Trauma’s ubiquity in society leads to an acknowledgement that damaging experiences likely affect more students than they leave untouched. Dewey acknowledged the importance of the past throughout his theorizing of experience and simultaneously recognized that students need to draw upon past experiences in new learning encounters. In this paper, we argue that Dewey may have opened the door to account for the possibility of traumatic experience affecting learning. We acknowledge the potential of music to prompt a trauma response and seek (...) to explore ways that music education may also provide a mechanism for working through difficult and traumatic pasts. (shrink)

This article explores how it might be possible to engage in world music ethically. I examine ways that traditional engagements can be problematic in order to push towards new possibilities for encounters and engagement. I begin by considering my own experience with world music. Moving to the theoretical, I consider “world music” study and the ways in which it defines the white, bourgeois subject, both socially and professionally. My conception of world music is spatial and temporal, as it represents journey (...) into a culture in order to learn its music. From identity formation, I then consider curriculum and pedagogy, concluding by offering several alternative practices that may allow for an ethical, non-essentializing approach to the study of world music. I align these culminating suggestions, in some ways, with principles of critical pedagogy. (shrink)

Abstract:In considering the potential of world music in music education, we might imagine ways to think about musics in cultural context or on their own terms. Engaging musics on their own terms involves embracing epistemological diversity; different epistemological frameworks accompany different musics and treating musics ethnocentrically is both an injustice and effectively an epistemological colonization. In considering how to engage musics and their accompanying sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts on their own terms, I put forward Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on dialogism as (...) a theoretical framework to examine the encounter, drawing also upon Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of the “strange encounter” and Megan Boler’s “pedagogy of discomfort” to consider pedagogical possibilities for fostering ethical encounters in music education and critical and mindful engagement in any musical encounter. (shrink)

In this paper, I center the epistemic dimensions of musics and musicking to consider the ways in which the band/orchestra/choir paradigm of music education prevalent in the U.S. and Canada may be implicated in epistemic injustice. Drawing in particular on the work of Fricker (Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007), Dotson (Hypatia 26(2):236–257, 2011), and The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (Kidd et al., The Routledge handbook of epistemic injustice, Routledge, New York, (...) 2017), I explore facets of epistemic injustice and apply these ideas to music education school contexts in Canada and the U.S. I further explore aspects of school music that may amount to “testimonial smothering” (Dotson 2011) and “cognitive imperialism” (Battiste in Can J Native Educ 22:16–27, 1998). Ultimately, building on existing literature on epistemic justice (Kidd et al. 2017; Fricker 2007), I theorize an epistemically just music education for school music in alignment with culturally responsive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial teaching. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider pedagogical moments when the project of pedagogy is to _not understand_, as understanding would entail complicity with dehumanization. I explore the slipperiness of understanding and parse when understanding is helpful and when it reinscribes structures of dehumanization. I examine when it might be important in music education pedagogy to foster a refusal to understand, specifically in cases of extreme suffering that might occur in projects of dehumanization, atrocity, and genocide. Then, I explore the ethics embedded (...) in different forms of understanding and consider why not understanding is sometimes the ethical path and tease out the complexities of such refusals to understand. Subsequently, I focus on what music might contribute to this pedagogical approach. I then explore and critique empathy and the project of empathy in education. Ultimately, I consider the role of discomfort in music education to facilitate these kinds of refusals. I center the work of several scholars in this discussion: Sherene Razack (Dark threats and White knights: The Somalia Affair, peacekeeping, and the new imperialism University of Toronto Press Toronto, ON, 2004, Rev Educ Pedag Cult Stud 29 (4): 375-394, 2007), Megan Boler (Feeling power: Emotions and education. Routledge, New York, NY, 1999), Jennifer Geddes (Hypatia 18 (1):104-115, 2003), Charlotte Delbo (_Auschwitz and after_. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995/2014), Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1963/2006), Marie Hållander (Ethics Educ 10(2): 175-185, 2015, Stud Philos Educ 38: 467–480, 2019), Barbara Applebaum (Being White, being good: White complicity, White moral responsibility, and social justice pedagogy. Lexington Books, New York 2010, White educators negotiating complicity: Roadblocks paved with good intentions. Lexington Books, New York, NY, 2022), and Liora Gubkin (Teach Theol Relig 18(2): 103–120, 2015). (shrink)

In the twenty-first century, many music education scholars seek to reconceptualize music education toward social justice. Critical pedagogy is at the fore-front of this shift. However, as teachers aim toward equity through employing critical pedagogy, some undesired effects of using this teaching approach may arise. In this paper, I consider the problematic side of critical pedagogy and ask two important questions: Are there any restrictions or limits placed on who can enact critical pedagogy in music education? And are there any (...) so-called "casualties" of critical pedagogy in music education or in education more generally? To consider these questions philosophically, I employ a critical race lens to explore tenets of critical pedagogy and their applications to music education, as illustrated in the ideas and practices of four elementary music teachers who strove to challenge dominant paradigms of music education. By examining critical pedagogy in music education with a critical lens, I seek to illuminate the philosophical complexities and paradoxes of engaging critical pedagogy in the classroom. (shrink)

Abstract:Music educators and music education researchers often rely on the use of story when advocating for social change. We may use story to illustrate a need for resources, point to a systemic injustice, illustrate a need for policy change, or identify an exclusion. Allies often utilize stories of oppression to demonstrate the untenability of situations or dehumanization experienced by particular people or groups. Stories shared, in other words, typically describe difficult, oppressive, or traumatic situations that may accomplish advocacy or social (...) change goals but may also inadvertently reinscribe oppressive relations. This paper considers several questions in relation to this practice: What does it do for dominant group members to hear stories of marginalization? How can telling stories ultimately reinscribe oppression? How could individuals who offer their stories benefit from sharing? What educational value does telling stories offer? If storytelling carries potential for reinscribing oppression, how else might educators advocate to meet the needs identified? To theorize this type of storytelling, I put Martin Buber’s work on I-Thou in conversation with work of Homi Bhabha. Buber’s theorizing allows the consideration of different types of relations, while Bhabha provides ways to explore the effects of what Buber terms an I-It relationship on individuals subject to systemic oppression. Ultimately, I explore ways to recenter minoritized voices and examine how it might be possible to consider oppressive systems without acquiescing to the demand for story. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education by Randall Everett AllsupJuliet HessRandall Everett Allsup, Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016).As a leading voice in music education, Randall Allsup works continually to reconceptualize music education toward democratic and socially just praxis.1 He routinely challenges the field to become self-conscious of practices that limit forward movement, providing (...) powerful critiques2 and urging music education toward open possibilities.3 Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education is work that will shift our field. His comprehensive philosophy of music education looks, longs, for moral openings4 through which twenty-first-century music education may become a space of possibility. His writing interweaves stories and theory toward what he calls an "open philosophy," drawing upon the ideas of John Dewey, Maxine Greene, and Roland Barthes. Allsup introduces stories of Dapper Dan, Jiro Ono, Kafka, Atul Gawande, and the Orpheus Orchestra in New York City to illustrate powerful points about current and possible paradigms of music education.Chapter 1, "Toward Open Encounters," discusses the making and breaking of the law (tradition) and explores how tradition and the Master-Apprentice model restrict what is possible in music education. Allsup explores the nature of music education and the limitations it places upon its participants. Chapter 2, "Music-Teacher Quality and Expertise," asks fundamental questions of our field and [End Page 100] explores and challenges the "place and purpose of public schooling in a democratic society."5 Allsup speaks to the function of education and critiques music education. Chapter 3, "learning in laboratories," puts forward a Deweyan laboratory model in which a museum is at the center of the school with learning laboratories situated around it. He explores what this structural fluidity might enable and develops notions of lawmaking and lawbreaking, extending possibilities of the open encounter. The final chapter, "looking, Longing, for Moral Openings," calls on music educators to embrace a more open music education paradigm. Allsup draws upon Greene to challenge music education to move "from the predictable to the possible."6 He puts forward the Orpheus Orchestra, a conductorless orchestra, as one possibility.I situate myself as an anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist scholar rooted in anti-oppression scholarship.7 locating my review through this framework, I elaborate upon what I see as the major strengths and limitations of this work, drawing upon Judith Butler8 and postcolonial theory. significantly, Allsup's book calls upon music education to "give an account of [it]self" and promotes a self-consciousness crucial for our field in the age of high stakes accountability measures. I contend that he provides a music education philosophy for what stuart Hall terms the "postcolonial moment"9 and ultimately positions music education as a space of possibility. Alongside these strengths, I offer a challenge toward what I view as the open possibilities of closed forms and a critique of his "pedagogy of travel and surprise."Judith Butler points to the impossibility of giving an account of oneself. she notes,I speak as an 'I,' but do not make the mistake of thinking that I know precisely all that I am doing when I speak in that way. I find that my very formation implicates the other and me, that my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others.10Butler notes the subject's "partial opacity to [her]self."11 In Remixing the Classroom, Allsup calls upon music educators to account for the practices and traditions continually reinscribed in the field. He poses challenging but fundamental questions in the work in music education, asking readers to consider what they do unconsciously. Butler asserts we can never fully account for ourselves. Allsup challenges the field to try, pushing music educators to face hard truths and limitations of what music education is and has been. In chapter 1, for example, he argues:To call a studying musician "unmusical" is to extinguish a light; it is to act as if the future is certain and that human potential is somehow fixed. It is to act [End Page 101... (shrink)

Abstract:In Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Glen Coulthard argues that since 1969, colonial power relations in Canada have shifted from an unconcealed structure of domination to a mode of colonial governance that operates through state recognition and accommodation. He instead looks to identify a type of recognition based on self-affirmation and self-recognition rather than state acceptance. Following Coulthard, I examine movements created to affirm oppressed groups in the context of anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness in the mid-twentieth (...) century and explore possible limitations of such movements, including the erasure or elision of complex intersections of identity. I then draw upon self-compassion, a mental health and wellness approach, as a potential framework for the affirmative politics Coulthard theorizes. Subsequently, I consider whether such a framework offers a mechanism to provide the self-affirmation and recognition that Coulthard identifies as vital to resisting oppression. I ultimately explore how understanding music as cultural production in music education might engender this affirmative politics to facilitate rich affirmation and validation of students and educators to musically imagine different possible futures. (shrink)