John Kratus

ABOUT

John Kratus taught undergraduate and graduate courses in music education at Michigan State University from 1994 to 2014 and was chair of the music education area from 1995 to 2006. His B.A. and M.F.A. in music education were from the State University of New York in Buffalo where he studied with Edwin Gordon, and his Ph.D. was from Northwestern University where his mentor was Bennett Reimer. Prior teaching positions were at Case Western Reserve University, Bowling Green State University, Lockport (NY) Public Schools, and the Diocese of Buffalo Catholic Schools. As a teacher, he received Case Western Reserve’s Teaching Excellence Award for the Humanities and Social Sciences (1991) and Michigan State’s Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Teaching (2001). At MSU he established and coordinated seven New Directions in Music Education conferences, which attracted music teachers and scholars from five continents. In 2002 he founded and hosted the Michigan Honors Composition Concert, a statewide composition contest for children from kindergarten to 12th grade and special education, in which the best student compositions from each grade are performed at the annual music education conference. The Honors Composition Concert continues to this day, now retitled the Young Composers of Michigan. In 2004 he was hired by the U.S. Department of Defense to provide in-service instruction on curriculum development and contemporary pedagogical practices to music teachers working in schools on American military bases around the world. Kratus has presented his ideas at conferences in Ireland, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Austria, Greece, Egypt, Japan, China, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. His articles have appeared in most of the world’s major music education journals, including the Journal of Research in Music Education, the Council for Research in Music Education, the International Journal of Music Education, Music Educators Journal, and Psychology of Music. According to Google Scholar, his article, “Music Education at the Tipping Point” (Music Educators Journal, 2007), is the most highly cited article by any American author in any music education journal. He has contributed chapters in three Oxford University Handbooks of Music Education: Music Composition Pedagogy, Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment, and Philosophy. Kratus was also elected chair of three Special Research Interest Groups in the National Association for Music Education: Creativity (2002-04), Philosophy (2006-08), and Popular Music Education (2016-18). During Covid-19, he presented Zoom classes to students at over 50 colleges and universities worldwide.