Music Education Professor Appointed to State Association

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Daniel Abrahams

Daniel Abrahams, assistant professor of music education, has been appointed to the Board of the Arkansas Music Educators Association as research coordinator. ArkMEA is the state affiliate of the National Association for Music Education. He is currently the faculty advisor of the University of Arkansas' award-winning collegiate chapter of the National Association for Music Education, which is affiliated with the Arkansas Music Educators Association.

"I am honored that the organization asked me to serve as research coordinator for the Arkansas Music Educators Association," Abrahams said. "I've always believed that research is an important part of being a good educator. It helps inform our decisions about teaching strategies, curriculum, and assessment."

Founded in 1954, The Arkansas Music Educations Association is the leading advocate for essential and quality music education in Arkansas. The goal of ArkMEA is to ensure that every student has the access to a sequential, balanced, and comprehensive program of music education taught by a certified music educator.  In his duties as Research Coordinator, Abrahams wants to help promote the ArkMEA Fall conference and solicit research from music educators from across the State to participate in conference research session. He also hopes to establish an state-wide graduate student seminar featuring guest lectures by prominent music education researchers.

As a music educator and researcher, Abrahams has presented seminars at the national meetings of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME); presented a seminar in Critical Pedagogy for Music Education at the Conservatorio Brasiliero de Musica in Rio de Janeiro; presented a seminar on Reciprocal Teaching at the 2nd European Conference on Developmental Psychology of Music, London, England; and presented seminars on Reciprocal Teaching and Informal Learning at the 29th International Society for Music Education World Conference, Beijing, China. 

Abrahams frequently writes about the use of reciprocal teaching, sociotranformative apprenticeship, and learner agency in the music classroom. His article on the impact of reciprocal teaching on the development of musical understanding in high school student members of performing ensembles is published in Visions of Research on Music Education and reprinted in Keith Swanwick's Music Education: Major Themes (Vol. 3) published by Routledge. His most recent research explores the use of CompositonCraft, a Minecraft modification developed in collaboration with the University's Tesseract Center for Immersive Game Design, to assist children with learning music. Before coming to the University of Arkansas, Abrahams taught middle and high school instrumental music in the Omaha Public Schools. 

Abrahams is a contributing author in The Music Technology Cookbook, The Child as Musician, 2nd edition, and the Oxford Handbook of Choral Pedagogy published by Oxford University Press.