Lorelei Batisla-ong

Education

• PhD, Music and Human Learning, The University of Texas at Austin, 2023
• MM, Conducting (Instrumental), Texas State University, 2006
• BM, Music Education (with Teacher Certification), Southwest Texas State University, 2002

Biography

Lorelei Batisla-ong is Assistant Professor of General Music Education at the Peck School of the Arts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For 14 years she taught elementary music in San Antonio and Austin public schools, and taught Music Education courses for 7 years at UT Austin, University of the Incarnate Word, and Anderson University. Prior to UWM, Lorelei taught for 4 years at Baldwin Wallace University outside Cleveland.

They served on the American Orff-Schulwerk Association Board of Trustees and served as chair of both the Leadership and Nominations Committee and the Diversity Committee. She was the State Director of the National Association for Music Education – Texas and is a Member at Large for the NAfME Collegiate Advisory Board. They are an officer for the Music Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Batisla-ong is Lead Content Editor of Decolonizing the Music Room and co-author of Elemental ʻUkulele: Pathways and Possibilities. She has publications in press related to popular music in general music, and social change in the music classroom.

Dr. Batisla-ong is a sought-after clinician presenting at national and international conferences and for area school districts. She melds the complimentary lenses of the practitioner and the researcher believing that research drives practice and practice grounds what should be researched. Her areas of expertise center on equity in teaching, general music pedagogy, and ʻukulele pedagogy. She is influenced by her training in teacher behavior using eye movement and fixation (eye tracking technology) as a proxy to understand teacher cognition and behavior and is interested in describing teaching by considering how a teacher’s visual focus of attention affords opportunities to improve social and musical learning.

Dr. B.'s joy is sustained by collaboration. Her personal experiences with perceptions of identity, belonging, and affirmation has resulted in collaborations with researchers interested in sustaining and cultivating community. She is proud of her work with Decolonizing the Music Room, an organization focused on amplifying Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian (BBIA) voices in U.S. Music Education. Naming and identifying social systems and how they are recreated in classrooms propels her philosophy on liberating pedagogy. This naturally extends to a research interest in teacher preparation during pre-service experiences and undergraduate music classes – specifically in terms of interrogating ableism and providing accommodations for undergraduate music education students in their student teaching placements.

Dr. B. continues to develop her ideas regarding ʻukulele pedagogy, teacher noticing and cognition, teaching skills development, equity in the classroom and teaching profession, and generally wonders why everything is the way it is and how it can be better.

She is perpetually considering getting a dog.

Curriculum Vitae, CV (PDF)

Recent & Selected Works