose of this qualitative multi-case study was to analyze the teaching methods utilized by three West Coast community college music instructors to foster creativity in music students. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and class observations. Five themes emerged as a result of the interviews. They were Educational Administrivia, Artistic Aspirations, Teaching Strategies, Maintaining Tradition, and Conversational Repertoire. Educational administrivia includes some of the pragmatics involved with nurturing creativity among community college music students. Artistic aspirations details each participant's goals in teaching this somewhat elusive skill. Teaching strategies identifies the myriad techniques used by participants to reach their educational goals. Maintaining tradition illuminates the larger issue of teaching creativity and its relationship with personal growth, society and the human experience. Finally, Conversational repertoire, the way participants express their ideas verbally, provides a creative analogy to the musical conversation each one of them teaches in his respective class.;Findings indicate that fostering creativity has implications above and beyond pure music instruction. Recommendations include 1) Encouraging community college administration at local and statewide levels to reconsider the Arts and music in particular as more central to student learning; 2) Designing a performance-based end-of-the-term assignment to provide a creativity practicum; and 3) Conduct an Action Research into the possibility of creating learning communities combining music courses with those from other disciplines. |
