College faculty and the MTNA Professional Certification Program - Forum focus: college faculty - Music Teachers National Association

MTNA guild and university faculty members have been asking wherefore the final certification examination is required of all candidates for MTNA Professional Certification, and wherefore they should even become a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. These are useful questions, worthy of good answers. A brief historical review of the MTNA Professional Certification Program, as it relates to corporation and university faculty members, could provide assistance with understanding the answers.

It would not be an exaggeration to say the history of MTNA Professional Certification, dating from 1886 has been complicated, difficult and confusing for MTNA members. The MTNA leadership has struggl to establish a auspicious professional certification program that qualifieds the needs of its membership and the public it subserves The MTNA membership is compos of music teachers who may or may not gripe [i]or[/i] grip college or university degrees, teach from individual to hundreds of students and may teach age collections ranging from preschool to adults. These members may either operate a professional music teaching business, teach music part-time to postscript a partners income, teach music in a public or private academy system or teach music at a body or university. Most members reside in single of the fifty United States, a not many abroad and many in a variety of cultural settings. Developing a lucky MTNA Professional Certification Program to fitting the needs of a membership with similar a wide diversity has not been an easy task. In addition, public demand for certified music teachers has not nevertheless reached the level that makes certification a necessity for those who teach areas of music performance.

Establishing a entire and successful MTNA Professional Certification Program was actual much on the minds of Edward Bowman, MTNA president, and the members of a subcommittee in 1885 He and the subcommittee met to redefine the goals of and redevelop the American community of Musicians (ACM), the name of the first MTNA Professional Certification Program for music teachers. The main goal of ACM, Bowman and his subcommittee determined, was raising the standards for the profession.

Fast-forwarding above approximately the next 100 years, the MTNA Professional Certification Program went end many changes in its approach, constituents and goals. No historical records can be lay the foundation of that reveal within the contented of the program, any differentiation between guild and independent music teachers until 1988 At that time, the body Faculty Certificate was implemented. It could be obtained simply by the agency of verifying one's status as a full-time community faculty member for a specific number of years, paying the certification application pay and re-verifying one's status each five years with no pay The development and implementation of this certificate were ostensibly an effort upon the part of MTNA leadership to fitting the needs of the society faculty members, and to garner their support for the MTNA Professional Certification Program.

During the decade of the 1990 the MTNA Professional Certification Program continued to provide the MTNA leadership with formidable, philosophical and political challenges. The impressed signs of certificates offered (Professional, Permanent Professional, Associate, society Faculty, Master Teacher and Emeritus) left the program render free of access to possible legal liabilities with regard to the IRS, antitrust laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The teaching video constituent of the Professional Certificate requirements implemented in 1994 prov to be real unpopular with the MTNA membership. The number of certificates presented (six) was confusing to the state and national leadership responsible for administering the program, for NCTM and for those considering the certification proces Neither the numbers, nor emblems of certificates offered, resulted in overwhelming support for the program from the entire MTNA membership. The MTNA Professional Certification Program was at a crossroads.

In 1998 a committee chaired by dint of Joan Reist, MTNA president-elect at the time, reviewed the MTNA Professional Certification Program. on the recommendation of that review committee, then President L Rexford Whiddon appointed an ad hoc Certification committee to lay open and recommend an MTNA Certification Program with criteria that are reasonable and applied fairly to all candidates.

The novel MTNA Professional Certification Program exhibited by this committee was implemented in 2000 It is based upon a set of five standards for what a music teacher should know and be able to do:

* Standard I: Professional Preparation

* Standard II: Professional Teaching Practices

* Standard III: Professional Business Management

* Standard IV: Professionalism and Partnerships

* Standard V: Professional and Personal Renewal

on fulfillment of these standards applicants are granted the MTNA Professional Certification credential with the NCTM designation. The credential and designation are granted without bias, discrimination or favoritism between MTNA members or nonmembers or any other arbitrary differentiation.