Disability is a neglected field of diversity within music education scholarship and practices. The study reported in this article sought alternatives for the hierarchical practice-model and ableist discourses that have thus far pervaded music teacher education, through a reconceptualization of expertise. The focus is on a Finnish university special education course, where musicians with learning disabilities conducted workshops for student music teachers over three consecutive years. Student teachers' written reflections (n = 23) were reflexively analyzed in order to examine how performing disability may disrupt, expand, and regenerate normative discourses and transform inclusive thinking in music teacher education. Performing disability is here seen to generate critical discursive learning, and create third spaces for pedagogical diversity and the co-construction of professional knowledge. It is thus argued that through teaching with, and by, rather than about, we in music education may move beyond normalizing understandings and practices of inclusion, towards an expanded notion of professionalism.
This article presents a case study of a group of approximately 70-year-old women who are learning to play rock band instruments in a formal music school context. The study examines the individual and shared meanings that the participants assigned to taking part in the rock band. The study aligns with John Dewey’s view that the meanings of present learning experiences are constructed in a continuum of the past and the future. Narrative techniques are utilized to report the three main themes that emerged from the participants’ accounts, which have implications for increasing empowerment and musical agency: the meanings assigned to learning music in a rock band context, playing rock music repertoire, and performing publicly in a rock band. The study contributes to the increasingly relevant discussion of a growing field in music education, and challenges the common assumptions of what is designated in this article as ‘later adulthood music education’.
This study examines how interactions between policy, institutions and individuals that reinforce inclusive music education can be framed from an activist standpoint. Resonaari, one among many music schools in Finland, provides an illustrative case of rather uncommonly inclusive practices among students with special educational needs. By exploring this case, contextualised within the Finnish music school system, we identify the challenges and opportunities for activism on micro, meso and macro levels. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that Resonaari's teachers are proactive because, within an inclusive teaching and learning structure, they act in anticipation of future needs and policy changes, engaging in what we call teacher activism. We claim that this type of activism is key for inclusive practices and policy disposition in music education.
In this self-reflexive study, I examine the possibilities and limitations of inclusive methodologies within activist scholarship in music education. Stemming from my own experiences and struggles as an activist researcher, I reconsider the potentials of inclusivity within participatory research approaches, especially concerning, or done together with, persons labeled as having learning disabilities. Acknowledging that the vocabulary and ethical guidelines for inclusive knowledge production in (music) educational research methodologies is in its infancy, this study addresses the demand for new spaces of academic activism through negotiations with the research community, including research participants and funders, and reconsiderations of the research roles and processes as contingent and relational.
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