The other thing that made the end of the year busy was completing (with Shirlee Emmons and Lisa Popeil) a chapter on solo vocal pedagogy to be published in the new Oxford Handbook of Music Education. This is a terrific undertaking: a comprehensive handbook AND a website.
Then, after my holiday I began a chapter on ‘Singing Teaching as a Profession’, in which I discuss the attributes of an expert teacher and how these apply in the teaching of singing. This chapter will be published in a collection of work by Australian authors, with the provisional title of Perspectives on Teaching Singing: Australian Vocal Pedagogues Sing Their Stories. No sooner had I completed that than I embarked, with Dr Diane Hughes, on another chapter for that book, called ‘Advocating for Change: Interdisciplinary Voice Studies’. Di and I are keen to see interdisciplinary voice studies included in the National School Curriculum – not just singing as part of Music (and that’s vital!), but voice as an integral part of learning and growth in language and personal development, as part of the curriculum in Science, English, Drama, and Personal Health and Development.