Dennis Frayne Arts, Music, & Education

 CHAPTER 2:

A JOURNEY THROUGH LITERATURE, LEARNING, AND LIFE

I am not impartial or objective; not a fixed observer of facts or happenings. I never was able to be an adherent of the traits that falsely claim impartiality or objectivity. That did not prevent me, however, from holding always a rigorously ethical position. (Freire, 1998/2001, p. 22)

The point is to endorse the practice of explicitly locating oneself as an invested knower in the work of reviewing, implicating oneself in the process, and taking responsibility in the critique and its cultural reception. (Lather, 1999, p. 3).

Becoming a Teacher

I began teaching as a young adolescent when I opened my first “School of Magic” for my younger brothers and neighborhood friends in rural North Tustin, Orange County, California. As a magician I enjoyed both mystifying others while performing on stage as well as teaching others the tricks of the trade behind the curtain. What I knew then of social justice I learned in Catholic school, in church, and from my parents. “As often as you did it for one of the least of my brothers, you did it for me” (New American Bible, 1971, Matthew 25:40). And “Open your mouth on behalf of the dumb, and for the rights of the destitute; Open your mouth, decree what is just, defend the needy and the poor!” (New American Bible, 1971, Proverbs 31:8-9).

By high school I was teaching piano lessons part time at the LoKnoPla Music Institute, and it was there I was introduced to more formal teaching strategies and relevant pedagogies for both children and adults. Ruth Stevenson Alling (1974) regularly shared bits of wisdom and experience, such as how “the adult mind is mature and grasps the idea of what he is to do more readily, but his hands are not so flexible and won’t do what his head tells them to” (p. 93). How did I learn to teach as a teenager? I watched, I listened, I read, I practiced, I co-taught, and I invented. I livened up the weekly Saturday morning piano recitals that I co-hosted by rehearsing skits and musical theater numbers with interested students.

Years later, before most people knew Microsoft and through the height of the new personal computer technology boom, as a self-taught computer programmer and systems analyst, I found myself hosting classes and developing tutorials for accountants, executives, and clerical staff to teach them how to use desktop computers, spreadsheet software, and other business and financial applications. These and subsequent experiences took me down a long and windy road that eventually led me to receiving my first teaching credentials: CTE (designated subjects) credentials in Arts & Entertainment, Information Technology, and Finance & Business. Important to my development as a teacher at this time was my immersion in andragogy, a pedagogical stance that views adult learners as “self-directed, capable of making decisions about what should be learned, as well as actively constructing meaning rather than passively receiving it from others” (Bierema, 2008, p. 13). Andragogy and similar studies in adult learning laid foundations for and perhaps foreshadowed later eye-openings, light-bulb-turnings-on, and a generally enthusiastic grasping and coming-to-terms with critical and feminist theories, self-determination theories, constructivism, emancipatory pedagogies (Freire), paradigm shifts (Kuhn), practitioner communities and inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle), and community participatory action research – all of which now contribute to the outlook and content of my work here.

Digging into Music Education

While society’s appraisal of and regard for music education in schools has for centuries ebbed and flowed, and its implementations by schools and school systems have been inconsistent, perhaps temperamental, and in some cases even dismal, music and music education have generally been valued (Jorgensen & Yob, 2019; Mark, 2008). From church choirs to singing schools and private music lessons on pianos, violins, and other instruments, youth – especially those from wealthier families – have benefited from music instruction. In the United States, through the pioneering (though in some ways controversial) efforts of education leaders and architects such as Lowell Mason, Horace Mann, George Loomis, John Dewey, and Frances Elliott Clark, music education gradually became somewhat of a staple in the nation’s public primary and secondary schools and curriculums, and has continued, to more or less degree, to the present day (Allsup, 2016; Fehr, 2008; Jorgensen & Yob, 2019; National Association for Music Education [NAfME], 2014).

However, the content, scope, and scale of music education, like all of education, has never been all-inclusive nor has access been equitable (e.g., Bates, 2018; Fehr, 2008; Mattern, 2019; Salvador, 2019; Yaffe et al., 2018). Significant imbalances are found within schools, among schools, within districts and states, across the nation, and through generations. We can read about them easily and abundantly, and I have witnessed them firsthand. And despite many favorable perceptions and in some cases considerable activity in the world of music education, some researchers estimate that the actual proportion of people actively involved in music-making, even as a hobby, is tiny – as low as 1% (Green, 2002).

Reasons abound. Money, status, power, class, race, culture, ability, ideology, values, incentives, economies… and degrees of altruism on one hand and corruption on the other, all play their roles. Many have argued, as do I, that the overarching cause of inequities in and inaccessibility to music education by many students – the “primary drivers of the problem” (Schwartz, 2018) – is, succinctly, “race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, cultural background, and location” (Yaffe et al., 2018, p. 5). Pendergast (2020) articulated how “structural factors are related to the contextual influences that support or block equitable access to secondary music classes” (p. 46). Helton and Paetz (2021) wrote that access to and quality of music education “seem rife with inequality” (p. 171) and suggested that in some cases budgetary structures deny equity between schools based on location and race.

Gustafson (2008) described ways in which high rates of attrition from school music programs by African American students can be tied to emphasis on certain cultural norms and expectations that attend to white students while alienating students of color. Many music curriculums and pedagogies ascribe positive, “rich,” “complex,” and other superior attributes to music of the Western European “common practice” traditions, while describing other forms and styles of music as interesting, exotic, “other,” primitive, decadent, and inferior. Gustafson (2008) contended that “the principle of equity compels us to examine the historical record that has brought us to this point and to consider the operation of a template for Whiteness and worthiness bound up in the school subject of music” (p. 292). There is a growing realization among music educators that barriers to participation in music programs by some students are erected, not just by what is external to the program, but by what is internal – the content, teaching strategies, and pedagogical choices (e.g., Culp & Clauhs, 2020; Gustafson, 2008; Kelly-McHale, 2018; E. Palmer, 2018; Salvador, 2019; Schniedewind & Davidson, 2014; Soto, 2018).

Exploring Culturally Responsive Pedagogies

I returned to school later in life to finish my music and theater arts degrees and obtain single subject teaching credentials in those content areas. It was then that I began researching and learning more about the structural problems, inequities, and ineffective (even harmful) yet ongoing (cyclical?) education reform efforts in the United States. Topics from school choice to multicultural education, disability studies, immigration, “acting white” (Gollnick & Chinn, 2009, pp. 62-63), “othering,” and the disquiet surrounding high stakes testing drew me in. I experienced more than one “Aha!” moment as my horizons were expanded and some old, dried, and coarse skin was shed. My new awareness included challenges to dominant perspectives toward music education, including the traditional music ensembles of choir, band, and orchestra (Grant & Lerer, 2011; Green, 2002, 2008a, 2008b; Lines, 2005), “the lauding of the elite, talented musician; the preservation of the Western European music canon; the transmission of ordered tonal and rhythmic ways of knowing; and the rise of technicism in systems, methods and teleological curricula” (Lines, 2005, p. 2). I began to recognize how exclusive practices legitimate some music forms, expressions, purposes, and cultures while denying the value of others.

It seems the social and educational gatekeepers of every age determine some music harms society, especially young people. “And Rag-time, shameless music that'll grab your son, your daughter, with the arms of a jungle animal instinct! Mass-staria!” (Willson, 1957, p. 31) (lyrics from Meredith Willson’s much loved Broadway musical, The Music Man). A hundred years ago the New Orleans Picayune called jazz music “hot, loud and dirty, a low streak in man, that could even do damage” (as cited in Frayne, 2006). A hundred years later, the New York Times opined, “When it comes to rap music, what's poisonous for the culture – and dangerous for minority youth – tends to be great for album sales” (Brent Staples, June 8, 2005). I played ragtime on the piano as a teenager, and still perform concerts of (especially Scott Joplin’s) ragtime music to this day. In my lifetime, ragtime and some other jazz idioms have become “acceptable” music, included (if sparsely) in anthologies of Western classical music (e.g., Norton), on music conservatory course syllabi, and in piano exam board repertoire lists (e.g., Music Teachers Association of California’s Certificate of Merit™ program). Newer music has taken the older idioms’ place, including rap and hip hop – music that to some may be incongruent with the “historical construction of Whiteness as a standard mark of worthiness” (Gustafson, 2008, p. 267). J. Richardson & Scott (2002) offer a provocative take:

Rappers could be considered outsiders (possessing minimal social capital) given their race and socioeconomic status. Rather than ignoring the social inequities that persisted in their neighborhoods, rappers became the ultimate capitalists (copying the dominant culture’s strategies) by creating and owning a music form designed to expose inequities and social contradictions. In an economic sense, what rap and hip-hop artists have done, is apply the capitalistic skills and networks valued by society to catapult themselves into media moguls. (p. 184)

Ironically, while educators reject and exclude their art from music classrooms, universities, and conservatories, many rappers and hip hop artists see themselves as educators striving to raise social consciousness and empower citizens (Morrell, 2002).

Inclusion and Coming to Grips with Oppression

Like so many of the privileged of my generation, I grew up believing in the “universal greatness” of America (the United States of). It took time for me to begin to understand the one-sidedness of that commentary, and the deep holes and realms of cultural emptiness and outright lies that mar curriculum at all levels of our education, from P-12 through university (e.g., Au, 2014; J. Banks, 2008/2014; Bigelow, 2006; Christensen, 2009; Marshall & Sensoy, 2016; Schniedewind & Davidson, 2014; Sleeter & Grant, 2007). A fire was ignited – I became more determined to learn how to help reverse – what I would later call transform, agreeing with Nieto’s (2002) preference to the tired (disappointing?) word, reform – what I was seeing more and more clearly as oppressive education systems. During my master’s program I was introduced to Rethinking Schools, whose books and articles I devoured, including some that weren’t so musical (e.g., Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers; Gutstein & Peterson, 2013), but nevertheless offered new insights. Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Social Justice (Au, 2014) provides numerous first-hand examples of teachers developing curriculums that involves students in their personal quests for justice in their schools and in their communities. Topics focus on issues ranging from the marginalization of students when taught historical inaccuracies and one-sided versions (such as Columbus’ discovery of America), to the confusing of students by ignoring racism both historically and in current society, to preventing students from achieving and succeeding by side-stepping language barriers and assets, and otherwise failing to recognize the academic potential of many students. Sleeter and Grant’s (2007) single-group studies approach to multicultural education provides another useful lens into “value-laden” curriculums (p. 122).

In music education curricula, social stratification abounds. For example, a typical American music songbook (compilation), purportedly containing representative songs from pre-colonial North America to the present day United States of America, From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs (Cohn, 1993), provides insights into how racial groups, socio-economic class groups, and genders, are promoted, marginalized, and stereotyped by education materials in use by music teachers in many of today’s U.S. classrooms (Frayne, 2016). In texts such as this example we see a preponderance of white European men, yet not a single reference to Mexican or Mexican American culture other than ancient Aztec/Mayan drawings and stories. As Grant and Sleeter (2009) suggest, “some groups are barely included in the curriculum and still others are excluded altogether” (p. 124). In this example, virtually all the white European images are presented as striving, successful, clean, standing tall, and/or happy; and virtually all the non-white-European figures are depicted as sad, poor, dirty, lanky posture, wild, or scary (e.g., a dark-skinned witch) (Frayne, 2016). As one reads through the songs, the stories, and the artwork, it becomes evident that there is a superficial attempt (Grant & Sleeter, 2009) to include some diversity in ethnicity, class, and gender. However:

The white men are learned, clean, well-dressed, and admired by others; the white men conquer, invent, build, explore, and make progress. On the other hand, women, for the most part, tend to children, pick flowers, cover their heads with shawls, wear aprons, and admire and follow their husbands or fathers. White children gaze at stars and dream. Black children play in the fields and get into trouble. Non-whites, with several notable exceptions, are consistently portrayed as poor, unkempt, barefooted, goofy, and/or scary. The Black slave in the early part of the book is freed later in the book but is shown to be a barefoot backyard tap-dancer or con-artist. The only Asian (perhaps Chinese) woman in the book is a mysterious looking ‘Madam.’ And the only portrayal of someone from south of the border is a bizarrely painted, wide-eyed, dancing Aztec/Mayan caricature. (Frayne, 2006, p. 3)

The single-group studies approach advocated by Grant and Sleeter (2009) suggests music teachers and music curriculums could, when presenting each group’s music and history, “take the group’s perspective about itself” and “challenge the colonial images” (p. 125); and “considerable emphasis should be placed on [each] group’s current needs and experiences” (p. 127).

Though Black musicians in America inspired the huge movements and revivals of folk music that became blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel, Motown, funk, R&B, rap, and hip hop, in each corresponding age, as previously iterated, music educators and administrators ever warn of the “dangers” of these “decadent” musical forms, including to our present day “concerns” about teaching popular music such as hip hop in schools (Au, 2014; Frayne, 2006; Green, 2008a, 2008b; Gustafson, 2008; Nieto, 2002). In our zeal, we exclude the very students who are the inheritors of these musical cultures and styles: the children of these prodigious musicians.

Similar mistreatments involve gender in music education, for example, of women. Despite an abundance of music composed by women throughout the centuries, and even more so in modern times, when we read published music histories, music anthologies, and school concert programs, we often see few – sometimes only one or two, sometimes zero – women composers mentioned or works performed (e.g., Caruso, 2014; Citron, 2000; Culp & Clauhs, 2020; Peters, 2016; Scott & Harrassowitz, 2004; Strempel, 2008; Wong, 2019). As a relatively recent music conference presenter remarked apologetically, “The only woman composer I ever learned about was Clara Schumann” (Artesani, 2012, p. 23). The fact that textbooks, anthologies, and “canons” fail to integrate the work of women composers creates a perception that women have added very little to the bodies of creative and intellectual music production (Caruso, 2014). Some have suggested, as has Citron (2000), that women have not so much been left out of the art of making music as they have been left out of defining the musical canon:

The more obvious reason is that women have exercised minimal power in the formation and semiology of the canons of Western art music. If they had a greater voice in canonicity, then gender would have figured prominently in the narrative…. Mainstream canonicity has derived mostly from male structures and convention, and canons have provided a powerful tool for their self-perpetuation. (p. 41)

Despite this lack of documentation, and despite that many music educators complete their degrees with insufficient knowledge of women composers or performers (Artesani, 2012), many music educators today argue that this cannot be an excuse for music teachers to ignore this problem and perpetuate a status quo that is inaccurate, unfair, and – unfortunately for students, performers, and audiences – devoid of much meaningful and beautiful musical works of art that remain hidden and underperformed. Grant and Sleeter (2009) suggested, and I agree, it is the music teacher’s role to provide a curriculum that addresses both males and females, and to help students discover and examine inequities in society, especially those that are directly influencing some students’ chances in life.

Music teachers and directors of music ensembles often program patriotic, America-themed, and holiday, Christmas-themed music concerts. Typically, these concerts will include traditional anthems and folk songs, patriotic marches, hymns and carols, and potentially a token African American spiritual, a Jewish Hanukkah-themed song, or other “ethnic” work thrown in with the intention of adding some diversity or a taste of indigenous culture (Gustafson, 2008). Yet these music programs too frequently fail to substantially highlight and celebrate the volume of non-Western European music literature available that has been contributed to our “American” culture over the centuries. This failure contributes to the existing hegemony that reinforces a white, Western European, Christian, male-dominated music world wherein the highbrow canon of music literature is deemed important and worthy of concert performance and other music, considered “popular” music, is the work of the lowly, less-educated, base, superficial masses. In addition, just as in our commercial media, when we do see references to the music of non-white racial groups, other socioeconomic class groups, and non-male genders, they are too often promoted, marginalized, and stereotyped in negative ways by education materials, educational media, and in the music repertoire itself. This topic is frequently discussed in Facebook music teacher groups, often with strong opinions and differing perspectives. When music teachers focus repertoire choices on what are considered great works from previous centuries, are they offering students rigorous opportunities with high standards, or are they missing opportunities to help students find relevance to the music they are singing by listening to the voices of popular culture? We are not providing an inclusive music education when as an outcome of our teaching, “individuals who know the world only from their own cultural perspectives are denied important parts of the human experience and are culturally and ethnically encapsulated” (J. Banks, 2008/2014, p. 2). Nieto (2002) pointed to studies that suggest teachers and schools “need to build on rather than tear down what students bring to school” (p. 121). Cultural differences should not merely be “touched upon,” but incorporated into the learning process. Jazz, gospel, blues, rock & roll, hip hop, reggae, salsa, and mariachi, each contain rich repertoires of music within their genres that can be drawn from when programming an America-themed or holiday-themed concert. And in so doing, teachers should find texts that spotlight the positive attributes and successes of the members of these minority cultural groups, and not portray them consistently as abused, mistreated, poor, sad, dirty, etc. (Frayne, 2016).

Discovering Action Research

It was during my teacher induction program and then my master’s in teaching that I was formally introduced to and had an opportunity to practice action research – what has opened for me possibilities for student and community empowerment. Although, descriptions of action research offered by both these programs tended to diminish its perceived value and prestige in the larger world of research and scholarship; for example, suggesting that action research is “applied research focused on solving practitioners’ local problems” and is “based on the idea that [teachers] having a ‘researcher attitude’ is helpful in dealing with [their] complex and changing environments” (Johnson & Christensen, 2014, p. 12). I ask: Is “solving local problems” any different than what I have been doing for years before I knew of action research? Is having a “researcher attitude” the same as being a researcher? Is action research real research, or a miniature variety – a soft plastic version of the heavy metal tool for teachers who are not really researchers (or scholars)?

From my series of small action research projects during this period, I advanced my understanding of how crucial it is that students learn content – and teachers use strategies – that are relevant to students’ lives. Two years later, in my doctoral program, these understandings evolved further as I broadened the scope of my qualitative research interests into CBPAR and then further into what some are calling critical music pedagogy (Abrahams, 2005a, 2005b; Biggs-El, 2012; Elliott, 2007; Gowan, 2016; Hess, 2017), or activist music education (Laes, 2016; Hess, 2018, 2019). In education, CBPAR begins by involving students. Today, the “voices of students are rarely heard in the debates about school failure and success, and the perspectives of disempowered and dominated communities are even more invisible” (Nieto, 2002, p. 123). “Naming the world” should not be the task of an elite (Freire, 1970/2018), youth should not be viewed as deficient or disregarded (e.g., Gatto, 2002, 1992/2017a, 2017b; Gray, 2013; hooks, 2010; Morrell, 2002; Schultz, 2011; Taylor, 2016; Yon, 2000), and students should participate in collective social transformation (e.g., Fine, 1991; Giroux, 1985; McLaren, 1986/1999; Mirra et al., 2016; Shor, 1992).

Involving Students in the Quest for Justice

Music classrooms, especially music ensembles and collaborative music programs, tend to facilitate and encourage student involvement, interaction, and connection. Dewey (1897) wrote that “all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race;” that “the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself” (p. 77). Today’s students are living and participating in today’s world which includes vast changes and evolutions of technology, of social norms, of political perspectives, of business and financial models, of arts, media, and entertainment, of power structures, of cultural and historical awareness, of law enforcement and criminal justice systems, of protest movements, and more. “Knowledge of social conditions,” Dewey (1897) continued, “of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order to properly interpret the child’s powers” (pp. 77-78). There is richness in every child’s experience, and through participation, learning can be enhanced and optimized. In Dewey’s (1897) view, education should not be a preparation for future living, but a process of living now, in the present; and, knowledge should not proceed from the teacher, but should be “stimulated and controlled in his work through the life of the community” (p. 78).

Like Dewey, Freire (1970/2018) stressed the importance of student involvement in their own education, an education that relies heavily on real-life experiences and participation, saying, “In the culture of silence the masses are ‘mute,’ that is, they are prohibited from creatively taking part in the transformations of their society and therefore prohibited from being” (p. 213). Rather than the “banking” or “digestive” form of knowledge transfer from teacher to student, who becomes merely a static and compliant recipient of information, Freire (1970/2018) encouraged educators to root students firmly in the process of learning so that they become critically aware of their reality and participate in an authentic dialog with teachers through which knowledge steadily builds and grows for each.

Awareness of social justice issues can motivate people, including students, to action (Junda, 2013; Morrison, 2008; O’Hagin & Harnish, 2006). Students can change, with or without realizing the change, through a creative process that involves becoming immersed, for example, in the historical, cultural, and textual context of a piece of music that strives to raise cultural awareness and social consciousness (Morrison, 2008). Teachers can help students move more deeply into social justice learning by starting with self-love and knowledge and working up to social action (Picower, 2012). On one hand, it is important to lay the foundations before moving to more advanced work; on the other hand, it is dangerous to lay the foundations and then not move to more advanced work. In the former case, students will not be ready because they have not yet developed pride in themselves and a respect for the diversity of others. In the latter case, students will be left with a superficial understanding of social justice and never move beyond the less-substantive “celebrating diversity” (Nieto, 2002) of weak multicultural education, to the more-substantive and empowering awareness-raising and social action.

A mentor once suggested, “We aren’t teaching music; we are teaching children through music” (J. Talberg, personal communication, September 2013). Some music educators, myself included, are beginning to take this – or at least are thinking about taking this – one step further; perhaps: We are empowering children through music (Frayne, 2016; Hess, 2019). In Putting a Human Face on the Immigration Debate, Picht-Trujillo and Suchsland (2014) wrote of realizing that they needed to “empower [students] to become agents of change” (p. 278). Allsup (2003) proposed that a critical investigation of how the dominant culture uses education must then lead to action. Allsup (2003) asked higher order and theoretical questions, such as, “Is our culture truly concerned with learning?” (p. 5), “Or is it concerned with simply reproducing itself?” (p. 6). Hess (2017, 2018, 2019) approached critical music pedagogy and activist music education from a constructivist perspective, with the goal of “doing” social justice work and/or enabling or facilitating social change. By studying the work of activist musicians, or musicians who are also social activists, Hess (2019) pointed out that we can learn from and get ideas about how to implement an activist curriculum in our music classrooms. Songwriting is frequently suggested as a vehicle for providing students a “voice” and empowering them to “speak out” against injustices, identify problems needing fixing, or to express their true feelings. Hess (2019) proposed:

When we move away from encountering the experiences of the unfamiliar Others to encouraging youth to put forward their own experiences through songwriting, we create the potential for empathy…. If students engage in songwriting in a way that fosters empathy, we might consider ways to make that feeling productive. (p. 143)

As in songwriting, Green (2008a) discovered the expressive possibilities for student voice in the actual performance of music that was culturally relevant to them; for example, in “not only the bodily looks, hair, clothing, gait and so on, but also the kinds of postures and gestures involved in playing certain instruments, and the shapes of the instruments themselves” (p. 99).

Elliott (2007) viewed critical in music education in terms of educator praxis. He was tasked, as a white, male, English-speaking American, to develop a Master of Music Education program in Puerto Rico. The program would educate mostly Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans. Elliot (2007) used the term “critical performative pedagogy” (p. 8) to discuss the conception of a pedagogical site as a “problematic space of racial, economic, moral, and social tensions requiring deep injections of social justice and civic courage” (p. 8). He suggested that critical music pedagogy “approaches the classroom as an opportunity for doing political and social work with and for students, teachers, and the communities in which they live” (p. 8). Hess (2019) suggested activist music education might help youth eschew passivity and engage the people and conditions that concern and affect them, exemplifying ways in which the “personal is political” (Hanisch, 1969/2009). And Guevara-Niebla et al. (1994) argued for the imperative of art to do political work in times of injustice, toward class equity and human liberation.

Diving into Self-determination, Autonomy, and Choice

Frequently suggested or hinted at in the literature of critical and activist pedagogies are the notions of self-determination, autonomy, and choice (e.g., Allsup, 2003; Elliott, 2007; Freire, 1970/2018; Green, 2002, 2008a, 2008b; Hess, 2017, 2018, 2019; Holoboff, 2015; Valdez, 2018). Valdez (2018) offered ideas and suggestions about implementing self-directed learning strategies in music ensemble classrooms, including small group work, goal setting, leadership opportunities, self-directed projects, self-reflections, and self-assessments. Valdez (2018) suggested students can take initiative for their learning, diagnose their learning needs, formulate goals and targets, pull from resources, and strategize and evaluate learning outcomes (p. 47). Some of her writing reflects and emphasizes what seems to be common in this type of work: the benefits to the music program, in some cases over, or at least in addition to, the benefits to the student(s). Holoboff (2015) discussed challenges and benefits of implementing student-centered learning in music classes, based on her experiences. Examples include allowing students to determine areas of interest, posing musical problems to be solved, using open-ended questions in analysis, facilitating students in planning their own work, and using technology to enable students to create their own work and art. Green (2008a) investigated the relationships between student autonomy and enjoyment, for if learners enjoy learning, it follows they will be more highly motivated towards it; if they are more highly motivated, they will be more likely to apply themselves; and if they apply themselves, they will be likely, at least in the long run, to learn more. (p. 93)

Grant and Lerer (2011) discussed differentiated instruction, based on their experiences with the ideas and strategies. They referred to differentiated instruction as a “philosophy that acknowledges and values the unique learning needs of all students, recognizing that learners are active agents in constructing their own understanding, and their own lives” (Tomlinson, 1999, as cited in Grant & Lerer, 2011, p. 24).

Self-determination theory maintains that “an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness” (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p. 227). Constructivist learning theory posits that students develop deep learning and assimilation by interacting with their environment (e.g., Piaget, 1971; Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff, 1990; S. Scott, 2011; Phillips, 1995). Other investigation into motivation discusses the relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and their impact on human social development and well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000). There is a growing body of international literature focusing on self-determination theory as it relates to motivation in music education, including work in Australia (P. Evans, 2015), in Hong Kong and the United States (Lai et al., 2017), in the Netherlands (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2005), and in the United Kingdom (Green, 2002, 2008a, 2008b). Elements of self-determination theory, constructivist learning theory, and an emphasis on intrinsic motivation can be found in experimental or non-traditional educational models for non-music and music education in self-directed learning (e.g., Bobby & Meiyappan, 2018; Eniola-Adefeso, 2010; S. Scott, 2011; Steinke, 2012), mobile learning (Bartholomew et al., 2017), project-based learning (Aslan et al., 2014; Mitchell et al, 2009; Tobias et al., 2015), problem-based learning (Zhang et al., 2011), flipped classrooms (Bernauer & Fuller, 2017), and learning studios (Aslan et al., 2014). Much of the research available is focused on music education at the university level, music education outside the United States, and all education (not music-specific).

Encountering Love and Hate, and the Impact on Participation and Retention

In my experience, school music students attend music classes with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some students elect to take a class because they are eager to do so and expect to continue in music study; some students take a class because they are experimenting with music; some students take a class because they have been persuaded by others (parents, teachers, or peers); and some students take a class because they have been placed there not by their own choosing. Devoted students typically request, voluntarily participate in, successfully audition for, and/or otherwise become accepted into a next level (e.g., intermediate or advanced) music ensemble for each subsequent school year. Indifferent, bored, or dispirited students quit at the first opportunity. On a spectrum, some students will say they “love” music class and some students say they “hate” music class.

In many situations, a degree of student choice, autonomy, and self-direction will positively impact a student’s experience in music class. Student choice may include having the option to learn an instrument or to study some other aspect of music, or to work individually or as part of a group, team, or ensemble. It may mean being able to select from a diverse array of instruments such as traditional band and orchestra instruments, electronically amplified instruments (e.g., electric guitar), culturally responsive instruments (e.g., mariachi), and experimental or home-made instruments (e.g., bucket drumming). It might offer opportunities to study singing, conducting, musical theater, choreography, or dance. Or it might mean getting to choose not to play an instrument at all and instead study electronic devices and technology (e.g., Garage Band), or topics as diverse as sound design, recording, multimedia, composition, songwriting, video game or film scoring, production design, programming, event planning, technical or stage management or crewing, music theory, musicology, or even music listening.

Autonomy and self-direction might be facilitated by teachers who serve less as instructors and directors and more as mentors, coaches, and advocates, assisting as necessary, providing structure, providing support, teaching when asked to do so, and helping when asked for help (e.g., Green, 2008a, 2008b; Oswald, 2006). In self-directed learning environments, students collaborate with their constructivist-leaning teachers, potentially choosing and/or designing their own methods of learning. These can include available method books, textbooks, and curriculum, materials found on the Internet, web sites, tutorials, YouTube and other video platforms, equipment technical manuals, user guides, games, and learning from peers, teachers, and others (e.g., Richard, 2017). Students may decide to learn to read music notation, to learn by ear, to choose their music genre and style, to select music repertoire, and to determine when and where to rehearse, perform, record, etc. (Green, 2002, 2008a, 2008b). Students may even define and set goals and learning objectives and participate in the design and methods of assessment and measurement of progress toward goals and learning objectives (Aslan et al., 2014; Davis, 2018; Holoboff, 2015; Steinke, 2012).

Self-directed, autonomous learning environments may be contrasted with more common, traditional, top-down, authoritarian approaches to music education, which resemble common-practice choir, band, orchestra, or other beginning instrumental music class. In this more typical learning environment, students have limited choice or no choice of what instrument they will learn and play. Students work out of a method book determined by the teacher, learn Western common practice note reading and music notation, play repertoire selected by the teacher, and perform at concerts and events programmed, planned, and organized by the teacher. Teacher-director-conductors lead mostly from the podium, set student goals and learning objectives, establish practice and rehearsal routines, assign homework, require and collect practice logs, and periodically assess student learning and skill development.

In some schools the levels of participation and retention rates are higher than others, but it is a common theme among music teachers throughout the United States and other countries that the numbers in general are too low, and that their music programs are threatened as a result (e.g., Green, 2002; Johnes, 2017; Miksza, 2013). Through my participation in global, national, state, and local music-related professional and advocacy organizations, which include in-person meetings, discussions, conferences, seminars, and discourse with thousands of music teachers within online discussion groups, Internet forums, and on social media (Facebook), I see prevalent themes and anxieties emerge. These themes often revolve around student retention, the diminishing number of students involved in music study, and speculation about why music programs in schools too frequently get shut down or downsized amid declining participation and budget cuts. Why are so many students – and the public – uninterested, uninspired, uninvolved, and unsupportive? Of course, today’s parents were yesterday’s students (Gatto, 2010). In my own experience as a music teacher, I have heard the complaints of youth who claim that they “hate music” after beginning or going through a course of music study. With these very vocal students and others who quit more silently, we are failing in our efforts to nurture lifelong music learners, or to help young people increase their appreciation for and even a love of music, and for music-making. It is well established and self-evident that education, including music education, has goals, objectives, and values for students and for the music education programs themselves (even as these goals, objectives, and values differ in substantial ways from educator to educator and school to school). For example, generally speaking, we want students to succeed (e.g., get good grades, score well on tests, graduate, go to college, get into good careers, earn a good living). We want students to develop as lifelong learners. We want music students to practice effectively and improve their knowledge and skills. We want students to continue and progress in music studies (we do not want students to quit). We want children to develop an appreciation for and even a love of music, and for music-making. We want to build successful and even prestigious music programs. We want to protect music programs from budget cuts. We want middle schools to feed high school music programs with skilled students. We believe involved, enthusiastic, and skilled music students help grow strong and effective music programs.

Self-determination theory as well as culturally relevant and critical perspectives suggest to me that helping students stay in music programs is about more than teaching musical skills. Can self-direction, autonomy, and more choices in music education contribute to social justice and equity concerns by engaging more students, especially those typically ignored and sidelined? (Elpus & Abril, 2011).

For example, could greater equity be achieved if

• More students had a chance to express their own home culture at school?

• Participation in music, which offers some kids a sense of meaning and purpose, helped more “at risk” youth to stay in school and to graduate, and to reduce the harmful, encroaching effects of the “school to prison pipeline” (Fine, 1991; Mallet, 2015)?

• Access to otherwise expensive instruments and equipment was improved and expanded?

• Barriers to entry that are often erected as a result of language, genre, style, and the overwhelming influence of and focus on Western European history and culture to the exclusion of all others, could be removed or reduced?

• The often negative and condescending view in the music education profession toward pop music, rock, hip hop, mariachi, etc., which can serve to alienate and push many students out of music participation, were mitigated or reversed?

Ideas around student choice, autonomy, and self-direction led me to investigate some of the alternative, “child-centered” approaches to general education that are out there in the world, including Steiner/Waldorf education, Reggio Emilia, Montessori, homeschooling, and “unschooling” – including an in-depth study of the philosophies, practices, and pedagogies of the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts (Greenberg, 2016). Developmental psychologist Peter Gray (2013), the parent of a student who “hated school” until he attended Sudbury Valley, and author of Free to Learn:

Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, wrote:

Children come into the world burning to learn and genetically programmed with extraordinary capacities for learning. They are little learning machines. Within their first four years or so they absorb an unfathomable amount of information and skills without any instruction. They learn to walk, run, jump, and climb. They learn to understand and speak the language of the culture into which they are born… All of this is driven by their inborn instincts and drives, their innate playfulness and curiosity. Nature does not turn off this enormous desire and capacity to learn… We turn it off with our coercive system of schooling. The biggest, most enduring lesson of school is that learning is work, to be avoided when possible. (pp. x-xi)

Daniel Greenberg, the founder of Sudbury Valley School, suggested that students in traditional schools are “becoming ever more rebellious, uncooperative, depressed, escapist, and desperate” (2016, p. 29). John Taylor Gatto, before and after his career as a public high school teacher in New York City, wrote extensively about what he found to be the “secret” purposes of American schooling: “it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order” (1992/2017a, p. 105); and, “Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief” (p. 106). While it may be tempting for some to dismiss the strong viewpoints of seeming anti-(compulsory)-public school visionaries, it is important to note that these same or very similar sentiments have been expressed by scholars who advocate strongly for public schools yet critique institutional motivations and inner workings with equal poignancy (e.g., J. Banks, 2008/2014; Fine, 1991; Giroux, 1981; Greene, 1988; Hanson, 2009; hooks, 2010; Motha, 2014; McLaren, 1986/1999; Moll, 1992; Morrell, 2004; Nieto, 2002; L. Richardson, 1997; Sandoval, 2000). Schools intended to educate and liberate too often traumatize and even imprison (Fine, 1991; Mallet, 2015; McLaren, 1986/1999). Unmasking Trauma-Informed Pedagogies I am not among society’s oppressed peoples. I am privileged beyond measure. I am male, I am heterosexual, I am white, I am upper-middle class, I grew up in sunny Orange County, California in a beautiful ranch-style house with both parents and five siblings, I am able-bodied, I attended private Catholic schools, I played sports and took piano lessons, I am married, and I have raised a healthy family. Yet my life has not been without struggles and disappointments. I experienced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse both as a child and as an adult. I experienced divorce and parental alienation. I am not among the oppressed, but I can relate to trauma at some level. I have experienced abuse and injustice, and I, like my father, am ever the champion of the underdog. Empathy toward issues of social justice, civil rights, equity, oppression, abuse, and self-determination has come naturally for me. Although, I do not rest easily within political encampments: I am a proponent of human rights, personal liberties, open borders, defunding the police, setting the prisoners free, and deeply regulating the wealthy classes, but also of self-determination and choice in education, for parents and for students, and of the protection of the unborn.

Writing about our personal selves feels uncomfortable in an academic setting, even for adults (hooks, 2003). Some content in the paragraph above remains painful to me and writing about certain personal experiences or values even briefly in a document such as this fills me with hesitation and uneasiness. What happens when young students raise critical questions, write words, or discuss personal experiences in their own lives that are problematic, such as those involving violent or vulgar language, committed crimes, thoughts of suicide, traumatic experiences, family fights or custodial battles, or instances of sexual abuse? (Fine, 1991; McLaren, 1986/1999; Nieto, 2002). Dutro (2019) presented case studies and testimony encouraging children to bring all topics related to their lives into the literacy classroom. She discussed how we as educators and schools too often do not allow some topics, such as traumas and other lived experiences, to enter the classroom, deemed as "inappropriate" for school discussions or writing. This same concern has been expressed by some writers about critical pedagogy in music, such as songwriting (Biggs-El, 2012; Hess, 2017, 2019; Holoboff, 2015) and scholarship (Laes, 2016). Laes presented testimony in a self-reflexive study related to music education research, scholarship, and authorship, asking, for example, “How can one construct research that represents lived experiences and meaning of participants while also being theoretically informed?” (p. 7). According to Dutro (2019), literacy teachers (and by extension, music teachers, especially those who include literacy, such as songwriting and scholarly writing, in their curriculum) can lead the way in insisting on compassionate and critical approaches to trauma in schools. This work is both activist from the teacher perspective (taking action, insisting) and the student perspective (speaking up, voicing experiences, and experiencing freedom to choose).

The Dirt on Critical and Activist Music Pedagogies

Several writers voiced concerns, fears, and potential/hypothetical and experienced/actual problems with critical and activist music pedagogy. Hess (2017) discussed negative side effects to enactments of critical music pedagogy, especially situations that are not sufficiently thought through, and those that do not consider all students and all their needs. Hess (2018) further argued that what she calls revolutionary activist music education cannot be enacted truly and successfully in P-12 classrooms primarily because teachers are state actors and thus too limited in their ability to break rules and must conform or face consequences, and secondarily because children are both too vulnerable and constrained. Hess (2019) also discussed possible trouble with respect to risks of “hierarchization” (such as centering Western classical music), cultural appropriation, stereotyping, exoticization, trauma, and the risks of sharing lived experiences (especially children discussing their own experiences of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse that would require mandatory reporters to report to state agencies).

Ellsworth (1989) suggested that it is very difficult to enact critical pedagogy in classrooms. In her own practitioner experience she learned that there are many unforeseen problems, including that it is difficult to allow for unexpected things – things that do not go well, people that do not cooperate – and then when that happens, she suggested, we teachers tend to solve problems by exerting authority or ignoring the people or situations altogether. In this way, she believes we can do more harm than good to the students involved. hooks (2010) asserted that “most children are taught early on that thinking is dangerous” (p. 8), and that it takes time, effort, and engagement to restore a student’s “will to think” (p. 8.) and to express themselves.

Perrine (2019) expressed opposition toward critical/activist music pedagogy and described how he felt critical pedagogy as enacted by teachers toward social justice strips students and parents of their right to choose and to educate their children as they see fit. He voiced concerns that critical pedagogy is aimed by cultural/political progressives at indoctrinating students toward a particular (leftist) political agenda. While there can be merit to this argument in certain circumstances, it cannot be painted with a broad brush: education I agree with becomes “learning” and “knowledge,” whereas education I disagree with becomes “indoctrination.” Hess (2017, 2018, 2019) expressed a similar – but perhaps ideologically opposite – concern: that student autonomy, choice, freedom of expression, and activism opens the door for potential “micro-fascist” behaviors and content.

And There’s So Much More…

In this literature review I have thus far striven to “dig into” music education with an emphasis on critical, culturally responsive, and social justice pedagogies. The content and praxis that music teachers (and all teachers) must contend with today is voluminous – beyond even what I have discussed so far. As I write, I continue to wonder, how can a music teacher – or any teacher – absorb all there is to absorb, reflect upon all there is to reflect upon, redesign all there is to redesign, and then implement all there is to implement, related to their instructional work toward equity, inclusivity, and social justice? What of the music teacher who, after gaining new insights and resolving to make improvements, begins including more women composers in their repertoire selections, yet while so doing, retains audition procedures and other prerequisites that exclude youth with disabilities from participating in music, delivers failing grades to students who were unable to attend the concert performance due to transportation and other socioeconomic and resource limitations, requires gender-specific wardrobe that tends to embarrass and dehumanize one of their non-binary students, and charges materials, equipment, uniform, and field trip fees that disallow a further marginalized segment of the school population from joining their program?

VIGNETTE #5

The student played violin at a beginner level in middle school and really wants to join the high school orchestra, but the parent decides not to give approval after reading the documentation that was sent home with her child. In reading the pages of the letter of introduction, the program requirements, the syllabus, the handbook, and the various forms and permission slips, the parent decides that participation is not feasible due to the $600 per semester fee, the number of night time and weekend performances and travel requirements, the daily home practice requirement which includes weekly submission of videos to the teacher, the parent fundraising and volunteer hours responsibility, and the $2000 (“optional”) tour fee.

Though it is possible that most or all of these challenges could be overcome or mitigated, the parent is not aware of this, and even so, because she speaks Spanish with limited English, does not feel comfortable trying to talk with the orchestra teacher about it.

Many students are unable to participate in music education programs due to obstacles, hurdles, and hoops that are, or appear to be, too difficult to overcome, to climb, or to jump through. In some states such as California and others, laws have been passed (e.g., California Assembly Bill No. 1575 after Jane Doe and Jason Roe v. The State of California) that now restrict or preclude public schools from charging students fees for educational services or requiring families to purchase equipment to take a class, including, for example, musical instruments. Where applicable, this has had both positive and negative effects. In some cases, students who previously could not participate due to high costs now can participate. In other cases, music programs simply have been shut down (temporarily or permanently). In many schools, teachers, administrators, and parents have found workarounds, including, for example, shifting to “optional” afterschool programs and/or summertime field trips, and utilizing “separate” Internal Revenue Service designated non-profit “501(c)3” booster organizations, all of which have potential for avoiding the law or taking advantage of what I consider to be loopholes or unfair exceptions. Some argue this is not following the spirit of the law (my perspective), while others argue this is done to ensure more students can have meaningful musical and life experiences while in school (personal discussions with other teachers).

VIGNETTE #6

The student applies to the AP Music Theory elective but is rejected because they have not had prior music instruction on an instrument and cannot yet read music or pass the qualifying exam.

Students are shut out of music education opportunities because they have not attained a prerequisite level of music knowledge and skill – instruction which only could have been received through prior music education at their school or district (which likely they have not had because it was not provided or was not accessible), or private music lessons, which only the wealthier families can afford. This shutting out will filter up to college admissions, where it will be virtually impossible for most students to gain entrance into a music program without substantive prior music education experience and training. This training usually comes only from many years of private music lessons or schools with strong and inclusive multi-year music programs – which are rare, especially in lower socioeconomic communities.

VIGNETTE #7

The band student gets in trouble on the playground at recess. He’s been warned by a collaborative of adults – his home room teacher, his music teacher, his counselor, and his principal – that if his behavior and grades did not improve, he would lose his “privilege” to be in band. This behavior event is the last straw. He is removed from the music program.

In my experience, students are removed from music programs because of “poor” attendance, behavior, and grades or academic performance. Also, many music teachers have taken punitive action toward students who do not “adequately participate” in, or disrupt, music classes. These actions have ranged from giving out poor grades (which often inaccurately reflect attendance or behavior rather than academic achievement, learning, or mastery of skills), to kicking students out of class or even out of the music program completely. Some teachers and schools are thinking about, designing, and implementing restorative justice practices and more constructive formal behavioral programs such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). Restorative justice in schools constitutes an “innovative approach to both offending and challenging behavior which puts repairing harm done to relationships and people over and above the need for assigning blame and dispensing punishment” (Hopkins, 2002, p. 144). A frequent topic of discussion among music teachers that I personally experience is whether and how to include attendance, behavior, “participation,” organizational skills, and other non-academic conduct in grades. Many music teachers deduct “points” and lower grades for these things – some of which are outside of the student’s control; other teachers, myself included (in the apparent minority), believe that grades, if used, should reflect progress toward learning objectives, and not be dangled as disciplinary rewards and punishments.

Understanding (Music) Teaching: Realities and Potentialities

A brief article on the NAfME website, written by a music teacher (Reichl, 2019), lists 14 suggestions for music teachers as they pursue “Professionalism in Teaching:”

Be on time, Dress respectfully, Be positive, Never complain, Blame no one, Smile, Compliment, Ask for help, Listen with your eyes and ears, Proofread and obtain approval, Acknowledge others, Respect the tenured, Maintain your musicianship, Show gratitude. (Bulleted list)

While I agree that each of these suggestions is useful to some degree in some situations, perhaps in any professional position, the list reveals for me the general “staff-level,” compliance-oriented, subordinate perception of teachers in our culture, even among many teachers themselves. Despite the widespread belief that teachers are immeasurably important to the education of students, and that a single teacher can have an enormous positive impact on individual students, our national educational enterprise, however defined, views teachers primarily as technicians – “faithful implementers of received knowledge and curriculum, transmitters of subject matter, and producers of the nation’s workforce” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, pp. 1-2).

While less common, some state organizations and school districts are striving to elevate teachers and include them in decision-making activities and policy design. An example is the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY), who advocate for educator involvement in policy processes. The Teacherpreneur program being piloted by the Center for Teaching Quality lets teacher leaders spend part of the day in their own classroom and part of the day serving in teacher leader roles, including potentially working with policy agencies and/or departments of education. Lechleiter-Luke (2019) offered a list of suggestions for teacher professionals I found more encouraging. These included, for example,

Know in advance the positions of the policy maker(s) with whom you are meeting, Don’t wait to be invited to the table – reach out directly to state legislators, Tie your and your students’ needs to those of your target audience, Work to build on-going relationships, Offer to establish an educator advisory council… (p. 13)

As Lechleiter-Luke (2019) related, participation by teachers in policymaking is rare:

My selection as Wisconsin’s 2010 State Teacher of the Year opened my eyes to the lack of teacher input into education policy. It seemed as if the people with the most practical knowledge about education and teaching were being excluded from the decision-making process. (p. 12)

As students are included in, or excluded from, music classrooms, so teachers are included in, or excluded from, policy decisions and curriculum design. Worse, both students and teachers are at times abused, oppressed, marginalized, or made invisible. The powerful and influential, whether over students or teachers, operate within networks that “work to encourage and include some but discourage and exclude others” (Hanson, 2009, p. 1). Teachers are at the axis of a matrix: they exert power and influence over students, while higher-ups exert power and influence over them. Teachers exclude students from participating in music and classroom curriculum design while at the same time are excluded from participating in school curriculum design and district and state policymaking. Forms of resistance and empowerment are called for, both for students and teachers. Critical feminist and emancipatory pedagogies offer a potential line of attack. “Critical feminist theory calls on us to reconsider our existing understandings of knowledge, power, and spaces of empowerment” (de Saxe, 2012, p. 183) and do something. In my view, teachers are called upon to do something both on their own behalf as well as on behalf of their students.

Applying Critical Feminist and Emancipatory Pedagogies

Feminist thought places importance on lived experiences (McCann & Kim, 2003). When one’s lived experience is abusive, oppressive, marginalized, or made invisible, as may be the case for some students and some teachers, critical feminist and emancipatory pedagogies offer potential for oppositional resistance (de Saxe, 2012; Freire, 2000/1970; hooks, 1994, 2010; McLaren, 1986/1999; Sandoval, 2000). Wrenn (2021) describes pedagogy as “the live interaction of the humans with the content that creates a unique outcome for every learning experience” (p. 59). Feminist critical pedagogies lean toward interactions between the teacher(s), the student(s), and the knowledge co-constructed among them (Lusted, 1986 as cited in Lather, 1999), and strive to disrupt patterns of oppression (e.g., Sandoval,2000). hooks (2010) spoke of imagination as important to the learning processes and capacities for both children and adults, and to modes of resistance by oppressed and exploited people. She went further, writing, “In dominator culture the killing off of the imagination serves as a way to repress and contain everyone within the limits of the status quo” (hooks, 2010, p. 60). And Motha (2014) sought teacher-student collaboration and inquiry that is “truly dialogic, in which learning is a two-way street” (p. 151). While there are differences, likewise there are similarities between the ways children, youth, and adults optimally learn.

Adult Learning Theory and Practice

I was introduced to the concept of andragogy while studying for my CTE teaching credential. The term “andragogy” was popularized by Malcolm Knowles in the 1970s and 1980s and refers to styles of adult learning that were observed to be voluntary, self-directed, autonomous, and rooted in and drawn from their own experiences (Knowles, 1975, 1980a, 1980b). Andragogy was seen to be appropriate for adults, differentiated from pedagogy which was perhaps more appropriate for children and youth (Brookfield, 1983, 1986). According to this theory, adults naturally tend to seek knowledge and skills outside formal and academic learning environments – “on the job training,” for example. Adults tend to want to learn when the need to learn presents itself and tend to seek learning that results in immediate application (Knowles, 1975). Criticism of andragogy includes the difficulty in making tidy distinctions (Riley, 2012) between the ways adults versus children learn, as well as concerns over whether “self-direction can serve to reduce our common connections, interdependence and interests, justify an obsessive focus on the self, deny the validity of collective action, [and even] justify the abandonment of public education” (Brookfield, 1993, pp. 227-228). I challenge the notion that children do not benefit from self-directed and andragogic learning processes: mastering video games, for example, and/or finessing the organization, rules, procedures, and ongoing negotiations required for unsupervised (non-adult-directed) field sports and playground activities. Mezirow (1997) suggested that children and adolescents commonly gain the foundations for autonomous thinking in stages:

…the ability and disposition to (1) recognize cause-effect relationships, (2) use informal logic in making analogies and generalizations, (3) become aware of and control their own emotions, (4) become empathic of others, (5) use imagination to construct narratives, (6) think abstractly, (7) think hypothetically, and (8) become critically reflective of what they read, see, and hear. (p. 9)

In adulthood, the goals advance to becoming more aware and critical, more able to recognize frames of reference and paradigms, more able to pose and solve problems, and imagine alternatives, and more effective collaborators (p. 9).

Andragogic principles tie in nicely with critical feminist and Freirean emancipatory pedagogies, wherein adult students strive to learn literacy skills, for example, in order to reduce their own experience of oppression and to become more productive within their communities (C. Banks & Nafukho, 2008). Freire (1998/2001) envisaged that “it is with this autonomy, laboriously constructed, that freedom will gradually occupy those spaces previously inhabited by dependency” (p. 87). Green (2002) applied andragogic emancipatory pedagogies in a different but related way toward how many popular musicians learn: learning is highly enjoyable and voluntary, enhances self-esteem, can be sometimes motivated by “dreaming of stardom,” and emphasizes “empathetic relationships, involving cooperation, reliability, commitment, tolerance and shared tastes, along with shared passion for music” (p. 125). hooks (2003) distinguished between those students in academia who are not interested in learning, are fixated on obtaining a degree, and “want to know exactly what they must do to acquire a grade” (p. 130), and those students who “long to know, who have awakened to a passion for knowledge, and who [may be on a] journey to wholeness [that] stands as a challenge to the existing status quo” (p. 181). Gray (2013) applied andragogic emancipatory pedagogies to children, suggesting that three instinctive drives – curiosity, playfulness, and sociability – drive human beings to “learn what they must to become effective members of the culture around them and thereby to survive” (p. 114). Dewey (1897) believed that to prepare a child for a free and democratic future meant to “give him command of himself” (p. 78). Greene (1988), speaking and writing about Dewey and related ideas of freedom and social purpose in education, honored “opening public spaces where freedom is the mainspring, where people create themselves by acting in concert” (p. 134). Rudolf Steiner (1996), whose educational philosophies guide the international Steiner/Waldorf schools, also advocated for autonomy that leads toward emancipation in child learning: “If we are careful to allow a child’s innate interests to develop as far as possible, then that child retains a certain kind of mobility throughout life and retains the ability to adapt to new situations” (p. 106). Loris Malaguzzi, visionary founder of the Reggio Emilia schools, believed in the “inherent abilities and basic rights of children and adults, particularly with regard to their competence and right to actively construct relations, knowledge, feelings, and identity” (North American Reggio Emilia Alliance, 2021, n.p.). Maria Montessori, too, incorporated the principle of free choice in the education of children – the “spontaneous development of the mental, spiritual, and physical personality…” (Hainstock, 1986, pp. 78-79). She claimed that in this emancipatory environment disorderly students became orderly, “the passive became active, and the troublesome disturbing child became a help in the classroom” (Hainstock, 1986, p. 78). J. Banks (2008/2014) defined andragogic emancipatory pedagogies as “transformative citizenship education” (p. 74) through which students become socially committed, active citizens who deliberate, share power, and have the “skills needed to act to promote social justice and human rights within their local communities, nation, region, and global community” (p. 75).

Tensions exist between what might be considered andragogy in the real world versus andragogy in the classroom. For example, Daffron et al. (2008) claimed, “Mandated training creates challenges in creating motivation to learn because it is viewed as ‘must do’ rather than being self-directed by the learner” (p. 173). How can a teacher encourage self-direction in even adult students when required learning objectives, assessments, and hurried due dates drive curriculum and instruction? hooks (2010) reminded us that “we are not all equals in the classroom” (p. 114). Even when teachers want to empower students, hooks (2010) continued, they often find that “students who have been raised in dominator thinking are uncomfortable with any teacher who repudiates this paradigm and seeks to create mutuality in the classroom” (p. 114). Freire (1998/2001) directed educators and students to be “conversant with other forms of knowledge that are seldom part of the curriculum” (p. 58). J. Banks (2008/2014) reminded us that student academic achievement increases as teachers “make use of, and build upon, the knowledge, skills, and languages students acquire in the informal learning environments of their homes and communities” (p. 140) and referenced Moll et al.’s (1992) funds of knowledge approach to connecting homes and classrooms. This approach is among the theoretical frameworks that became important to me during my doctoral studies and has impacted my dissertation content and direction.

Funds of Knowledge

Funds of knowledge (FoK) as a theoretical framework was first applied by Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg (1992) to describe the historical accumulation of abilities, bodies of knowledge, assets, and cultural ways of interacting that were evident in U.S.-Mexican households in Tucson, Arizona. The skills and knowledge that have been historically and culturally developed to enable an individual or household to function within a given culture can be integrated into classroom activities to create a richer and more-highly scaffolded learning experience for students (Moll et al., 1992). The FoK framework maintains that households and communities contain ample cultural and cognitive resources with great potential utility in the classroom. By capitalizing on household and other community resources, the FoK framework strives to help teachers and students organize classroom instruction superior in quality to the “rote-like instruction” students are commonly experiencing in schools (Moll et al., 1992). Students are participants, not passive recipients, in acquiring knowledge. In line with this emancipatory thinking, Freire (1970/2018) stressed the importance of student involvement in their own education, hand in hand with the people’s involvement in their own liberation. Freire (1970/2018) advocated a coming to know of one’s “objective situation and their awareness of that situation” (p. 95), since In their political activity, the dominant elites utilize the banking concept to encourage passivity in the oppressed, corresponding with the latter’s submerged state of consciousness, and take advantage of that passivity to fill that consciousness with slogans which create even more fear of freedom… The starting point for organizing the program content of education or political action must be the present, existential, concrete situation, reflecting the aspirations of the people. (p. 95)

In the traditional contemporary classroom setting, the teacher wields and centers the power. In a classroom experience guided by the FoK framework and developed with critical awareness, perhaps students can become more empowered, self-directed, and engaged in their learning.

Moll et al. (1992) developed a collaborative project team consisting of educators and anthropologists and set out to study household and classroom practices within working class, Mexican communities. Their goal was to develop innovations in teaching that drew upon the knowledge and skills found in local households. The research team strove to establish “strategic connections” between classroom teachers and university researchers jointly investigating households, qualitatively, hoping that teachers would then develop ethnographically informed classroom practices. The household, community, and cultural capital they called funds of knowledge.

In the households, the teaching of the skills and knowledge was found to have characteristics typically not found in schools, including flexible, adaptive, active networks, involving multiple persons from outside the home who were part of the students’ social world and community (Moll et al., 1992). Relationships were “thick” and “multi-stranded,” meaning students had multiple relationships with the same person or with various persons. For example, “My uncle teaches me carpentry and also celebrates my birthday party and also organizes barbecues and also takes us fishing” (Moll et al., 1992, p. 133). “Teachers” in the home context knew the whole child, and those home teachers developed reciprocity, interdependence, and mutual trust in their long-term relationships. Students were participants, not passive recipients, in acquiring knowledge. From the study, teachers – who now could see beyond stereotypes and had a more sophisticated understanding of their students – made use of these funds of knowledge in their teaching by developing meaningful curriculum units that built on students’ cultures, experiences, skills, and knowledge capital. Assets-based learning is one of several variations on the FoK framework. Macias (2020) suggested that an “assets-based perspective on learning is in opposition to a deficits-based perspective on learning” (p. 25), and, inviting students, parents, and community members into the classroom to teach about their culture, traditions, and skills, “pushes against the historical bias found in Western education” (p. 25). One goal of assets-based learning is to integrate different types of skills, knowledge, and patterns of learning so that culturally and economically diverse students can “access and understand content knowledge on a personal and deeper level” (Macias, 2020, p. 26). Along these lines, Roe (2019) discussed “invitational education” (p. 5), which encourages teachers to be inviting to students, to help students feel that they belong in the classroom community, to help students feel that their outside interests and home life are valued in the classroom, and to engage students in sharing their outside activities with the classroom. Roe (2019) referred to this “reciprocal knowledge” (p. 5) – sitting within the FoK framework – as assets. Educators who intentionally invite students in this way can leverage student strengths and assets “to offset potential academic deficits by building relevance into the curriculum with themes drawn from the information and interests observed during the student’s home or a community visit” (Roe, 2019, p. 7).

Varga-Dobai (2018) expanded the FoK framework to include meaning-making, through an arts-based exploratory project called, “Remixing Selfies.” Students come to school not only with knowledge and skills they learn outside school, from being part of a family and a community, but also from the experience of schooling itself, as well as experiences with friends, peers, and interactions with popular culture. Varga-Dobai (2018) developed the “Cultural Selfie” as a class project for pre-service teachers to help teachers learn about FoK, intercultural awareness, meaning-making, and understanding of the “Self” (p. 119). This self was investigated by each teacher to reflect and share on self as part of family, self as part of community, self as a literacy person, and self as teacher, and their funds of knowledge and meaning-making within each of these self-categories.

Chesworth (2016) studied funds of knowledge with respect to children’s interests and how they relate to play in the social environment of the classroom. This research showed how children co-construct meaning with others – parents, family, friends, teachers, and classmates. Chesworth (2016) also discovered ways in which funds of knowledge contributed to the “interplay of power, agency, and status within peer cultures” (p. 294). Students who shared an experience at home, for example, and then played at school with each other, often became the dominant players who controlled the game and decided who among the other students would be included or excluded, and what the rules would be. How children’s interests developed at home was also explored – often children’s parents play an important role in how their young interests develop. Also, teachers were seen to misinterpret children’s interests, as in perceiving an interest (superficially) in Play-Doh (the material) when the interest was really in baking (and the Play-Doh was simply the best vehicle for expression that was available).

Llopart and Esteban-Guitart (2018) offered a definition of the purpose of the FoK framework: “To improve academic performance, to improve relations between teachers and students, and to carry out curricular and instructional innovations in the classroom” (p. 148). These authors also considered the learner as the core of educational activities and reflected on expanded FoK themes such as student’s interests, funds of identity, social worlds, and social transformation, and suggested, “Through this process of recognition and validation, school curricula can be adapted to these realities which are used as scaffolding material in the act of teaching and learning” (p. 156). Cruz et al. (2018) proposed the incorporation of funds of knowledge with “social capital,” focusing on promoting environmental behavior. Rodríguez and Salinas (2019) investigated and discussed “difficult” funds of knowledge in the teaching of immigration. Difficult knowledge was described as “the study of experiences and traumatic residuals of genocide, ethnic hatred, aggression, and forms of state-sanctioned social violence” (p. 137). Zapata (2020) wrote of her experiences implementing a critical translingual framework in her elementary language arts classroom, striving to “decenter and resist dominant deficit perspectives too often imposed on racially and linguistically minoritized students” (p. 385).

The goal of the FoK framework, as with critical pedagogies, includes striving to help improve access and learning for minority, marginalized, or “disadvantaged” youth, and to turn perceived student “deficits” into assets. My claim is that funds of knowledge through a critical lens can be applied to any minority, marginalized, or “disadvantaged” person, including teachers. Youth and students are marginalized in their relationship to what stands above them: teachers, administrators, and governments. Teachers also are marginalized in their relationship to what stands above them: administrators, governments, and academia. Using the FoK framework with shifting power dynamics and relationships could potentially provide opportunities for teachers to develop curriculum and learning opportunities that builds on students’ funds of knowledge, engages these students, turns perceived deficits into assets (e.g., Bomer, 2021), reconfigures power dynamics and relationships, and results in a discovery of learning that is welcomed, enjoyed, meaningful, relevant, and ultimately successful. And, using the FoK framework and assets-based view toward teachers could be part of reimagining the inner workings of schools, the role of teachers, and the entire teaching profession.

Reimagining Teachers and Teaching

As a schoolteacher, I have frequently found myself in the uncomfortable position of having to teach using curriculum, pedagogies, and strategies that I felt were inappropriate, ineffective or even harmful. This is not to say that I did not have some freedom in the way I ran my music programs – in fact, music teachers, along with other “specials” and “electives,” often have more flexibility in program and practice than “core subject” teachers, who are subject to more narrowly-defined content standards and regulated assessments. Nevertheless, much of what I have been required to do as a teacher has been defined by others, and many conditions have been imposed by district and school administrators, longstanding traditions, policies, availability of resources, and budgets. In all cases I felt – knew – that if I could do things the way I believed they should be done, students would benefit. In some cases, I was successful in pressing for sometimes mild, sometimes striking changes and improvements; in other cases, I was unable to make inroads at all and received aggressive and even threatening pushback from various supervisors, VIPs, and gatekeepers.

Inquiry as Stance

During my post baccalaureate programs I became aware of the tremendous and voluminous availability of published knowledge that is available to teachers. Available yet undiscovered, untapped, and inaccessible.

In a relatively recent Facebook post I wrote:

There exists a wealth of scholarship within the halls and libraries of academia that could be of tremendous use and value to educators on the ground. But like Reaganomics, well-intentioned or not, this abundance and wealth does not trickle down as many (who are even aware of its existence) might wish or hope for. There is simply no time. As long as teachers are teaching all the minutes of every workday and focused on all the priorities we currently set for them, there is no time for sufficient immersion in useful scholarship. (Frayne, July 24, 2021)

It was, in part, Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (2009) work in inquiry as stance that opened my eyes to the reality that the knowledge needed by teachers – and available to them – would in fact seldom reach their hands. It was a sinking feeling that accompanied my growing curiosity and realization of how scholarship circles above, around, and within academia, passes outward through elite and high-cost publishers and think tanks, and comes down to teachers not as internalized knowledge but as external policy mandates. And poignantly, the question – and possibility – was raised: Should not teachers, in fact, be participating in generating this knowledge themselves, to begin with? If teachers are important (likely the most important) actors in a student’s education, why are they not important actors in creating scholarship about teaching?

Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) advocated that “Recognizing that teachers and other practitioners are critical to the success of all efforts to improve education is clearly an idea whose time has come – or should have come long ago” (p. 1). Freeman (1998) argued that teachers should not only be consumers of knowledge but also producers of knowledge, and further, perhaps, “transformers” (p. 10) of knowledge. It is fascinating to compare how knowledge is generated, evolves, is communicated, and is practiced in other scientific disciplines and communities. Freeman (1998) suggested that there is, as yet, no publicly recognized ‘discipline’ of teaching, and that an important building block of a scientific discipline and community is research. This begs that further question: if teachers already do not have time and resources to avail themselves of existing scholarship, how will they ever have time and resources to conduct research and generate scholarship? Steiner (1928, 1996) went further to include teachers even in the running of schools, recommending that a “college of teachers,” rather than a principal or headmaster, govern each school. I add that teachers should be directly involved in the full range of educational practice, including policymaking, curriculum development, and school governance. But how? And when?

We in education often speak in terms of professional development – which for many teachers simply means training on school and district policies, procedural updates, curriculum changes and mandates, and instructions for the “latest new thing.” Sometimes for the most fortunate it means useful learning. But what we perhaps should think more about, along the lines of Freeman (1998) and Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009), is the development of the profession – and teachers should be primary participants in and drivers of that development. An inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) perspective proposes, and I strive to underscore in my work, that we need to rethink – expand – the role of teachers. Not by giving them more work to do, but by lightening their teaching load so that they can have time to re-professionalize their profession. We need to reverse the current trend of deskilling teachers and diminishing their value, real and perceived, and go solidly and much further in the other direction.

Ducasse, a Franco-Brazilian teacher-researcher, (as cited in Freeman, 1998) revealed: “The Egyptologist needs a pyramid or an ancient tomb thousands of miles away to carry out his research. But I can do it every day, the whole year round, right here in my own classroom” (p. 17). How might the teaching profession be influenced in fruitful directions if teachers taught, say, 4 hours per day, and had the other 4 hours available for learning, research and development, co-creating knowledge and scholarship, curriculum design, policymaking, and governance?

Reflecting on Teaching Practice: What Kind of Teacher Am I?

Throughout my teacher education, from bachelor’s degree to credential program to induction program to master’s degree to doctoral program, I have been asked to think about and write about my teaching philosophy. Self-reflection, what Senge (1990/2006) links to critical thinking, what hooks (2010) and others value as part of a transformational feedback loop, and what Heifetz et al. (2009) invoke as going “on the balcony” has played an important role in my growth as a teacher and as a person, and will play an important role in this study – for myself and my study participants. What kind of teacher am I? What kind of teacher do I want to be?

As part of my master’s program, I studied “three approaches” to teaching (Fenstermacher & Soltis, 2009), and came away believing that all three were necessary: “the executive approach, the facilitator approach, and the liberationist approach” (p. 5). Music education covers a breadth and depth of topics and activities, strives toward multiple and varied objectives, and requires a wide range of teaching styles and methods. Music requires the understanding of complex concepts, ranging from theories of harmony and composition to the physics of sound and the workings of delicate functions of human physical anatomy. Music requires the development and mastery of skills that can take years of careful practice, study, and persistence. Music requires on-stage performance and the overcoming of psychological and physical obstacles. Music requires organization, planning, administrative, financial, and interpersonal skills in the production of concerts, recitals, festivals, competitions, halftime shows, parades, and fundraising efforts. Music requires the understanding of history, cultures, religions, traditions, and current trends. And music involves technical prowess in fields including sound design, lighting design, multimedia design, recording and computer technology, and software engineering. Delivering quality music education requires not only skilled teaching, but also effective leadership.

Fenstermacher and Soltis (2009) applied what they call their “MAKER framework” (p. 7) to compare/contrast self-reflective activities for teachers, consisting of five core elements described as Method, Awareness of students, Knowledge of the content, Ends that describe the purposes and ideals for teaching, and the Relationship that exists between teacher and students. I suggest that teaching music involves a sixth aspect of teaching that is not considered in this framework, and that is “Teacher performance and career path.” Music teachers perform with students and are judged by their own performances as well as by the performances of their students. When a student choir or band is performing, the teacher-director-conductor is typically performing on stage with them: conducting is performing. Teacher-performers must practice their craft diligently, and they often use their students/ensembles to improve their own skills, to increase their own prestige in the community, and to advance their own careers. Schools win competitions, perform at desirable venues, such as Disneyland or Carnegie Hall, tour around the country and the world, make recordings for commercial resale, and we teachers are performing, winning, and losing right alongside our ensembles. As teacher-performers, there are goals and relationships that result – some that may be questionable – and should be explored more deeply.

VIGNETTE #8

The teacher’s long-term goal is to become a tenured music professor at a prestigious university. He is determined first to gain experience at every level of education in music, beginning with elementary school, then middle school, then high school, and then college or university.

And so, he begins his journey: first as an elementary general music teacher. Every few years, he applies for a new job at a higher level – next as a middle school choir and band teacher, and finally as a high school choir teacher. In each position, he strives to be a good teacher, to learn a lot, and to become established in the local community and well-known as an active member of the national community of choral directors. He participates in festivals, competitions, community events, and conferences. And then he leaves.

At each level, his student ensembles earn him prestige as he perfects his craft at teaching, conducting, and program leadership. Now, he has achieved his goal. He has left his final high school position to accept a professorship at a university.

Looking back, the teacher acknowledges that in some ways, he used his students as tools and/or steppingstones to further his career. He wonders about the ethics involved, and whether he would have made different decisions in his teaching if his sole focus was on student learning rather than career enhancement and personal growth.

Professional ethics, according to my view, refer to challenging decisions made by music teachers – even with good intentions – to use students as steppingstones for career advancement, and tools for self-promotion, professional prestige, and personal development. Is there a conflict of interest embedded into these circumstances? On the path toward teacher job satisfaction and self-fulfillment, what decisions that impact students are being made along the way? Whose interests receive priority? Will music teachers implement social justice pedagogies that may to some degree sacrifice their own goals and ambitions in order to most benefit the most students?

Like coaches of a football team, music teachers are executives – leaders. Music teachers must drill students in a highly regulated manner in order to achieve the level of perfection required for high-level traditional performance. Directors, conductors, drum majors, and choreographers work tirelessly to “clean” music, movement, and diction. At the other end of the spectrum, I teach courses and direct ensembles in popular music, rock & roll, and jazz. These styles of music are different and require very different approaches. Students set their own goals, determine what instruments and styles of music they want to play, develop their own strategies for learning and preparing the music. The level of “perfection” attained is driven by personal desire. My role as teacher and leader in this case is clearly more as the facilitator.

A music teacher-leader, to be effective, must care deeply for their students (e.g., Freire, 1970/2018; hooks, 2003; Steiner, 1947, 1972, 1996). Students involved in performing, composing, or recording music are opening themselves up to public scrutiny in very personal ways. Music teacher-leaders must create safe, supportive, highly tolerant environments for students to feel ready to take risks, be creative, and make themselves vulnerable in front of others. We ensure our music rooms are places students can come any time and hang out, practice, talk, play, or work. For some students, the music classroom is one of the few places they feel they can be themselves. Music may be the only reason some “at-risk” students stay in school. So, music is a subject that can be an optimal setting for the liberationist approach. Music has served society over the centuries as an “elegant ideal” for humankind to strive toward, and it also can be a leveler of socioeconomic differences. Scott Joplin, an underprivileged African American composer at the turn of the 20th century, made history with the popularization of ragtime music (Blesh, 1971). Potentially obscure musicians in today’s world have broken socioeconomic and societal barriers with the invention of new styles of popular music ranging from funk and jazz to rap and hip hop. As a music teacher-leader, I found myself striving to use the liberationist approach to teaching music to help students discover and unleash their own potential to not only create music but redefine it in new ways for new audiences and new generations. There is an element of social justice in this approach to teaching, in striving to eliminate barriers to entry and participation and invention, and thus I feel there is a need for emancipatory teaching as well. As a teacher I find myself in the position of “information authority” in the classroom or with an individual student, and that my students view me, as their teacher, as an information source. Over time I have come to recognize even more the value that information has, and how access and representation – or lack thereof – can impact, and change, perspectives.

Envisioning Transformation: What Kind of Teacher Do I Want to Be?

VIGNETTE #9

Part of the fun of garage sales can be the haggling over the price of an item. On the other hand, when you're selling something of value, it can be off-putting when someone tries to talk you down too low. As a young adult living in Los Angeles, I hosted a garage sale with friends and roommates. A man approached me with a small telescope he found in the pile, and asked, “How much?” I didn't remember where the telescope came from and it seemed to be just a toy, so I asked for twenty-five cents. “You can have it for a quarter,” I smiled. The man smiled back and said, "Thank you. But I think this telescope is worth a little more than that. I'll give you two dollars." And he did.

In that moment, I more than learned something. That encounter had a profound impact on me at the soul level that would change my outlook for a lifetime. I was transformed: that was the kind of person I wanted to be.

Riley’s (2012) dissertation nudged me toward thinking about transformation in teaching. Riley (2012) employed the phrase, “coming to see differently” (p. 16), which to me conveys something different and more profound than what we typically ascribe to “learning,” “training,” “credentialing,” and “professional development.” As a practicing teacher, I participated in professional development activities and events that helped me to hone my conducting skills or that offered me ideas for improving my sequencing of instruction when teaching the recorder or flute. Some of these were revelations, for example, when watching inspiring classroom management techniques employed by a particularly loving, thoughtful, and experienced teacher. But have I ever experienced transformation? Possibly, for example, when I first came truly to understand the harm being inflicted upon certain children by punitive policies that unfairly excluded them from participating in, among other things, music. Possibly, also, when I first came to truly understand the harm being inflicted upon certain children through the dishonest, demeaning, and dehumanizing portrayals of people like them in our music textbooks and anthologies. And possibly, when listening to others’ stories and reflecting on the term, “illegals,” and how that designation has been negatively impacting some children and families, and thus finally changing my outlook. On these occasions, I did not learn a new skill, per se, but rather, I learned and/or experienced things that changed my way of thinking, that made me come to see differently, and then led me to change my teaching practice in significant ways – transform them, perhaps, at the level of a personal paradigm shift.

Mezirow and Associates (1990) spoke in terms of new or revised interpretations. Steiner (1916/2011) stressed the importance of being open to the possibility of position, perspective, and policy reversal, based on a steady influx of new information and experiences. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) encouraged challenging assumptions, posing new questions, reforming conceptual frameworks, and shifting visions. Freire (1998/2001) offered insight into “unarmed” curiosity – human curiosity as “restless questioning, as movement toward the realization of something hidden” (p. 37), and as a “permanent process of social and historical construction and reconstruction” (p. 38). J. Banks (2008/2014) sought transformation as changes in “canon, paradigms, and basic assumptions” (p. 55). hooks (2010) sought “shifts in consciousness” (p. 61) and creating spaces for transformation in classrooms through a “posture of openness, with an unfettered imagination in what can be” (p. 62). Nieto (2002) believed that teachers must “face and accept their own identities” (p. 215) and “confront their privilege” (p. 216) in order to go through potentially painful yet life-changing, transformational processes. Nieto (2002) suggested that “a journey always presupposes that the traveler will change along the way” (p. 214). Hess (2019) offered ideas for “intentional movement toward transformation" (p. 90), providing students with a means “to consider and identify the conditions that affect them and to potentially imagine a different way forward” (p. 90). Senge (1990/2006) illustrated examples of “transformative relationships” (p. 264), through which participants come to realize that “a problem is not just one person’s problem, but everyone’s problem” (p. 266). Giroux (1981) asked us to recognize that transformation is difficult and requires an “indictment whose central message is that things must change” (p. 109). And L. Richardson (1997) elucidated the “transformative possibilities of the collective story” (p. 33), uplifting the voices of silenced or marginalized groups of people to the point individuals are transformed by the realization that “That’s my story. I am not alone” (p. 33).

Like Riley (2012), my dissertation centers transformative learning, with an initial emphasis on music education, among music teachers. Several research studies touch on this experience of transformation of music teachers. For example, Kerchner (2006) investigated the “cognitive and social transformation” – what she termed “metamorphosis” (p. 7) – of female music education students. The results of these investigations found that many music students began their higher education as performance majors – often responding to lifelong praise and encouragement to become musical performers – but then transformed themselves at some later point into becoming music educators, possibly due to new feedback. For example, perhaps they gradually came to realize that there are many music performers of equal or much greater talent and ability. Deszpot’s (2017) work evolved from a perceived need to “re-imagine education” (p. 1) and strove to understand whether and how a specific set of pedagogical strategies (in this case Kodas, a derivation of Kodály) might have transformational power, or incite “pedagogic metamorphosis” (p. 4). Chadwick’s (2015) work in Botswana’s music classrooms explored action research among music teachers that resulted in the potential for a change in teachers’ views of their work and in their approaches to teaching. Allsup (2003), in striving toward using music education in ways that transform students, related aspects of his own transformation as a teacher, for example, in coming to realize that both text and instruction are cultural constructs, and the ‘study of perfection’ is an ideal that rarely succeeds when handed down. By trying to create transformative experiences for my students, I probably obstructed the possibility of real dialogue or the kind of inter-cultural exchange that makes the separation between so-called artistic quality and cultural ownership in schools superfluous. (p. 7) And Jorgensen and Yob (2019) wrote of potentials for teacher transformation through a consideration of metaphors for music teaching – the “master-apprentice” (p. 25), the “steward” (p. 28), transformation or “becoming something different” (p. 30), and the “ripple effect” (p. 32).

The authors tell a story of a music educator and her students in which a major shift occurred:

Working cooperatively and actually accomplishing something they could be proud of for the first time in their lives built a sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy and a taste for success that is transforming their lives, and its transformative impact seems to know no boundaries” (Jorgensen & Yob, 2019, p. 33).

Upitis et al. (1999) conducted research into professional development in the arts, highlighting the potentials for teacher transformation and “expansion” (p. 25) in both external learning environments, such as summer institutes at performing arts organizations, and internal, local, school-based learning projects. Their research examined “how teachers’ practices change as their knowledge, images and beliefs change, rather than how practices change in response to pedagogical training or imposed curriculum guidelines” (p. 26). This research parallels my goal to learn more about teachers’ transformative learning relative to social justice matters in music teaching rather than simply acquiring more knowledge or improving technical skill related to music performance and/or music teaching, although they focused on arts advocacy more generally rather than specifically social justice concerns. The authors claimed that “in order for any professional development programme to have sustainable results, teachers must show evidence of all three levels of transformation” (Upitis et al., 1999, p. 27). These three levels indicate the conditions for and the degree to which transformation will be sustained, from “insufficient but necessary” to “potential” to “operationalized, long-term” (p. 27). In my own experience, and from discussions with other teachers, I agree that much professional development engaged in by teachers, which often takes place over relatively short periods of time (a few hours or a few days) does not rise to the level of sustained change. It is over time that real change occurs, where images and beliefs grow and change, and where life practices are altered as a result. (Upitis et al., 1999, p. 27)

Toward Creating a Practitioner Inquiry Community

In my career of music teaching and learning, I have encountered and/or participated in practitioner inquiry (-like) communities, or communities of practitioners that incorporate some elements of a practitioner inquiry community. Examples include professional associations, school and district “professional learning communities” (PLC), and Facebook groups. Professional associations I have participated in include the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), the Southern California School Band & Orchestra Association (SCSBOA), the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC), and the Stanislaus County Music Educators (SMEA). Inquiry and learning arose out of organization membership, conferences, seminars, programs, meetings, lectures, presentations, and networking (informal discussions). These events and activities facilitated learning from other teachers and directors, discussing problems and solutions, expanding knowledge and skills, reading new literature, observing others in action (both experts and other learners). These communities have been very useful throughout my career – spaces where I learned from other practitioners and brought new ideas back to my classrooms.

PLCs have been a mixed bag. In Ceres Unified School District (CUSD), our district’s music teacher PLC was strongly supported by district administration and proved fruitful. We met frequently and discussed topics including teaching strategies and concert performance practices. We also planned districtwide music activities including festivals, multi-school concert performances, and other collaborative projects. In Menifee Unified School District (MUSD), our district’s music teacher PLC was less hospitable and, in many ways, more for show – we held mandatory meetings and did some planning but often simply passed the time to fulfill the requirement. Things were done the way they were done for decades, and new voices or ideas were mostly unwelcome. At other times the PLC time was used by district administration to pass along new policies, for employee “onboarding,” or to offer teacher training on topics such as technology, PBIS, SEL, or safety.

Facebook groups have been important to me as a learner, a teacher, and a researcher. I am a member of dozens of professional/teacher Facebook groups, including some that have thousands and even tens of thousands of members.

Examples include:

• Band Directors Group

• I’m a Choir Director

• The Art of Piano Pedagogy

• Piano Teacher Central

• Professional Voice Teachers

• Elementary Music Teachers

• Decolonizing the Music Room

• Social Justice Music Educators (a group I founded)

• Progressive Educators Group

• Badass Teachers Association of California

• Private School Teacher

• Waldorf Parenting and Education

• Montessori Homeschooling

• Homeschooling in Southern California

• Teachers Throwing Out Grades

• The Principal’s Desk

• K-12 Bilingual and ESL Teachers

• Special Needs Parents Support & Discussion Group

…and many others. These groups are valuable for teachers with questions, offering advice and suggestions, learning about new resources, and for general discussion. Topics span the full range of possibilities and levels of granularity, from how to improve classroom management, to how to handle an abusive administrator, to how to help a student with dyslexia, to how to migrate away from gender-specific concert attire, to performance repertoire suggestions, to questions about cultural appropriation or lack of ethnic representation, to how to communicate with parents, to how to prepare a concert program, and everything else imaginable. I participate regularly both as one who asks questions and seeks ideas, and one who answers questions and offers suggestions about potential resources and solutions.

Discussions that focus on social justice topics can become informative and helpful, and they can also devolve into bickering and fighting. Harsh words are frequently exchanged between teachers with strong opinions on both sides of a debate, and participants are sometimes removed from groups punitively for using abrasive or unkind words toward others. I have seen and experienced name-calling, bullying, and doxing. I have witnessed cases where teachers have discussed personal and sensitive situations or opinions in a group, and then another teacher reported the sharer to their school or district administration, with unpleasant consequences for the original poster. There are strong feelings from different perspectives on whether this kind of reporting can be justified or is always wrong. A consequence of this threat is that many teachers who may have valuable insights or viewpoints remain silent observers rather than active participants.

Each of these types of professional groups offers the potential for transformation. I have experienced the delight of a new idea that completely changed my way of thinking about a topic, or that significantly improved my curriculum or pedagogy. I have listened to and read stories of other teachers who came to see things differently or dramatically altered their approach to teaching. I have participated in online discussions that led to “Aha!” moments for myself and other teachers. For the purposes of my dissertation, I strove to intentionally assemble a teacher inquiry community for the purpose of studying the work of music teachers – what happens and how it happens – with respect to social justice pedagogies: from questioning, to researching, to doing something, to reflecting upon, to transforming.

The Current and Changing State of Things

I navigated my doctoral journey during disruptive and trying times. The COVID-19 pandemic turned the world and everything in it – including education – upside down and has fundamentally changed how many people live their lives. The police-shooting death of George Floyd followed by massive uprisings, protests, counterprotests, difficult conversations, and revitalized activism around structural racism has hardened some and transformed others. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and “defund the police” gained traction as well as severe opposition, and discussions about teaching critical race theory in schools have escalated and reverberated as states and schoolboards debate positions and policies and pass laws. The “great quit,” during which teachers are leaving the teaching profession in greater numbers than other professions (Dill, 2022), often changing careers out of dissatisfaction, likely has not fully played out and its long-term impact is unknown. Homeschooling and other alternative schooling arrangements have been on the rise, and especially increasing since the start of the pandemic (Eggleston & Fields, 2021), including blended online/face-to-face instruction and partnerships between public and private entities. Teachers, students, and parents in some school districts and policymakers at various levels of state and federal government continue to push back against standardized testing (Jacobs, 2021). We have the potential today to rethink “business as usual,” and strive, as a society, to come to see things differently, and to consider the possibility of transformation and even paradigm shifts, involving not only music teachers but all teachers, and not only music education but all education. These possibilities reflect my study’s interest in anti-oppressive and emancipatory education, practitioner communities and inquiry as stance, and theory of change.

Permeating Our Work with Reverence, Gratitude, and Love

Although reverence, gratitude, and love are not explicitly a part of my research study or dissertation, I desire to write briefly about the importance of these three states of mind, soul, and spirit with respect to my project and my work. It is not enough that the social sciences and in particular education be approached intellectually. All teaching, all work in education, and all work in educational research and scholarship, in addition to all the academic and ethical concerns, must be permeated with reverence, gratitude, and love. Reverence for knowledge, for the sources of knowledge, for the masters from whom we learn, and for the human beings who we teach. Gratitude for those who have handed us down insights, ideas, and wisdom, who have provided us opportunities, who have inspired and supported us, who have taught us and mentored us, who have lifted us up after failures and who have celebrated our successes. Love, especially for our students, and for our students’ families, for our partners and collaborators and research participants, and for the members of the communities in which we serve and benefit from. For me, reverence, gratitude, and love form a most essential foundation for learning, and provide the very core necessary for transformation.

“I pluck golden fruit from rare meetings with wise men.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Writings

I find support for my beliefs from some of my most important, longstanding, and newly discovered teachers, authors, and mentors, and the following discussion and citations will provide the closing for my Chapter 2: Journey through Literature, Learning, and Life.

Reverence

Steiner (1947) discussed the importance of a disposition of “child-like reverence” in learning, and a “veneration for truth and knowledge” (pp. 5-6). hooks (2003) related the sacred to connection, and admonished students and teachers who erroneously believe that “if the heart is closed, the mind will open even wider” (p. 181); conversely, she taught that “it is the failure to achieve harmony of mind, body, and spirit that has furthered anti-intellectualism in our culture and made our schools into mere factories” (p. 181). Alling (1974) related inspiration to a spiritual experience and promoted the benefits of inspiring enthusiasm and devotion in students through “greater use of our intuitive and creative powers” (p. 120). Freire (1998/2001) associated respect of students with genuine humility of teachers, asking us not to be afraid of “revealing our own ignorance” (p. 65). Perhaps we can interpret the phrase, enter the kingdom of God as a metaphor for gaining knowledge and wisdom when we contemplate the words: “I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God” (New American Bible, 1971, Matthew 18:3). As a student might stand in awe of their amazing teacher, a teacher should stand in awe of their every student.

As we face the growing child living into life, we are overcome by the feeling that before us stands as a sacred riddle. If we work with the child, we must seek to solve that riddle with a deep sense of reverence. We feel in that growing soul something different from everything we see. We feel that something unknown lives in the developing human being, and that feeling is correct. Our modesty and reverence cannot be great enough when we face the task of educating the child. Our humility before that being who presents us with a new riddle to solve can also not be great enough. (Steiner, 1996, p. 72)

Gratitude

Seligman (2011) taught that gratitude strengthens our relationships with others and over time will change our lives for the better. Thich Nhat Hanh, who hooks (2003) referred to as one of her spiritual teachers, wrote of miracles of mindfulness, one of which I interpret to be gratitude: “Nourish the object of your attention; with mindfulness, your attention will water the wilting flower” (1999, p. 65). Our family psychologist, Dr. Richard Landis, spoke of the healing powers of gratitude (personal communications, over the period 2000-2010), as did Rev. Craig M. Butters, a Catholic parish pastor and counselor who helped me through my divorce (personal communications, over the period 2006-2007). In education and the teaching profession, there is so much to be critical of, frustrated with, exhausted from, and angry at; we, both as teachers and as learners, must counterbalance our criticism and dissatisfaction with appreciation and gratitude. Gratitude has been shown to be a powerful predictor of psychological well-being, and gratitude interventions can be effective in improving well-being (Kardas et al., 2019). As teachers we should be an example for our students, since “promoting a grateful orientation towards life can go a long way in terms of inducing the occurrence of cascading effects on adaptive school outcomes that can help learners to flourish” (Caleon et al., 2019, p. 310).

Love

Lewis et al. (2001) said, “Love makes us who we are, and who we can become” (p. viii). I believe the first prerequisite to good teaching is love for our students. Without love, we cannot teach, nor can we learn, in a healthy, moral, and beneficial manner. Others agree: “The origin of knowledge is love” (P. Palmer, 1993, p. 63), and the passion and inspiration to teach has to be “fundamentally rooted in a love for ideas” (hooks, 1994, p. 195), and for students (Heydebrand, 1925/2021). Heydebrand expanded, saying, “The fruit of this knowledge [of the human being] is the love that binds the teacher’s and the child’s soul to each other. Then rules become insights and duties become deeds of love” (p. 13). And hooks (2003) added, “Without love, in fact, we should not teach at all; for where there is not love, there is domination” (p. 128). Freire (1970/2018) concurred:

Dialogue cannot exist in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and recreation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation for dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause – the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made possible. If I do not love the world – if I do not love life – if I do not love people – I cannot enter into dialogue. (pp. 89-90)

Mahatma Gandhi advocated that “all our activities of agriculture, education, medicine, arts and crafts should emerge from the foundation of love” (as cited in Kumar, 2019). And Steiner (1972) taught that “the seed of love is planted into the innermost core of human nature” (p. 364), and, It is the mystery of all evolution into the future that knowledge and all that the human being does through a true understanding of evolution is sowing a seed that must ripen as love, and the greater the force of love coming into being, the greater will be the accomplishments of creative force in the future. (p. 364)

“All education is political,” claimed Freire (1970/2018), famously. And in schools, perhaps unfortunately, even love is political, and can make both students and teachers uncomfortable and vulnerable. Yet there are benefits to explore. Dutro (2019) highlighted how although addressing trauma in schools is “always both personal and political” (p. 108), yet centering joy amidst trauma can help form connections and increase capacities for empathy and compassion in “loving, relational, and humanizing classrooms” (pp. 108-109). hooks (1994, 2003, 2010) frequently related her struggles and triumphs while engaging with love in her teaching, saying, “Love in the classroom creates a foundation for learning that embraces and empowers everyone” (2010, p. 159). Despite critics who are cynical about love, hooks (2010) trusted that “love’s place in the classroom is assured when there is any passionate pursuit of knowledge” (p. 160).

I close this chapter with a few more words from hooks (2003):

Love in the classroom prepares teachers and students to open our minds and hearts. It is the foundation on which every learning community can be created. Teachers need not fear that practicing love in the classroom will lead to favoritism. Love will always move us away from domination in all its forms. Love will always challenge and change us. This is the heart of the matter. (p. 137)