Popular “problems”: Deviantization and teachers’ curation of popular music

Context: The teacher as curator

With one of the most established histories of teaching popular musics in schools, the typical Finnish secondary school music classroom is equipped with guitars, keyboards, drum kits and microphones, school textbooks contain both “classic” and recent popular music hits, and many lessons resemble garage band rehearsals (Westerlund, 2006). Individuals are accepted into music education degrees at one of the three universities that offer music teacher training (the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Oulu University, and the University of Jyväskylä) on the basis of their versatility as musicians, requiring them to demonstrate practical music skills in more than one genre. This means that although some applicants are classically trained, they are also well versed in folk, jazz, popular, or world musics. Music teacher training requires 5.5 years of study at university, including a master’s degree, and popular music features as a key component of these studies (Väkevä, 2006). Consequently, music education graduates enter the teaching profession competent “in the use of the instruments commonly associated with rock bands, as well as knowledge of studio techniques, making arrangements in different popular music styles, and on-stage performance” (Westerlund, 2006, p. 119). These highly qualified, versatile, and popular-music-savvy music teachers are afforded considerable freedoms, by and large working independently without supervision or inspection by governing authorities or school officials. In addition, there are few curricular directives, with the National Core Curriculum that was in effect at the time of this study (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004) predicated on valuing pluralism, with a focus on student-centered, constructivist learning and music-making, embracing difference and diversity as the ideal, rather than outlining particular musical content for classroom teaching and learning.

With students bringing their own musics to schools, and the abundance of textbooks, online platforms and other popular repertoire resources available, it may seem as though any or all music could, and indeed should, be welcomed in the classroom. The Finnish teacher’s role with regards to repertoire may thus be seen as that of curator. This is not a curator solely concerned with preservation, found alone in dusty museum archives. Rather, the curatorial teacher is flexible in their adoption of pedagogical methods (Kocaturk, Balbo, Medjdoub, & Veliz, 2012) and creates a learning environment in which students are able to generate, explore, and process knowledge. An expert in the subject being explored, the curatorial teacher is also an “expert learner” (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009, p. 31) working in collaboration with students. Thus, instead of explicitly outlining content that students must learn, the curatorial teacher provides the map to extend students’ own, outside-school musical knowledge. Although students may make suggestions, it is ultimately the teacher who decides which popular musics or songs will feature in school lessons or activities, and he/she explains and contextualizes it for students, “helping them to see it in ways they may not have discovered if left on their own” (Eeds & Peterson, 1991, p. 118). This aligns with Green’s (2008) student-centered approach to incorporating popular musics in school lessons or activities, “metaphorically taking the learner by the hand, getting inside their head and asking ‘What do they want to achieve now, this minute, and what is the main thing they need to achieve it?’” (p. 34).

While popular musics are not solely the domain of teenagers, they have been understood to play an important role in the identity construction and cultural affiliations of young people (Hargreaves & North, 1997; McPherson, Davidson & Faulkner, 2012), making them of particular interest when envisioning music education as a “social force and a constituting element of community” (Allsup, Westerlund & Sheih, 2012, p. 462). With students’ welfare and positive overall growth being one of the primary mandates of Finnish schooling, the influence of certain popular musics (positive or negative) upon the malleable identities of growing adolescents is an important consideration for the curatorial teacher when selecting music for school use.

What’s the problem?

Ascribing music with the tendency or potential to influence the character or behavior of the listener or performer is nothing new, and research in recent decades illustrates a wariness of particular popular musics and their effects on young listeners (Christenson & Roberts, 1998; Johnson & Cloonan, 2009; Lacourse, Claes, Villeneuve, 2001; Miranda & Claes, 2004; ter Bogt et al., 2012). North and Hargreaves (2008) have referred to the popular musics at the receiving end of such criticisms as “problem music.” This suggests that certain musics are potentially detrimental for teenagers, making them particularly inappropriate for school use, as contexts that aim to nurture and educate young people both academically and socially. However, it may be seen as impossible for the teacher to simply exclude this category of music altogether, as which musics are considered problematic ostensibly varies according to context and situation. Rather, it may be more fruitful to attend to the processes by which certain musics or songs come to be seen as problematic: processes of deviantization.

For the purposes of this article, deviance is defined as non-conformity “to the norms or values held by most of the members of a group or society” (Giddens, 2006, p. 1013) and “behaviour which somehow departs from what a group expects to be done or what it considers the desirable way of doing things” (Cohen, 2009, p. 35). In his groundbreaking book Outsiders (1963), Becker stated that “social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders” (p. 9). It may thus be seen that musics or songs are not intrinsically deviant, but are rather understood as such as a result of the interaction between the music itself, and those with the power to label music as problematic. Hargreaves, Hester and Mellor (2012) built upon these interactionist theories through the introduction of the term routine deviance, referring to minor instances of deviance by students that the teacher is required to rapidly identify, process, and react to, as part of his/her everyday class teaching (p. 23). In extending this even further it may be seen that ideas of routine deviance apply not only to students and disruptive behaviours, but also to the “labelling of those people, events, or objects that stand contrarily” (Kotarba, Merrill, Williams, & Vannini, 2013, p. 84), such as some popular musics in formal education contexts.

Understanding music as a “social, political, religious, economic, and psychological force” (Jorgensen, 2003, p.90), the labels we apply to particular musics both reflect and influence our labelling of the individuals associated with them. As Elliott (1989) has written, “because music is something that people make or do, a people’s music is something that they are, both during and after the making of music and the experiencing of music” (p. 12). Thus, the deviantization of certain musics or songs in the classroom also makes outsiders of the individuals who identify with, or enjoy, those musics. Indeed, Mantie and Tucker (2012) suggested that students may be “punished (through grades or exclusion) or simply cast as deficient in some way; they are said to have not yet developed proper musical appreciation or taste” (p. 267). This raises significant challenges for the music teacher to navigate deviantized musics in a way that does not exclude students, but upholds the educational values determined by Finnish policy makers, including political neutrality, diversity, and equal opportunities for participation (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p. 12).

Earlier research (see Kallio, 2015a) found that Finnish music teachers mediate between both broad and specific social narratives of popular music, each with different norms and constructions of deviance, influencing what repertoire is considered (in)appropriate for classroom use. The broad narratives were identified as cultural, religious, and curricular, addressing issues of enculturation, cultural diversity, the role of religious repertoire in secular schooling, tradition versus transformation, teacher autonomy and confidence, and curricular critique. The specific narratives included those of the school as institution, school staff, parents, personal narratives of the self as teacher, and narratives of students. Contextualized within these social narratives that label particular popular musics as problematic, this article focuses upon teachers’ understandings of the music itself, the labelled, through addressing the following research questions:

Research design and methods

This research was designed as a multiple case study with an instrumental interest, where a particular case offers insight into an issue or aids in refining theory (Stake, 1995, p. 237), in this study aiming to gain insight into the musical features influencing teachers’ popular repertoire decision-making. Without a national database of music teachers working in Finland from which to randomly select teachers, the selection of research participants was based on a purposive sample (Creswell, 2009) of five lower-secondary school music teachers (teaching students between the ages of 13 to 15 years old in compulsory grade 7 and 8 music classes and elective classes in grade 9). These teachers were selected according to criteria based on typologies of geographical region, type of school, and years of teaching experience. This was not in order to maximize the generalizability of findings through the “sampling of attributes,” but to maximize “opportunities to learn” (Stake, 1995, p. 6) from teachers in different contexts and career stages.

Initially, the contact details of approximately ten schools were compiled from different regions of Finland (Northern Lapland, Lapland, Central Finland, Eastern Finland, and the Capital region). These schools were based in medium to large cities, resting on the assumption that teachers working in environments with larger and more diverse populations would be more likely to be employed full time and be proficient in the English language, the language of the researcher. From this list, the researcher chose different types of schools (comprehensive schools, music specialized, and Swedish speaking schools) and sourced teacher’s contact details from the school websites. Five teachers were contacted via email, introducing the researcher, informing them about the purpose of the study and inviting them to participate. It was made clear that requirements of participation were that they had completed their teacher training at one of the three Finnish universities, were currently employed full time, available to meet with the researcher and comfortable to be interviewed in English. If they agreed to participate, teachers were asked to mention how long they had been working as music teachers, with the hope of selecting teachers at different career stages. Two of the initial five contacts did not respond, perhaps as they did not wish to participate, did not meet the requirements for participation, or because they did not understand the email written in English. Two more teachers’ contact details were found from the initial lists based on geographical location; they were contacted, and agreed to participate in the study. The participating teachers are henceforth referred to by the pseudonyms: Outi, Maria, Julia, Iida, and Risto. These five teachers represented varying levels of experience, ranging between Iida’s six years as a music teacher, and Maria and Julia’s 16 and 17 years of music teaching respectively.

As all teachers had graduated from music education degrees requiring engagement with, and knowledge of, popular musics and pedagogies, teachers were not selected according to their personal musical histories. Maria, Outi, and Julia had all begun their music education in the western classical music tradition, only later engaging with popular styles and idioms. Iida had begun her music education in folk musics, though from her time at university onwards had immersed herself in popular musics and performances. Risto, however, had never been classically trained, was a jazz guitarist and had dabbled in various ‘rock’ instruments in his youth (such as keyboards, drums, etc).

Although English was not the first language of any of the participants, and there were occasional stumbles in linguistic comprehension between the researcher and teacher participants, these often provided opportunities for elaboration or to spend time on particular issues to clarify or clearly delineate what was intended. In addition, in instances where a word or phrase could not be translated, communication occasionally took place in Finnish or Swedish, the two official languages of Finland and the native languages of teacher participants. For example, teachers often used popular Finnish proverbs or sayings to describe their work or beliefs, which were often familiar to the researcher. If they were not familiar, teachers took time to explain the meanings of such phrases in detail to the researcher, as not only an outsider to their work in Finnish schools, but as an immigrant to Finnish culture more generally. As such, language differences between the researcher and participants were not seen as a significant impediment to understanding or communication.

Three interviews were conducted with each teacher, following a semi-structured format similar to that suggested by Seidman (2006). The first two interviews, each approximately 1–2 hours long, sought to gain a broad understanding of the individual teacher’s experiences of teaching, their personal musical and educational histories, and their understandings of the narratives that influence their popular repertoire decisions. The first stage of analysis was conducted following these first two interviews according to Kelchtermans’ (1994) narrative-biographical approach, thematically analyzing the data in two stages: the first phase being a vertical analysis, where each participant was taken as the unit of analysis, and the second phase, a cross-case analysis, where recurring themes and similarities between cases were identified. This analysis was used to craft four factional stories (see Coulter & Smith 2009; Kallio 2015a, 2015b) based on themes that emerged from the cross-case analysis: a reconstructed, (re)storied “fiction[al] form… laid over a ‘fact-oriented’ research process” (Agar, 1990, p. 74). These factional stories were shared with teachers 2 weeks before the third interview, as a heuristic tool for reflection, to generate deeper, more reflective, and critical data through inspiring a new spiral of retellings (Olson, 2000). Perhaps as a result of distancing the discussions from teachers’ personal experience, the third interviews were considerably longer, averaging around 2.5 hours, with one interview lasting 5 hours. These discussions shifted the focus to an inquiry involving the teachers and the researcher, a process of collaborative reflection, negotiation, and meaning construction (for more information regarding the narrative technique used see Kallio, 2015b). The data from all three interviews was then approached through the process of analysis of narratives (Polkinghorne, 1995), applying paradigmatic thinking to identify and describe themes emerging across types of stories and storytellers. In this study, the themes that were constructed were the broad and specific social narratives that frame teachers’ repertoire decisions (see Kallio, 2015a), and the features of music that teachers identified as contributing towards their understandings of popular musics as deviantized. In addition, there were a number of themes that related to how teachers navigated these musics in their classrooms, such as professional ethics, a sense of uncertainty, the uniqueness of music as a school subject, and student welfare.

Curating music, constructing deviance

Although the participating teachers recognized tensions between many of the musics or songs their students enjoyed or identified with, and the school as “an institution with some, more or less, defined frameworks and conditions” (Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010), they emphasized that the exclusion of all deviant popular musics or songs from school activities was impossible, and indeed undesirable. This was not only a result of the music that entered the classroom unexpectedly (through student initiatives or compositions), but also challenges in identifying which songs were problematic in the first place. As one of the teachers, Outi, noted,

Of course there are some songs I definitely know I cannot include, and others that I know will not be a problem at all for students. But then there is a big grey area, and I have to be the boss in that area.

With the responsibility of curating classroom repertoires, deciding which popular musics are included, and which are excluded, the teachers in this study described the decisions within this grey area as complex, situational, and personal, and noted that they required significant reflection, as Julia explained,

These decisions are tied into my own morals and ethics all the time, which is why I have to ask myself questions where I’m right, and where I’m not right, and “what is right?”

Thus, while popular musics may be seen to create a more inclusive environment for democratic participation, the music that is ultimately taught and learnt during lesson time “is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge” (Apple, 1996, p. 22). Participating teachers recognized that their repertoire selections were not made in isolation, but were framed and guided by broad and specific social narratives that label certain musics or songs as deviant. As mentioned earlier, it has been found (Kallio, 2015a) that competing social narratives in, and of the school community may result in the labelling of certain popular musics or songs as problematic, and influence a teacher’s repertoire selections. Within these dynamic and situational narratives, there is a second level of concern that teachers consider when selecting music for the classroom: the music itself. With this as the focus of the current study, teachers identified four musical features that contributed to the deviantization of popular repertoire:

These four features will be discussed in turn below, not as an attempt to categorize popular musics, but to explore how they have been constructed by the teachers in this study as factors that contribute towards understandings of deviance in popular music, and the implications of these constructions for the democratic, inclusive classroom.

Lyrics

The prevalence and widespread acceptance of popular musics in Finnish school music classrooms was seen to complicate teachers’ judgments regarding the appropriateness of song lyrics or the use of particular words. Accordingly, teachers noted that certain musics or songs could not be automatically excluded, as Risto explained, “rock and roll is very much telling about bad habits … But you still have to teach [these kinds of musics].” ¹ Particular profane words or themes were often seen as characteristic of particular popular genres that teachers wished to include in classroom activities, perhaps mitigating the potential offense theses musics may cause, as Outi described:

It’s hard to listen to any kind of punk music [in the classroom] if you don’t allow students to hear any swear words. It is part of the genre … There has ² to be bad words in the music so you can understand that [non-conformist ethos or attitude].

Particular genres were identified by many teachers as more often lyrically problematic than others; however, this did not entail their automatic exclusion. Maria noted that reprimanding students for singing or composing inappropriate lyrics was more complex, when it was recognized as “part of the [musical] culture … that you use such words.” Teachers also suggested that profane or taboo language in songs could present opportunities for “teachable moments” (Greher, 2009) to reflect upon ethical or sociological issues, as Iida explained: “for instance, black metal. I think it’s good to talk about the ethical aspect of lyrics.” This may contradict research that suggests that educational institutions are particularly conservative with regard to swear words, or profane language (Ravitch, 2003). However, it is worth considering how such musics are recontextualized (Bernstein, 2000) when considered in a formal education setting. A popular song with potentially offensive lyrics means something very different when used for educative purposes by a teacher, than for entertainment by a student. The educative purposes of the school context also raised concerns among teachers, as Iida noted:

I think that there must be some safety limits to what you can say in class. It’s not only the bad words, but also the meaning and the intention of using them … what they do to people.

Although the role of the school was not necessarily seen in direct opposition to the norms and values of popular musics with offensive lyrics, it was also assumed that the school “cannot avoid dealing with the issues of the right and the good” (Mantie & Tucker, 2012, p. 266, italics original). It was thus understood that when recontextualized in the classroom setting, the use of such musics was guided by “educational rules or principles, by which we can learn, and understand what is appropriate” (Julia).

Imagery

While not all teachers had access to video or online material in their classrooms, Risto and Maria discussed the inclusion of such material in their teaching lessons. Risto had shared the music videos of Michael Jackson songs the students had been learning, and Maria had allowed students to bring their own videos to class as learning tools, adopting an approach similar to that described by Green (2008). Whereas Risto had not experienced any problems with his limited use of video material, Maria noted that she had encountered significant challenges with popular music imagery, and had made conscious decisions to exclude certain songs based on imagery she felt was inappropriate. She offered a particular example of a student who had shared an online video of a recently released duet by a popular rapper and R&B singer. The video included images of one of the artists singing with a background of a burning house, and artistically styled scenes of the song narrators (actors in the music video) in flames. Maria explained her reaction to the video,

I don’t like to encourage anyone to play with fire, and it was just too suicidal. I felt uncomfortable with it. From then onwards I said [to the students] that I need to know the particular songs and videos before [we can watch them together in class]. Otherwise there come such things that I don’t like the students to watch.

Maria thus saw her role as a gatekeeper with respect to the use of music videos in class. Her concerns extended to songs played without accompanying imagery in classroom activities, assuming that students could watch the video outside class time and may be familiar with the video imagery of certain songs:

We don’t even have to watch the video [during the class], if there’s pole dancing or something [I am uncomfortable with in the video] I would not let students play the song in class.

Since the particular incident Maria shared during the interviews, she explained that although she felt it unfortunate, she had stopped including music videos altogether due to the additional practical demands that vetting material demanded of her time.

Musical mood

The mood of a music refers to affective states that, unlike emotions, do not involve “a synchronized response in components like expression and physiology (e.g. gloomy)” (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010, p. 10). Musical moods such as “aggressivity” or “melancholy” were noted to affect teachers’ decisions whether to include or exclude particular popular songs or musics. Iida explained her awareness of musical mood was heightened when she moved from the capital region in the south of Finland to the school in which she currently worked, in northern Lapland:

It’s also the atmosphere, the strong spirit that the music makes. When it’s very hardcore, aggressive, or so deep somehow. I have noticed [that I consider these moods] when we have been playing grunge music or metal … I have noticed this year especially, with kaamos time [polar nights], it has been so black. The music really makes a difference. I had one class who were in such a bad mood. I changed the song I had planned to something more energetic and [cheerful], they needed a nicer atmosphere.

As Iida’s comment illustrates, teachers’ concerns regarding the musical mood were situational, and often related to student welfare. In addition, with the Finnish curriculum prioritizing learning through music-making, playing popular musics was seen by teachers as a more intense and potentially influential experience for students than listening to or critical discussions of musics, and popular repertoire was often selected accordingly. As Julia explained:

At least for some very aggressive musics I might not rise them up to singing and playing material, but I have discussed them with students … so we don’t play it … but I haven’t totally excluded it. Even though [I imagine] somebody might ask ‘what are you doing there?’ [in surprise or disapproval].

Teachers were more aware, or wary, of potentially problematic popular musics, and their effects (as discussed below) when students experienced making it themselves, rather than a more distanced, appreciative, or analytical engagement with musical material.

As also illustrated by Julia’s comment, in addition to their own concerns regarding musical moods, teachers were particularly aware of the potential concerns of other social actors (such as parents, other staff members, principals, students, etc.). Risto agreed that external actors influenced his repertoire choices when it came to musical moods,

I think it is important for me to try to balance the aggressive kind of sounding songs and the ballads … because I imagine the situation that a student may tell their parents at home that we were playing angry or bad songs, or the parents would call me or the principal.

Considerations of other teachers’, principals’ and parents’ reactions to their lesson contents did not necessarily lead teachers to exclude certain musics, but rather increased their awareness of what the overall music repertoire of their classrooms ‘looked like’ to others (see Kallio, 2015a).

Emotional affect

Music was emphasized by all teachers as a unique subject in schools, affording opportunities “to discover, share, express, and know about aspects of the human experience that we cannot know through any other means” (Hodges, 2000, p. 54). These musical insights are referred to as emotional affect, involving a synchronized, “subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency and regulation … e.g. happiness, sadness” (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010, p. 10). The importance and value of popular music for teenage students, as well as the connections they make between particular songs or pieces and events in their own lives, were seen as especially relevant to how songs or musics may affect students emotionally. Risto recalled one incident,

We were playing quite a sad song, nothing really depressing, but one student’s emotions came very strongly. I was surprised … someone had recently died in her family, and she explained to me that the song was the reason for this emotion, why she was crying … music brings [these thoughts and emotions] to mind.

With this understanding of music as “lived experience … like emotionally learnt stuff, not skills or knowledge only. It’s about identifying with emotions” (Julia), teachers’ justifications for including popular musics with emotional variety in school repertoire were tied to utilitarian goals of developing social/emotional skills and to the curricular directives to give students a ‘means of expressing themselves musically, and to support their overall growth’ (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p. 230). This was also related to student welfare as Iida said: “I think it’s like therapy for the students.” However, while acknowledging the therapeutic potentials of music, Julia warned against repertoire selection with such goals in mind as “it is a long road to become a well-trained music therapist. I would be a dilettante!,” and Maria believed this was an avenue students could follow in their own time, not at school, as she explained:

I try to find happy music. Not a variety. Music is good … for your own therapy, then you can have these sad songs … but I think you can sing them somewhere else. School music, it has to be uplifting, and pepped up, and joyous.

While Maria’s choice was for the benefit of the student group as a whole, other teachers emphasized that individual students’ emotional reactions to music were situational and, therefore, unforeseeable. The national curriculum states that teachers should “help the pupil understand that music is tied to the time and situation. It is different at different times, and in different cultures and societies, and has a different sort of meaning for different people” (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p. 230). In line with these directives, students’ identifications and reactions to music were seen to be uncertain, as Julia explained: “we all have our individual breaking points … it’s the same thing with … the emotions which music raises up … basically we can never know what will happen.”

As illustrated by Julia’s comment earlier regarding the difference between talking about and playing deviantized musics, critical discussion was often used as a way of mitigating the potential emotional affect of popular musics introduced to the classroom by students themselves. Iida recalled one particular incident that had caused her concern. A young female student shared a song with the class that included particularly aggressive sounds, and also particularly misogynistic lyrics, illustrating also how these features often combine and/or overlap:

The song was really talking about women like they would be dogs, and the sound was really very rough … I was thinking this is psychological violence against the whole group if we listen to the whole song. I didn’t know how to react, and I was so shocked as it continued, as we listened and listened and listened … I had to just turn down the volume at one point. We were discussing it a very long time … how music affects you.

As a relatively early-career teacher, Iida noted that instances like these provided teachable moments for herself, as well as her students. Outi emphasized that responding to these situations was learnt “kantapäänkautta,” from the ground level up—something that was learnt the hard way.

Balancing curricular directives and popular calls for school music to reflect the wider society (Elliott, 1995; Green, 2006) with student welfare and protection was seen as complex and requiring significant deliberation. The responses to these challenges varied between teachers, according to the different situations they faced in their everyday work. For instance, whereas Maria kept a collection of ‘tried and tested’ textbooks from which she drew upon ‘safe songs’, Outi noted:

We can’t make a path for students that is entirely safe. They will face these things in their own lives, so if we are all the time ensuring that they are protected from these issues, perhaps they will not know how to react when they face these things on their own.

Teachers’ contrasting ideas of how repertoire selection may best promote student welfare illustrate the complexity and contextual nature of such decisions; an interplay between the teacher, the student(s), and the music itself, within the social narratives of the broader school community (see Kallio, 2015a).

Deviant popular music education: An invitation?

The findings of this study suggest that constructions of deviance in music, potentially affecting a musics inclusion or exclusion in school activities, do not allow teachers to easily categorize music as problematic or otherwise. Rather, teachers may be seen to make careful and considered repertoire decisions, taking into account constructions of deviance informed by at least four features of popular music: lyrics, imagery, musical moods, and emotional affect. However, teachers understood interpretations of these features, and the deviantization of popular musics as personal, complex, and uncertain, dependent on context and situation.

If what is understood as deviant is dependent on contextualized cultural values and norms (Giddens, 2006) and music classrooms increasingly welcome diversity, it is perhaps unsurprising that teachers found it difficult to outline straightforward categories of musics that were problematic, and those that were not. As many school systems adopt a pluralistic approach to music education and, in principle, consider all or any music worthy of classroom attention, considerations of not only “the good,” but also the “deviant” are relevant for music educators when selecting repertoire for their students. This is particularly so if we consider the ethical encounter between teacher and student, that is, the encounter concerned with best teaching practice, as “grounded in commitment, caring and responsibility” (Bowman, 2002, p. 69). Indeed, the direct affect (if it were possible to establish such an etiologically robust relation in the first place) of certain popular musics or songs on the individual must be taken into consideration when selecting music that addresses not only who students are but also, who they are becoming. As Bowman (2002) writes, “education is distinctly ethical in character, concerned ultimately with the development of character and identity” (p. 64). However, guiding students towards a single vision of what constitutes good character or positive identity rests on an assumption that there is a consensus of values, morals, and behaviours (Taylor, Walton, & Young, 1973). In aiming towards a single “good,” or by unquestioningly censoring the “deviant,” there is a risk that the teacher’s work is more a matter of coercion (Mantie & Tucker, 2012) than curation, legitimating certain popular musics and delegitimating others through an unequal “distribution of social power and control” (Wright, 2012, p. 26). In this way, a coercive approach towards popular repertoire selection may naturalize ideas of certain musics or songs as “deviant” according to majority-group ideas of what is “good” and “appropriate,” degrading and excluding the cultural meanings of these musics, and the teenage students who enjoy and identify with these musics. This appears incongruent with the ideals of democratic schooling, which promote the equal participation and inclusion of all students in musical learning.

In order to challenge this notion of repertoire selection as a matter of coercion, the teachers in this study suggested that it is not only necessary to recognize the complex interplay between musical features and the competing situational narratives and contexts that lead to the labelling of certain musics as deviant, but also necessary to continually reflect and reevaluate one’s own values and beliefs in considering what is right, for whom, when. In other words, teachers believed that it would be impossible to draw up a list of specific musical features that allowed teachers to identify musics as “good” or “bad,” and nor are there prescriptive models of repertoire selection that would fit every teacher’s personal approach or context. However, this is not to suggest that teachers work in a position of total relativism in which the deviantization of popular musics is simply a matter of ideological censure (Taylor et al., 1973, p. 310), based on who is judging when. Rather, this study suggests that teachers’ mediations and selections of popular repertoire take into account specific musical features; however, the identification of such features as problematic or otherwise is done situationally, in relation to one’s own professional values and personal ethics, and contextualized within the wider school community (Kallio, 2015a)—“amid the contradictions, complications, and ambiguities of teaching music” (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 125).

Whilst popular music is often thought of as more conducive to a democratic, inclusive music education, this study suggests that popular repertoire selection, and the justifications for popular music in the classroom, warrant further attention. If popular musics in schools receive little critical attention, are regarded as an “easy solution” to student motivation or participation, or as a culture-lite panacea for educating the masses in an accessible way, there is a risk of undermining the great strides that have been made towards a democratic and inclusive music education. As Mantie and Tucker (2012) have argued, these issues of essentialism and coercion “should be a vibrant conversation within the music education community,” yet this topic is met with a “glaring silence” (p. 267). If schooling is to offer democratic opportunities for participation and learning, the story does not end with the censorship of popular music in the classroom, adhering to an unquestioned “good” and perpetuating “particular visions of who people should be, both individually and collectively” (Mantie and Tucker, 2012, p. 267). Both teachers, and students, may learn more through a greater focus on questioning the processes by which certain popular musics are deviantized, than identifying categories of “problem music” to avoid. Although North and Hargreaves (2008) do note that “labelling music as problematic clearly causes it to be perceived as such” (p. 210), in educative contexts it is important to remember that the processes that label musics also implicitly label our students, and we need to engage in decisions about repertoire accordingly. This is not to suggest that all popular musics should be welcomed unquestioningly, but rather that the teacher must engage in a practice of inquiry, questioning the uncertain whats, hows, and whys of popular repertoire selection (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 140). A democratic, inclusive approach to selecting music for the classroom also necessitates an ethical questioning of whose music is legitimized, and whose is excluded from school music education, within the broader concerns of student welfare. Moreover, if and when these musics do enter the classroom, these ethical concerns need to be critically explored together with students, if one of the tasks of schooling is indeed to guide students towards full participation in a world characterized by diversity and moral uncertainty. If “what we play, or to what we listen either asserts or questions the power relationships in which we find ourselves” (Froelich, 2002, p. 10), deviantized popular musics may offer an invitation to learn beyond social bias, to question the labelling that occurs within and beyond our classrooms, to reconsider assumed values and understandings, and to ethically reflect upon the musics and practices that are in students’ musical worlds, and the school—an altogether different kind of problem.