The current music education paradigm may be considered an oppressive experience for both students and teachers through its historical foundation, standardized nature, and focus on Western art repertoire and its associated skill building. Realizing the oppressive nature of many aspects of music education, some scholars and practitioners have sought to reimagine music teaching and learning through various forms of collaborative learning. While making a positive impact on music education, these collaborative practices do not go far enough in providing the opportunity for students and teachers to critically examine and drive their teaching and learning. A feminist approach to music education provides one possible means for addressing this issue through a focus on solidarity, empowerment, cooperation, and justice.
In this study, I sought to understand how the four feminist pedagogical principles of diversity, opportunities for all voices, shared responsibility, and orientation to action might manifest within a fifth-grade general music class. Specifically, these traits were examined with regard to content (the what), purpose (the why), and pedagogies (the how) with further consideration of who and where and their potential impact on the what, why, and how. To understand how these principles might manifest, 19 fifth-grade students and I engaged in a multi-week Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) project. CPAR is a process where participants—in this case, the students and myself, the teacher—can work together with the goal of making practices—in this case, the procedures, processes, routines, and norms of our music classes—more rational, sustainable, and just.
Our CPAR project began with a critique of our prior school music experiences. Following this critique, the students and I worked together to transform our music classes to become more engaging, relevant, and enjoyable. This transformation occurred through our establishment of class expectations and norms, our development and implementation of a plan of action which included exploring the techno music genre and developing a techno-style composition using GarageBand, and our eventual reflection on the process.
By decentering the pedagogical practices of our music classroom throughout this study, the students and I disrupted some of the prevalent—and oppressive—practices of the current music education paradigm and began to experience a sense of empowerment and liberation. Even with these successes, there were challenges which hindered the full manifestation of feminist pedagogies in our music classroom. These barriers included our previous experiences in the established system of music education, our lack of experience with a decentered pedagogical approach, and the logistical constraints of working within the confines of a public school. This study was a small act of subversion in a potential large-scale transformation of music education. As such, a longitudinal approach to future research is needed to determine whether and how a feminist approach to music education might impact musical engagement in school and beyond.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45132 |
| Date | 15 September 2022 |
| Creators | Schoppe, Lucas |
| Contributors | Silverman, Marissa |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds