Donna Weston
Donna Weston is Deputy Director (Learning and Teaching), Head of Popular Music, and Program Director of the Bachelor of Music with Honours at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Australia. She is also the Conservatorium’s International Advisor. Donna lectures in popular music history and semiotic analysis and has a particular passion for collaborative learning and peer-assessment as integral to popular music education. She is convenor of the Musical Livelihoods stream of the Conservatorium’s Research Centre. As a Program Director over the past 12 years, Donna has made significant and on-going changes to several degree designs, keeping in line with both emerging music pedagogy and research as well as the rapid changes in the music industry. Currently, she is engaged in exploring pathways for the intersection of Popular Music Studies and popular music practice at tertiary level, and musical livelihoods for all music graduates. A significant component of her research is also situated in ecomusicology.
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eBooks by Donna Weston
Posts by Donna Weston
Musicast Episode 6: A Nod to Marching Bands, Part 2 with Aaron Dugger- Balancing Process and Product
High school band director Aaron Dugger returns to the podcast to discuss process and product in secondary marching bands. in the Texas UIL system, it can feel like your teaching to a test but Aaron offers productive insight as to how to take the system and make it work for students and programs of all kinds. [...]
The Essential Work of the Arts: A Productive Response for Teachers
This post is a response to the post "The Essential [...]
Musicast Episode 5: Young Band Directors Panel- Finding and Remembering Your “Why”
\A panel of high school band directors who have been teaching for 6 years or less come together to discuss the good, the bad, and the inspirational parts of being a band director. The discussion includes topics about leadership, COVID era teaching, and finding and remembering why they became music teachers. This episode will feed your soul! [...]
The Essential Work of the Arts
As a young educator, I was always tasked with the [...]
Musicast Episode 4: Kirsten C. Kunkle – Passionate Pioneering
Soprano Kirsten C. Kunkle has been hailed as an outstanding singing actress with a voice that has been described as beautiful, ethereal, powerful, fiery, and bewitching. he attended Bowling Green State University and the University of Salzburg for her undergraduate studies, majoring in voice performance with minors in Italian and German. Her graduate degrees are in voice performance from the University of Michigan. A voting member of the Muscogee Nation, Dr. Kunkle commissioned and premiered sixteen original compositions, including one of her own, based upon the poetry of her ancestor and highly-acclaimed poet of the Native American Muscogee Nation, Alex Posey. [...]
Research to Practice: Using Data for More than Just Grades
I used to think that research was complicated and couldn’t help me in my classroom. I used to see the Music Educators Journal arrive in my mailbox, flip through, sigh, think to myself – “If I only had time….,” and then add the issue to a growing pile on my dining room table. [...]