Course

In the second and third years, you will deepen and broaden your knowledge and skills: You will do internships in primary and secondary schools and, during the orthopedagogical music teacher project, teach music lessons to pupils with a disability, for example a deaf pupil or a pupil with an autism spectrum disorder. This will involve doing a joint internship with a student from the Music Therapy bachelor. Guest lecturers will give you an insight into the different forms of special needs education. In the third year, the emphasis of your internships will be on secondary education. 

In the 'Musical Leadership' subject, you will write your own music for school ensembles, who will actually perform the arrangements or compositions under your musical direction.   

You will also learn to lead choirs and ensembles. During band coaching, you will learn basic skills on drums, guitar, bass guitar and keyboard. You’ll put those skills into practice during the internships and project weeks.

In your graduation year, you can specialise in the area of your choice. For example, secondary education, PABO, orthopedagogical music teacher, community art or music theatre. You will choose a minor that suits your interests, for example extra instrumental tuition, arranging or song writing. You will do your own practical research, which will involve doing an internship and reading books and articles. This will result in the development of an end product for which you will conduct research, such as an essay or a series of articles, a series of lessons, an innovative method or setting up your own music education company.  

As part of your specialisation, you will also work on your own music production with or for a target group of your choice. This music production represents the musical conclusion of your course, during which you will present yourself to others at the ArtEZ finals. A main subject lecturer will supervise you in your preparations.

Solos, duets, choir and ensembles: they form the basis of the annual Music Making Festival. All the students of the Music in Education course in Zwolle are put in the spotlight vocally and instrumentally at the end of each academic year. Making music, creating, collaborating and performing music go hand in hand on this course. During the Music Making Festival, the students give a presentation to demonstrate this. Different styles are featured: from classical to jazz and pop, but there is also music composed by our own students. 

Once a year, students of the Music in Education course organise a work week around a theme of their choice, for example musical theatre, Latin American music, pop music, non-Western music or arranging. At the end of the week, you then present what you have been doing to each other or a wider audience. This is a good way and a musical way for new students to get to know the other years.

Collaborating with other disciplines has become increasingly important in education. Arts subjects are offered in schools in a coherent and sometimes integrated way within cultural and artistic education and general art. Teachers and departments of the cultural subjects are increasingly interacting with one another inside and outside schools and are coordinating their goals and working methods. Which is why in the first three years, you’ll be working with students from other teacher training courses within ArtEZ (visual arts and theatre) for a number of days every semester.

You will be looking into questions like: what are dance, theatre, music and how do the design processes within these different disciplines originate? You’ll visit exhibitions, performances and music performances together, immerse yourselves in the context, respond to current events and place what you have experienced in a historical perspective.  

Winterlab is an annual one-week project in January. During Winterlab, students from different three-year degree programmes work intensively together on an issue from society for two weeks. Examples include things like: is the level of vacancy in the centre of Zwolle a problem or does it actually offer opportunities? Each team of students is assigned an issue on the Monday morning and presents some imaginary scenarios on the Friday of the following week. The Winterlab projects are supervised by guest lecturers.

In the fourth year, you will work on a production with or for a target group, either independently or with others. For the production, you will write and arrange music, study music and give musical direction. You will organise the production yourself and choose a location to perform it. The music production is the finale of your course, the ideal showcase to demonstrate your musicality and teaching skills. You will present your music production during the ArtEZ exam period – the ArtEZ finals.