Certification and the new teaching standards.

The MTNA National Certification Commission, with the assistance of MTNA leadership, worked diligently for more than a year to create a set of five MTNA Professional Certification Program Teaching Standards that defines what a competent music teacher should know and be able to do. These teaching standards were developed to provide a solid philosophical foundation from which the MTNA Professional Certification Program could grow in quality and numbers. The benefit of employing the collective perception and insight of these leaders is already apparent.

The Teaching Standards provide new meaning for the Certification Program's requirements that lead to the designation of Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. They give the certification requirements a coherent reason for being, rather than standing simply as arbitrary opinions about what the requirements of a certification program should be. Meeting the requirements for fulfilling the Teaching Standards now tells us that NCTMs are committed to how they practice their profession, manage their professional business, build professional partnerships and grow professionally and personally. The Teaching Standards also tell us that NCTMs are committed to finding their personal and professional niche in an ever-expanding and changing learning environment.

The MTNA Professional Certification Teaching Standards speak to a basic professional teaching concern: quality. They assist the NCTM by focusing attention on quality music study and students' musical growth, rather than on a student performance in a recital or two each year. Standards compel the NCTM to think about the teaching process--what our teaching philosophy is, why we teach, what we teach and what we want the results to be. They help define what competent music teachers should provide for students.

The Teaching Standards knit the certification and renewal processes into an integrated, total MTNA Professional Certification Program. Maintaining Standards I--III, continued fulfillment of Standard IV and the fulfillment of Standard V in the renewal process place more value on partnering and professional and personal growth than ever before. To fulfill the five Teaching Standards for what a competent music teacher should know and be able to do, NCTMs must continue to learn and grow as professional music teachers.

The Teaching Standards bind the music teaching profession philosophically regardless of whether teachers work independently or at a college or university. College and university music professionals are responsible for transmitting teaching standards to future independent music teachers through course work content. Teaching competencies and standards transmitted to future independent music teachers during that course work will have everything to do with how and what those future teachers transmit to the music students in their studios and classrooms. In due course, numerous independent music teachers' students will attend a college or university to study music. Hence, the cycle of transmitting teaching standards keeps revolving. Together, professional music teachers, one and all, determine how the Teaching Standards for our profession will evolve.

Recently a university pedagogy professor who is an NCTM and an MTNA member said, "They [Teaching Standards] would make excellent objectives for my pedagogy class." Going a step further, the pedagogy professor could use the new Certification Portfolio option as a tool for teaching the MTNA Professional Certification Teaching Standards. The development of a Certification Portfolio leading to MTNA Professional Certification could have its beginning in the college or university pedagogy class. It would represent nothing new because most state certification programs for teachers work with college and university teacher-training programs beginning in a student's junior year of course work. Usually, the first step in such a program's course work is the development of a teaching portfolio, one of the required components for most state certification programs.

Using the Teaching Standards as course work objectives and the MTNA Certification Portfolio option to teach those objectives would provide purpose and meaning to pedagogy course work, to professional certification and to the transmission of quality professional teaching standards. In addition, a base would be built on which the bar for the standards of the entire music teaching profession could be raised, one of the ultimate goals of the MTNA Professional Certification Program.

--Pat Tuley, NCTM Chair National Certification Commission