There have been significant strides made regarding the civil rights of LGBTQ+ students and teachers in recent decades with legal precedent being set by federal courts. Recently, this precedent has been challenged in many conservative states with legislatures passing laws to prohibit the discussion of gender non-conforming and non-heterosexual identities in Kâ12 classrooms, ban transgender student athletes from participating on sports teams that align with their identified gender, and forbid access to gender-affirming care for transgender children (Lambda Legal, 2023). These laws are being challenged in courts, and litigated cases have resulted in favorable rulings for LGBTQ+ people, but there are many more yet to be decided. Even in states where protections for LGBTQ+ students remain strong, public schools are still extremely heteronormative â stigmatizing and erasing non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming students. It is well documented that these students navigate school differently than their heterosexual peers but what is not clear is how music teachers in states with strong protections for LGBTQ+ students, who teach a significant number of them, are trained to meet their needs.
With this study, I sought to answer the following questions: 1. Which states in the eastern division of the National Association for Music Education (NAFME) have ratified educational policies that contain specific language regarding non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming students? 2. What specific language is used in educational policies, related to non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming students, in states that have ratified these policies? And 3. How are college music teacher preparation programs, in states with educational policies related to non-heterosexual and gender non-conforming students, preparing preservice music teachers to support these students?
To answer these questions, I analyzed the education policies in the NAFME eastern division to discover the range of protections for LGBTQ+ youth. I then selected the state with the most protections and chose two universities in that state to examine as part of a multiple case study. I requested syllabi and reading lists from music education faculty, devised questions from those documents and conducted 30-minute interviews with those faculty members. Once the faculty interviews were completed, I revised the student questions where necessary and conducted 30-minute interviews with students who were in their final semester of the program.
Through the lens of Queer theory, I analyzed the faculty and student interviews and found that certain faculty traits ultimately lead to pre-service music teachers having the ability to support LGBTQ+ students in their music classroom. These traits included being aware of the need to support LGBTQ+ youth but particularly being comfortable with and willing to broach these sensitive topics with pre-service music teachers. Professors who are unaware of the specific needs of LGBTQ+ students, or who are aware but unwilling to broach the subject, could result in pre-service music teachers who are not equipped to support these students in their classrooms unless resources outside of their university were sought.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46631 |
| Date | 28 August 2023 |
| Creators | Milton, Jeremy David |
| Contributors | Kos, Jr., Ronald P. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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