Christina Saldivar

Dr. Crosby
Article Summary
Professional Development
In an article entitled Collaboration as Effective Music Professional Development:
Success Stories From the Field, Ann Marie Stanley, Alden Snell, and Scott Edgar explain the
voice of the teacher in descriptions of Professional Development (PD) efforts that aide
collaboration to be an important aspect of meaningful music teacher PD (76). Their goal of the
article was to convey the importance of collaboration.
The authors began he article by explaining Collaborative Professional Development.
Many teachers believe that they cannot ask for collegial support, but this is not the case. The
authors believe that that it is important for the early career music teachers to have mentors and to
observe the more experienced teachers (77). This concept is very effective and influential to new
or inexperienced teachers. They can benefit tremendously from this suggestion.
The authors provides seven elements that characterized effective collaboration.
Collaborative PD for music teachers is: musical, and organized around content-specific skills
and strategies, sustained, long-term voluntary, with elements of teacher choice and control over
their own learning (78). Today, there is a deficiency of music-specific PD and it is not helpful to
the new music educator.
Collaborative Professional Development is very important and effective in the music
education world. Experienced teachers bring a wealth of professional knowledge to their PD
encounters. PD can provide music educators with reliable networks of support they need to

assess, evaluate, and adjust their teaching practices centered on feedback from colleagues and
students.

Stanley, A., Snell, A., & Edgar, S. (2014). Collaboration as Effective Music Professional
Development. Journal Of Music Teacher Education, 24(1), 76-88.