NCCO TASK FORCE on Expanding Choral Pedagogy

As communities around the globe respond to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCCO has assembled a group of choral educators from colleges and universities around the country. Their task is expanding choral pedagogy to meet the needs of today's students and the capacity of today's technology. The research and resources they bring forth serves a rapdily-evolving discipline that is vocation to some and avocation to others. All of this, built on a tradition dating back nearly 1,000 years.

The Task Force on Expanding Choral Pedagogy was formed in May 2020 and began meeting in the very first days of June. Their charge, crafted by the Executive Board from the contributions of members around the country, is as follows:

The Charge

The Executive Board of NCCO calls for the formation of a Task Force on Expanding Choral Pedagogy. The charge is to support choral pedagogues at the tertiary level by identifying relevant research and developing practical resources aimed at adapting and adding to current pedagogies while the landscape of education shifts in a COVID– and post-COVID–influenced era.

The appearance and use of video conferencing, asynchronous/multi-tracked ensembles, countless new apps, and other technologies have come about in response to the unexpected and global shift of education from our campuses to the internet. Since many of our collegiate choral colleagues were not trained for this new climate, NCCO hopes to support its members with information and resources that can inform and improve choral teaching both in rehearsals and elsewhere during this time of social distancing.

The Task Force is encouraged to conduct their inquiry using both traditional and novel methods, producing pragmatic results that our members can use now and in the near future, such as teaching tools, lesson plans, project design templates, and other resources.

Approved by NCCO’s Executive Board, May 2020

Task Force Membership

  • Elise Hepworth, chair, Missouri Western State University
  • Andrew Clark, Harvard University
  • Rollo Dilworth, Temple University
  • Coreen Duffy, University of Montana
  • Patrick Freer, Georgia State University
  • Deanna Joseph, Georgia State University
  • Nancy Klein, Director of School of Music, Old Dominion University
  • Michael McGaghie, Macalester College
  • John Perkins, Butler University
  • W. Aaron Rice, Graduate Student, University of Arizona
  • Bonnie Sneed, McLennan Community College
  • Betsy Cook Weber, University of Houston

Outcomes

View the committee's report on Expanding Choral Pedagogy.

The task force completed its work in Summer 2020, and it is no longer active.

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