Intersections in Music Education: Implications of Universal Design for Learning,Culturally Responsive Education,and Trauma-Informed Education for P–12 Praxis

Positionality: Our Story

As intentional practitioners who seek to work for equity, we recommend teachers examine biases and work to avoid assumptions by getting to know themselves and others. Reflecting on one’s positionality (how one is positioned in relation to others within a context) is important for all citizens of this world and especially for teachers who wish to examine intersectionality in music education. Recognizing how their own social identities may be afforded more or less privilege and power within a particular context may help teachers learn to notice biased thinking and stop enacting it (see Sidebar 1 for ideas about disrupting bias). Rather than making assumptions about a person’s identities, teachers can provide opportunities for others to self-identify and describe their identities (e.g., race, gender, religion). Doing so could help teachers learn about students, families, and communities in ways that foster empathy and sensitivity.

Although no one is entitled to another’s personal story, we believe voluntarily sharing to one’s comfort level in a particular space or context is a vulnerable act and an important step toward building relationships. When sharing, adults should establish boundaries that preclude flooding others with information or sharing information that is not appropriate for the students/setting. ⁴ When learning about individuals, we suggest refraining from judging how much or what someone shared or “filling in” blanks. If a person does not disclose certain information about themselves (e.g., sexual orientation, religion, race), it does not necessarily mean that they are different from others who have shared or that they have any particular feelings. Take the time to build trust and slowly get to know each person.

To model our continued work toward these aims and provide an example, we believe it is important to share about ourselves to our levels of comfort in this space [professional journal] and how we come to this conversation. Informed by the suggestions noted previously, our descriptions are not exhaustive, and we recognize some teachers or students, like ourselves, may be comfortable sharing more than others. Both authors are married mothers who were born and raised in the Midwest, have doctorates in music education, work at universities, and have taught music in P–12 settings. We have been researching, writing, and presenting together on issues related to inclusion, equity, and intersectionality in music education since 2017. As individuals, Salvador identifies as a White, atheist, cisgender female and does not identify as a person with a disability. Culp identifies as a biracial (Black/White) cisgender female. As such, we occupy identities that allow for certain privileges and positional power within particular contexts and identities that are afforded less privilege or marginalized within other contexts. Although we share similarities, our experiences differ in part because of the complex intersections of our individual identities.

Identities and Intersectionality in Music Education

To provide more equitable and inclusive music experiences, music educators can consider how students’ multifaceted identities influence their experiences in music classrooms. Specifically, the concept of intersectionality ⁵ can be a useful way to begin to understand student identities and recognize barriers and biases students may face. We use intersectionality to “referenc[e] the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities.” ⁶ Thus, although considering a single identity characteristic, such as dis/ability, as a way to create equity may be a starting point, the intersectional viewpoint recognizes more complexity in each person’s experience. ⁷ Therefore, we suggest teachers consider intersectionality by honoring the whole child and their unique circumstances.

Demographics in Music Education

Creating inclusive environments begins with understanding individuals, such as teachers and learners, in educational spaces. ⁸ Although class frequency and length vary widely, 94 percent of U.S. elementary school students have access to general music classes. ⁹ However, children in places with high concentrations of students from minoritized backgrounds are less likely to have music classes, ¹⁰ and children with special education needs may be pulled from music classes to receive services. At the secondary level, researchers have found that students who enroll in secondary ensembles differ from the school population across a number of demographic variables, including gender, special education status, race, and home language. ¹¹ LGBTQ students may find refuge in the arts, ¹² yet music and theatre students may also be more likely to experience bullying. ¹³ Moreover, for any student, being present in a music classroom is not the same as having equitable access to music instruction.

Because music students become music teachers, it is likely not surprising that music teacher candidates and the music teacher workforce have not been representative of the U.S. population. ¹⁴ Most music educators are from middle-class backgrounds, White (90%), and female (60%), ¹⁵ although women may be underrepresented in certain areas, such as band conducting. ¹⁶ Additionally, LGBTQ+ music educators may feel hesitant to reveal aspects of their identity at work. ¹⁷ Admission to university music programs often requires specific kinds of music skills, knowledge, and dispositions that privilege certain types of knowledge and access to resources, ¹⁸ and few supports are available for music teacher licensure candidates with disabilities. ¹⁹ Furthermore, music teachers may not be prepared to teach in inclusive and responsive ways to honor the needs of students in terms of disability, culture, gender identity, or sexual orientation. ²⁰ Music educator diversity and preparation matter because students can benefit from role models they identify with and from inclusive and responsive learning experiences. ²¹

Asset-Based Pedagogies

Asset-based pedagogies (ABPs) focus on individual strengths to improve learning. Researchers have demonstrated that intellectual development may increase when teachers believe in young students’ potential. ²² As they grow older, student perceptions of their music teacher’s beliefs about their capabilities may be related to persistence in high school music education programs. ²³ Across age groups, student self-efficacy was reported as the most important predictor of achievement on music examinations. ²⁴ In the next section, we offer brief overviews for three ABPs. We provide resources (see Sidebar 2) ²⁵ and conclude by synthesizing commonalities.

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to create inclusive learning environments characterized by equitable access to and participation in learning by all children. UDL reflects developments in architecture that sought to design universal access to spaces (e.g., ramps used for wheelchairs, strollers) and brain research that recognizes neural variation as the rule. ²⁶ In considering strategic, affective, and recognition neural networks, researchers Tracey Hall, Anne Meyer, and David Rose ²⁷ proposed that learning environments should include universal approaches that create multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation, and multiple means of action and expression. Because all children have the potential to face barriers to learning, using the UDL framework to anticipate student needs and remove barriers from the outset has the potential to help all children.

Culturally Responsive Education

Following music education scholar Vanessa Bond’s example, ²⁸ we use the term Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) to encompass culturally informed approaches to teaching. These include Culturally Relevant Pedagogy ²⁹ and Culturally Responsive Teaching, ³⁰ which focus on responding to students by using “cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective.” ³¹ Building on this work, education scholar Django Paris and H. Samy Alim, an anthropologist, advanced Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy as education that seeks to sustain student and community cultures. ³²

Music teachers who use CRE practice cultural humility, by “engaging power dynamics between their school and the communities they serve and refusing to stereotype,” ³³ cultivating critical awareness of their own culture, and resisting to position it as “neutral” or the norm. CRE also requires that teachers strive to know families and communities and recognize community cultural wealth by “focus[ing] on and learn[ing] from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged . . . [including] aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital.” ³⁴ Enacting CRE requires developing critical awareness (awareness of sociohistorical influences on the trajectories of students who have been marginalized), building on students’ cultural knowledge (e.g., prior knowledge, stories, musics), and employing cultural content integration (integrating knowledge that validates student experiences). ³⁵ In these ways, music teachers who use CRE facilitate instruction that places student, family, community, and school cultures on a more equal footing by responding to students’ needs and sustaining cultures. CRE often requires that teachers reshape curriculum to reflect what they learn about students and communities.

Trauma-Informed Education

Trauma-informed care emerged from practices used when working with military veterans. ³⁶ Because trauma-informed educational approaches have a variety of names (practices, pedagogies, etc.), we emulated Bond’s use of CRE as an umbrella term by referring to all these approaches as Trauma-Informed Education (TIE). Trauma ³⁷ can be understood as an injury that “has lasting adverse effects on [an] individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.” ³⁸ Scholars have observed relationships between childhood trauma and difficulty in school. ³⁹ Because all students have the potential to face trauma, using TIE can help teachers create safe environments before or after a traumatic event occurs.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, six principles are key to a trauma-informed approach. ⁴⁰ First, children who have experienced trauma need safety. Teachers enacting TIE practices work to help children see school as a place where they are physically and psychologically protected from harm. Guided by the second element, trustworthiness and transparency, teachers build the sense of safety through warm, supportive interactions coupled with predictable, clearly communicated expectations. Teachers can also foster peer support, the third element, which can be accomplished through thoughtfully planned family projects or “buddy” systems. Following the fourth element, collaboration and mutuality, teachers work together with students toward shared educational goals. By using the fifth element of empowerment, voice, and choice, teachers work to ensure students know that their ideas, comfort, and preferences are considered, valued, and acted on. Finally, teachers allow cultural, historical, and gender issues to inform TIE. ⁴¹ This sixth element reflects the idea that people with particular characteristics have been more likely to experience trauma due to how they have been treated. Furthermore, due to intersections of identity characteristics, trauma may affect particular individuals more than others and in different ways.

Shared Principles of UDL, CRE, and TIE

In summary, ABPs focus on learner strengths, recognize diversity in learning and experience as the rule, and foster student self-efficacy and agency to help improve learning. Teachers utilizing ABPs consider child, family, and community resources and design learning environments that welcome strengths and support differences to help children achieve. In these ways, ABPs stand in opposition to deficit-based approaches, which focus on assessing deficiencies and designing remediation, often accompanied by blaming the child or the child’s culture for these supposed deficiencies. ⁴² In Table 1, we outline shared principles that we have identified among UDL, CRE, and TIE. We believe these common elements present opportunities for music educators to create more inclusive and equitable music education.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1

Descriptions of Shared Principles among Universal Design for Learning, Culturally Relevant Education, and Trauma-Informed Education

Principle	Enactment
Know and value individual student experiences and goals	Learn and care about students’ lives, previous experiences, needs, preferences, musical goals and interests, and musics.
Build relationships with families and community	Cultivate positive perspectives on caregiving structures in their myriad forms, recognize family and student assets, and be involved in the community.
Honor student voice and provide choices	Actively seek and include student input and provide multiple ways students can participate in music.
Establish firm, healthy boundaries that maintain high expectations	Explicitly discuss and co-construct behavioral and musical expectations, determine performance expectations based on standards of quality drawn from the cultural contexts of the musics teachers and students select, and believe students can achieve these outcomes.
Reshape curriculum	Continuously and (pro)actively examine and adjust praxis (what is done, why it is done, how it is done) based on knowledge about students, families, the school’s communities, and oneself to better serve learners.

Suggestions for Music Teachers

In this section, we offer six principles that currently guide our praxes. Our ideas about and approaches to creating equity in music education spaces have evolved over time, are informed by the principles we believe are central to ABPs, and extend our previous work. ⁴³ Table 2 offers generative ideas and suggestions for music educators, recognizing that teachers are the experts in their classrooms. Therefore, we suggest teachers select and adapt strategies for their particular contexts, which may necessitate involving other school personnel (e.g., principals, counselors).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2

Generative Ideas for Praxis

Guiding Idea		Suggestion
Practice cultural humility
Make a critical assessment of a practice to determine how it may be exclusionary.	• Consider what “low cost” means to you and your students in terms of concert attendance—work with the venue, the school, and local organizations to provide free admission for all students. • Consider any religious affiliations of the performance venue and whether all parties would feel comfortable there—do not connect out-of-school performances with school grades, openly discuss and disseminate information about venues with families, and provide multiple options for performance opportunities at different locations and with a variety of ways to participate (e.g., formatting the program, selecting the repertoire).
Meaningfully integrate cultures different from your own.	• Examine concert programs from the previous school year in terms of representation—select repertoire for the next program or concert that includes musics that represents different identities (e.g., religious, racial/ethnic, sexual orientation, gender) via composer characteristics or thematic/lyrical material. Feature genres that are different from what you have previously chosen or outside of your “comfort zone.” • Examine how a piece of repertoire is presented to students and audiences—research all song literature and ensure that accurate and up-to-date background information is provided for all music to the best of your knowledge, ensuring a similar level of detail for all musics presented.
Build relationships with families and communities
Intentionally learn about families and community.	• Reflect on what you know about your learners’ families and what you assume about them—use an intake form that includes information about who lives in a child’s home(s), what languages they speak, what musics they listen to, and if anyone musics (e.g., sings, plays, dances). • Take an honest inventory of what you perceive as areas of strength and weakness in the community—challenge these beliefs by using community asset mapping (see Sidebar 1, disrupting bias).
Find ways to incorporate family members and community partners as instructional partners.	• Identify ways in which the program and students could be supported—invite students’ family members to share their musics in class, serve as musical mentors, or assist with performances/programming (e.g., accompanying, running sound, selecting repertoire, providing food, organizing transportation). • Identify local artists or arts organizations in your community—select one and work with them to design a mutually beneficial collaborative experience for your students and those community members.
Know and value individual student identities, circumstances, experiences, and goals
Actively demonstrate that you are an adult who will support students.	• Reflect on how you typically learn about students, any gaps in your knowledge, and assumptions you may make (e.g., based on appearance)—rather than labeling, allow students to self-identify in terms of their identities (e.g., race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation) and share any applicable terminology in their own time as you build relationships with them. • Reflect on language and images used in your classroom in terms of the diversity of your school and the global community—examine lyrical content for negative or stereotypical messages, immediately disrupt classroom talk that negatively depicts others (even in jest), and ensure that images in the music room reflect a variety of social identities.
Find out about students’ musical preferences and experiences.	• Consider how students’ musical interests could be incorporated into classes—use a “playlist of my life” assignment and structure warm-ups or cool-downs based on students’ selections. • Consider how students’ musical abilities could be incorporated into classes—ask students to participate in a musical “show and tell” where they demonstrate a “[hidden] musical talent” or something musical they like to do outside of class, allowing students to complete this activity in class or in a more private way, such as using Flipgrid.
Honor student voice and choice
Learn from and with your students, valuing their expertise.	• Reflect on the ways you elicit and select volunteers from the class—instead of calling on individual students in front of peers, ask the class for volunteers or privately approach a student to ask if they would like to serve as a model, assistant, or “expert” in an area that they have identified an interest or capability in (e.g., students may be more or less reserved during activities such as teaching classmates lyrics in a given language and/or talking about home culture or music). • Reflect on your areas of musical strength and areas for potential growth in terms of skills and knowledge—invite students to teach you techniques or musics you do not know by engaging them in skill- and knowledge-sharing experiences where they serve as experts.
Create opportunities for student choice and power sharing.	• Consider how you select repertoire for a performance—ask students to talk with three trusted persons about those persons’ favorite musics and what they would like to see and hear at the next concert, engage the class in an open discussion, and use these ideas to inform decisions. • Consider how your class operates in terms of organization and procedures—engage students in a selection process where students are assigned rotating roles (e.g., music manager, instrument collector, recorder distributor) in the classroom to ensure interested students have opportunities, which could be determined by a class vote and also by teacher input.
Establish firm, healthy boundaries that maintain high expectations
Construct class expectations collectively.	• Consider what “success” means to you in terms of a music practice/activity in your classroom—help students set personal goals for responding/performing/creating/connecting to a musical work, help them create plans to achieve these goals, and have them assess their achievement, progress, and effort. • Reflect on your classroom policies (how were they developed, who may they disadvantage, what purpose do they serve, do they demonstrate trust for students)—lead a discussion with your students at the beginning of the year to establish three to five broad classroom expectations and the consequences for violating them; revisit periodically to see if adjustments should be made.
Be willing to listen to students’ concerns, but do not engage in gossip or attempt to serve as a counselor.	• Reflect on the types of conversations students have in your classroom and whether they serve to raise others up—help students to view the music room as a safe space, both for them and others, by modeling and reminding them of applicable classroom norms (e.g., that we do not engage in negative or unhelpful speculative talk about others’ personal lives and circumstances). • As related to students, reflect on what your roles are (e.g., teacher, role model, mentor, mandated reporter) and are not (e.g., a peer, licensed counselor, confidant—there are “secrets” teachers cannot keep)—as appropriate, listen to students’ genuine concerns, provide information to help them speak to the school counselor or other school personnel, and be transparent about your role as a mandated reporter.
Reshape curriculum
Develop new approaches and programming before the school year begins.	• Take an honest inventory of your mental energy, knowledge, and time (be kind, realistic, and accountable to yourself—trying to do too much at once can overwhelm you and affect the quality of the project)—select one level of planning (e.g., lesson, unit, concert, grade level, class) and start from scratch in terms of planning. • Reflect on your areas of strength, potential areas for growth, and community and see how those relate to any professional development experiences you participated in during the previous semester—seek out professional development experiences that will help you grow in ways that can help you better serve your particular learners.
Stay flexible throughout the school year.	• Reflect on the goals and expectations you have set for your learners and your program and how they align with the community—select one class or grade level, leave a portion (e.g., repertoire, a unit) of the curriculum “open” in the second semester, and brainstorm with your students to conceptualize something new based on their interests. • Assess how students are doing in-the-moment—check in with learners to see how they are feeling about their progress and make adjustments using student feedback provided publicly (e.g., group discussion) and privately (e.g., anonymous questionnaire) and discuss any adjustments with the class.

In addition to the shared principles listed in Table 1, we suggest teachers begin by practicing cultural humility. This practice is aided by developing self-knowledge, which is why we encourage teachers to recognize their identities, understand the interplay of those identities, and identify their positionality. This process of self-examination is not about evaluating oneself or one’s culture as good or bad because such dualistic thinking is not helpful. ⁴⁴ Instead, practicing cultural humility allows teachers to create spaces (and equal footing) for musics, social practices, and ways of learning that foster equitable treatment among student, family, and community cultures.

Conclusion

In this article, we offered information and suggestions intended to help music educators develop strategies to meaningfully engage with others in educational spaces. Recognizing intersectional identities is one way to begin to honor the uniqueness of an individual’s experiences, see the whole child, and welcome each individual into music class. Rather than seeing differences as obstacles, embracing students’ unique and multifaceted identities can provide valuable opportunities to create, perform, and respond to music in ways that allow students to personally connect with the content and enrich their and others’ musical experiences. Employing such practices also could raise engagement among students who are not currently participating in school music, leading to increased and diversified enrollment and participation in musical activities. Furthermore, these strategies may assist music teachers in building meaningful relationships with families, communities, and colleagues, which could ultimately serve to improve instruction and create a more inclusive, diverse, and supportive professional environment.