Exploring Access, Intersectionality, and Privilege in Undergraduate Music Education Courses

Abstract

Music teacher educators often work to prepare preservice music teachers to be socially conscious and adopt dispositions toward teaching in socially just ways. Preservice teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions toward social justice issues may not be sufficiently challenged, however, unless coursework is appropriately conceived. I designed a three-part workshop to introduce and explore the concepts of access, intersectionality, and privilege, and then conducted a basic qualitative study to examine undergraduate music education students’ understandings of and attitudes toward sensitive social justice issues, as well as their experiences with the workshop. I found that exploring sociological concepts related to social justice through interactive activities and allowing students safe methods for expressing themselves, such as journaling, may facilitate the adoption of positive dispositions among preservice teachers toward toward social justice issues.

Experiences of Preservice Music Teachers at Minority Serving Institutions

“…Participants shared the importance of seeing how their mentor teacher managed their class and ensured that all students received the help they needed. In contrast to research by Frierson-Campbell et al (2020) and Escalante (2020), participants in this study stated that they felt more confident in their ability to understand and connect with students from diverse backgrounds. This may be attributed to the knowledge that the participants’ shared about the similarities between their field experience placement and their own experiences in secondary school music programs.…”

Music Teachers’ Experiences with Implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

“…As a result, the actions become more presentationalcentered on disseminating information about DEI-which leaves teachers with a discomfort of figuring out how to implement tenets of DEI in their own ways. 9 As a result of such presentational actions, the teachers mentioned that DEI is often focused on representation of identities. High school choral teacher Rebecca saw this focus on representation in her school initiatives in New York City, including honoring specific cultural months, such as Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI), "where everyone puts up some pictures in the hallway and thinks this gesture makes our school diverse and accepting."…”

“…Similarly, identities may intersect "to reflect varying levels of privilege and marginalization." 16 What words do you associate with diversity, equity, and inclusion? How would you describe these terms to another person?…”

¿Estamos tan mal? La Educación Musical en España respecto a Alemania y Austria

“…Desde este punto de vista educativo, para que la educación cumpla su función de justicia social, la educación musical debería estar presente en la formación obligatoria de los más jóvenes con independencia de su situación geográfica, el nivel socioeconómico familiar, el género o la raza (Horsley, 2015). Para ello, la formación inicial docente también debería incrementar los programas que fomenten la diversidad cultural (Escalante, 2020;Palmer, 2018;Salvador y Kelly-McHale, 2017).…”