Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy in the Music Classroom: Supporting the Development of
Cultural Competence and Sociopolitical Consciousness in Future Music Educators
Ruth
E. Gurgel, Kansas State University
Brigetta F. Miller, Lawrence University
brigetta.f.miller@lawrence.edu
Music
classrooms in the United States experience disproportionately higher retention
rates for students from upper socio-economic backgrounds, students who are
white, and students whose parents have some years of college education (Elpus & Abril, 2011;
Lundquist, 2002). If these
statistics demonstrate that music education is not serving all students well,
how can teacher educators prepare their teacher candidates to reverse this
trend, especially given that these teacher candidates were often successful in
current school music models? Culturally Relevant Pedagogy has been shown to
support academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical
consciousness in K-12 students in multiple academic subject areas, and this
presentation explores the application of CRP in music education.
Ladson-Billings
(1994) defines Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) as a theory that includes 6
prongs: 3 pedagogical and 3 ideological.
Woven throughout this presentation will be examples of historically
rooted pedagogies in music education and how they can work against CRP in
today's classrooms. One of the presenters, a music educator who is a member of
the Stockbridge-Munsee (Mohican) tribe, will share connections from her work in
both K-12 and undergraduate music education.
This
presentation will focus specifically on interviews with 7th grade music
students from within a pluralistic music classroom. The presenters will compare
the music students' perspectives with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, identifying
points of congruence. The 7th grade students self-identify in 4 racialized groups and sound bytes of their interviews will
be played. The presenters will discuss how the students' ideas can be used to
support and encourage cultural competence and sociopolitical competence in
future music educators. The presenters will share global immersion experiences
for undergraduate music education students as well as reflective activities and
action-based strategies for use in student teaching. Topics covered include:
body comportment in music classrooms, competitive vs. collaborative structures,
musical achievement, popular music paradigms, and "world music."
This
presentation will conclude by evaluating resources and strategies to bring
Native American music into the classroom. The presenters will share authentic
recordings, not yet published musical transcriptions of tribally specific
lullabies and developmentally appropriate pedagogical practices designed to
produce a "cross-cultural encounter [that] can be an active process of
self-developmentÓ rather than a Òpassive act of cultural tourism" (Titon, 2008, p. 144).
The presenters will conclude by using the research to suggest ways in
which teaching music from unfamiliar cultures can illuminate the fluid,
ever-changing nature of humans throughout space and time.
References
Elpus, Kenneth and Abril, Carlos R. "High School Music Ensemble Students
in the United States: A Demographic Profile," Journal of Research in Music Education 59 no. 2 (2011):128-45.
Ladson-Billings,
Gloria.
The Dreamkeepers:
Successful Teachers of African American Children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994.
Lundquist, Barbara R.
"Music, Culture, Curriculum, and Instruction," in New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching
and Learning, ed. Richard Colwell and Carol Richardson, Oxford, NY: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Titon, Jeff Todd. Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the
Music of the WorldÕs Peoples. Belmont, CA: Schirmer
Cengage Learning, 2008.