The Intersection of Music Teacher Education and Social Justice

Research in the area of music teacher education and social justice often remains a theoretical discussion of possibilities and suggestions for future practice. In the interests of uncovering empirical research that can illuminate evidence of practice and for practice in the future, this chapter provides a thorough and systematic review of previous empirical work in the field. It provides evidence of what research has been accomplished, and where the field has yet to go, in addressing the concerns of social justice and diversity in music teacher education. The chapter reveals how previous work conceptualizes and enacts the development of socially just approaches in music teacher education and concludes by arguing for the importance of further empirical research at the intersection of these areas.

Educational Policy Reforms and the Politics of Music Teacher Education

This chapter discusses the politics of music teacher education in relation to the major policies that transnational institutions are promoting virtually all over the world, in relation to national curricula reforms and in relation to the programs developed by higher education institutions. The first section copes with the impact of international organizations on the reforms of national curricula based on an economic rationale and on the shaping of a new role for music and arts education in schools. The second section discusses to what extent higher education institutions in charge of teacher education are assuming these curricular changes. The final section contends that music teacher education programs should consider three major issues to foster social justice: (1) the quality of programs from an educational perspective; (2) the demise of music education as part of compulsory education; and (3) the acknowledgment of politics in music education and music teacher education.

Relationship, Rescue, and Culture

In recent years, Venezuela’s anti-poverty El Sistema program (officially named the Fundación Musical Simón Bolívar) has roared onto the international music scene, offering a rare, large-scale example of the participation of music education in social policy. Yet El Sistema’s socioeconomic effects are neither assured nor fully understood, much less easily adaptable abroad. Reading El Sistema’s complex engagements with an eye to how it works as a social program, the author examines in particular its decentralization and capacity to function as a space of care, its discourse and structures around creating a space of “rescue” for youth, and its curricular focus of Western classical music. While these areas raise several cautions, including charges of deficit thinking and cultural colonialism, the program’s own tensions and negotiations also suggest paths for strategic implementation. In this, El Sistema offers music educators and policymakers some possibilities for entering critically into oftentimes familiar practices.

Gender and Sexual Diversity Challenges (for Socially Just) Music Education

This chapter explores music education’s relationship to social justice for sexual-diverse and gender-diverse persons and communities. It focuses on music education in the context of public schooling as both a critical site for social justice and social justice education, particularly as related to gender and sexual diversity, and a robustly heteronormative enterprise that receives and sustains oppressive ideologies with regard to gender-sexual diversity. To bring together ideas, Kumashiro’s work in social justice education is drawn upon, specifically his four-part activist theory of anti-oppressive education, as well as recent, emerging research in music education regarding gender-sexual diversity and discussion of music education students and practice. Whether acknowledged or not, social justice intentions and actions with regard to gender and sexual minorities are precast and limited by our awareness of and readiness to identify and act against the multiplicity of ways we benefit from the gender and sexual status quo.

Music Education Assessment and Social Justice

This chapter considers the role that assessment, particularly formative assessment, has to play with regard to social justice purposes in education. It disentangles the notion of assessment from that of testing. Valorization of music is highly significant, as what is valued tends to be what is assessed. This can result in the disenfranchising of world music, pop, rock, and jazz on a daily basis in music classrooms all over the Western world; so this chapter problematizes the content of the music curriculum, too, asking whether that which can be labeled “school music” has any relevance beyond itself. To counter these problems, this chapter suggests the use of feed forward, which takes place during music making, privileging process over product. It suggests that the principal purpose of assessment should be to improve learning in music, not to simply provide data for systemic purposes.

The Imperative of Diverse and Distinctive Musical Creativities as Practices of Social Justice

Social injustice and intercultural tensions are often bound up with conflicts that create intolerances: conflicts of memory, conflicts of value, and conflicts of cultural stereotyping, which serve to demarcate one group from the alien “other.” Raising awareness through research needs to position academics, researchers, non-academics, and arts organizations as collaborative partners for deliberating about and developing intercultural translation; this requires dialogue, exchange, and co-construction. What forms the core of this chapter, then, are findings of ongoing research, presented as a layered story interlocking elements in theory and practice relating to how different types of creativities are recognized and communicated in the diverse practices of a particular organization, Musicians without Borders, whose projects work with the power of music to connect communities. This chapter presents an exploration of the empathic and intercultural creativities that emerge in the songwriting and improvisational practices of musical creativities, empathy, interculturality, practices, improvisation, and songwriting.

Musical Creativity and “the Police”

This chapter suggests a framework for understanding how neoliberal educational agendas are gradually seizing modernist, progressivist, and child-centric notions of (musical) creativity, while imperceptibly depriving them of their potential for countering educational injustices. Furthermore, it is argued that the renewed emphasis on creativity in education does not aim at counterbalancing performativity-centered educational policies but is (a) a response to the emergent entrepreneurial turn in education, and (b) a sign of recognition of creativity as a work-related value. The chapter elaborates on how music education discourse on creativity is gradually being appropriated within this entrepreneurial, performativity-oriented climate. Finally, it is argued that music education may still be able to advance a vision of creative engagement that addresses issues of social justice in forms of prefigurative pedagogies of an activist orientation.

Informal Learning as a Catalyst for Social Justice in Music Education

This chapter considers social justice in relation to the incorporation of a set of informal learning practices within the secondary school music classroom and teacher education. It interprets Nancy Fraser’s view of social justice as “parity of participation” in order to suggest that the dialogical approach of informal music learning practices can potentially promote such participatory parity. It then examines Paulo Freire’s concept of critical pedagogy, which emphasizes the need for teachers and students to participate together in the learning process so as to enhance critical consciousness. Through an application of Green’s theory of musical meaning, the authors suggest that critical consciousness in music can be aided through a deeper understanding of music’s sonic materials and their inter-relations. Informal learning in the music classroom may promote both parity of participation and critical consciousness, with the potential to lead to a liberating musical experience.

Multiculturalism and Social Justice

Social justice, with its emphasis on identifying and rectifying inequalities that exist in society, is a concept that in many ways parallels multiculturalism. This chapter argues that multiculturalizing the curriculum is an essential means by which to move toward more socially just educational experiences. It turns to the work of pioneering educationist James Banks, applying his Levels of Curriculum Reform to learning experiences in music education. These tiered levels—contributions, additive, transformative, and social action—provide a sequential pathway by which educators unversed in working with multicultural content can create curricula that lead to a more multicultural and socially just educational enterprise.

Music, Social Justice, and Social Inclusion

Refugees and newly arrived immigrants may face a range of social, emotional, and cultural challenges related to geographical and cultural displacement and trauma experienced in the country of origin, en route, and in the process of relocation and resettlement in a host country. In this chapter the role of music in the lives of young refugees and newly arrived immigrants in Sydney, Australia, is investigated in terms of its social and cultural effects. The chapter focuses on the collaborative music and dance activities of a Sierra Leone Youth Group and an Intensive English Centre (a specialist secondary school for newly arrived students). For marginalized participants, the music and dance activities, conceived within a socially just framework, were seen to provide opportunities for participatory parity, cultural justice, and social inclusion, within communities from both the home and host cultures.