Abstract
Music teacher educators often work to prepare preservice music teachers to be socially conscious and adopt dispositions toward teaching in socially just ways. Preservice teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions toward social justice issues may not be sufficiently challenged, however, unless coursework is appropriately conceived. I designed a three-part workshop to introduce and explore the concepts of access, intersectionality, and privilege, and then conducted a basic qualitative study to examine undergraduate music education students’ understandings of and attitudes toward sensitive social justice issues, as well as their experiences with the workshop. I found that exploring sociological concepts related to social justice through interactive activities and allowing students safe methods for expressing themselves, such as journaling, may facilitate the adoption of positive dispositions among preservice teachers toward toward social justice issues.
Keywords
Injustice and inequity are pervasive across the United States. Factors such as rising income inequality, poverty, unemployment, racism, and xenophobia are common features of our current sociopolitical landscape. Music education scholars have identified ways in which injustices and inequities persist as direct outcomes of either structural barriers, such as inequitable access to music instruction locally (Salvador & Allegood, 2014), which results in unequal participation rates across demographic groups in music classes nationally (Elpus & Abril, 2011; Lorah, Sanders, & Morrison, 2014), or as a direct function of the practices within music classrooms, such as curricula that are irresponsive to students’ cultural backgrounds (Kelly-McHale, 2013). The topic of social justice refers to the awareness of and actions toward correcting injustices and inequities such as these. However, preparing preservice teachers to effectively teach in socially just and socially conscious ways may be a challenge for music teacher educators (Robinson, 2017; Salvador & Kelly-McHale, 2017).
Scholars have investigated various initiatives designed to prepare preservice music teachers to be socially conscious and adopt dispositions toward teaching in socially just ways. According to a review of literature in the Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education (Ballantyne & Mills, 2015), this body of research has typically addressed preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about inclusive classroom practices, factors influencing preservice teachers’ approaches to diversity, and how music teacher educators might inspire socially just practices among their graduates. The authors found that immersive field experiences centered on issues of social justice, combined with guided reflection, may enable preservice teachers to confront and change their own dispositions toward social justice, while diversity courses alone may be insufficient to challenge their dispositions. However, other researchers have found limits to how far field experiences challenged preservice teachers’ dispositions (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Nichols & Sullivan, 2016); experiences intended to promote a better understanding of and positive attitudes toward issues of social justice may not be enough to challenge or change the long-held beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions of preservice and inservice teachers.
According to social justice researchers, music teachers generally hold positive dispositions toward diversity, though the strength of such convictions may vary depending on the breadth and depth of their understanding of social justice issues (Ballantyne & Mills, 2008; Joseph & Southcott, 2010; Riley, 2009). McKoy, MacLeod, Walter, and Nolker (2016) noted that despite the positive outcomes of their professional development workshop on the perceptions of the participating inservice teachers, participants often described discomfort, misunderstandings, and insecurity around culturally responsive teaching. Nichols and Sullivan (2016) noted that field experiences may reinforce and perpetuate, rather than challenge, prevailing negative narratives about youth of color; while their service-learning project at a juvenile detention center had many positive elements, it fell short of dismantling the participating preservice teachers’ own internal racial biases. VanDeusen (2019) found that when preservice teachers are oriented around cultural diversity, privilege, and implicit bias prior to field experiences, immerse themselves in the broader community in addition to the school environment, and use guided reflection before and after their field experiences, they may develop greater empathy for teaching students from cultural backgrounds that differ from their own, recognize their own implicit biases, and deepen their understanding of culturally responsive teaching. Music teacher educators may also face some of the same challenges as the participants in the previous studies. Salvador and Kelly-McHale (2017) surveyed 361 music teacher educators and found that respondents expressed difficulty defining and breaching social justice, and indicated they lacked the information and resources needed to effectively address the topic in their music teacher preparation programs.
Some scholars, in nonempirical articles, have shared their experiences engaging in social justice content with preservice teachers. Kindall-Smith (2013) discussed how social justice content was integrated throughout her music education courses. The author noted positive changes in students’ attitudes toward diversity, though integrating social justice content into music education courses was challenging. The author adapted course materials and instructional strategies to better facilitate students’ engagement with sensitive topics and to balance the time spent between social justice content and traditional music education content. Robinson (2017) detailed her approach to developing a critical consciousness for equity and diversity among preservice teachers. The author described a 3-day professional development series for the purpose of exploring and examining preservice teachers’ attitudes, understandings, and beliefs about the underlying causes of inequality and injustice (e.g., racism, sexism, and ableism). These sessions revolved around the related concepts of access, the (relative opportunity afforded individuals or groups to access specific resources), intersectionality, (the concept that social identity categories, such as class, gender, and race, do not function independently but intersect and reinforce one another), and privilege, (the relative privilege or marginalization afforded individuals or groups based on their social identity). By introducing these concepts and exploring them with preservice teachers, the author sought to break down potential barriers to addressing these sensitive topics safely and meaningfully.
Based on the literature reviewed here, it would appear that breaching sensitive topics and examining one’s implicit biases is critical to advancing social justice in music teacher education. To inform music teacher educators how they might approach topics such as race and privilege in their teacher preparation programs, I needed to better understand how music education students thought and felt about these topics. Therefore, I conducted a basic qualitative study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) to examine preservice teachers’ experiences with a workshop similar to Robinson’s (2017). I chose this workshop as a model since it addresses sensitive issues directly while providing a scaffold of sociological language related to power, identity, privilege, and marginalization with which students may express their thoughts.
The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate music education students’ understandings of and attitudes toward sensitive social justice issues. I examined students’ journal reflections on their experiences as participants in a three-part workshop that incorporated the sociological concepts of access, intersectionality, and privilege. Additionally, I sought to investigate students’ perceptions of the workshop itself, as well as how they may have experienced any challenging or sensitive content. Thus, the research questions were as follows:
Method
Research Paradigm
I framed this investigation as a basic qualitative study in which the main purpose was to understand how the participants made sense of their experiences (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). I did not seek additional methodological dimensions (e.g., the essence of a phenomenon in a phenomenological study) for understanding the participants’ experiences. My intent in limiting the degree to which I sought predetermined dimensions to understanding the participants’ experiences was to leave myself open to possibilities that may not necessarily have arisen naturally within stricter parameters of other qualitative research paradigms.
Participants
This study took place in three separate music education classes at a large public university in the Southwest United States. The classes were all part of required courses for music education major undergraduates. I was an invited guest lecturer in each of the classes and had not had prior interactions with any of the participants. All students in each class were briefed on the study purpose and parameters, and all gave their consent to participate per the university institutional review board’s regulations. A total of 63 students participated in the study. Ten of the participants were enrolled in an upper-level, advanced elementary general music methods course, while the remaining participants were enrolled in one of two sections of an introductory-level music education course. The three workshop sessions occurred during the normal meeting times for each class, once a week for 3 weeks. Typical content delivery and instructional strategies for these classes were a mix of lectures, participatory activities, in-class discussions, and group projects. Therefore, the content delivery during the workshop sessions was not atypical for the environment of each class.
Social justice content was not included in the curriculum of each respective course prior to my involvement and social justice content was not an ongoing component of the music education courses at the university. Likewise, required courses in the degree program outside of music education did not include social justice as a main focus. Though students may have been exposed to social justice content in their previous coursework to some degree, this information was not collected for this study.
Data Collection
I collected data through written journal reflections from each participant. At the conclusion of each workshop session, I asked the students to complete an open-ended journal entry with the following writing prompt: “Reflect on your experiences throughout today’s class. Write about these experiences in detail. There is no minimum word or page count. Your reflections will not be shared with any other students.” The journal entries were a required assignment for each course but were graded only for completion by each respective instructor of record. Students were instructed to submit their written reflections electronically to the course’s online assignment hub prior to the start of the following class meeting. All data were stripped of any language that could be used to identify the participants. The relatively large number of participants for a qualitative study, along with the number of submitted journal entries, resulted in a substantial amount of data.
Workshop Overview
The three-part workshop, modeled after Robinson’s (2017) professional development series, was designed to develop a critical consciousness of equity and diversity. To give due credit for her ideas and to provide the reader with necessary context, I strongly encourage readers to review Robinson’s (2017) interesting article “Developing a Critical Consciousness for Diversity and Equity Among Preservice Music Teachers” in the Journal of Music Teacher Education. Below I describe my sessions and how they differed from the author’s original work to fit within a 45-minute class period.
In the first session, Exploring Access, students participated in a game in which they demonstrated the stratification of opportunity, or access, between two hypothetical students, who only differed in their socioeconomic status (SES). Like in Robinson’s game, participants were split into two teams, one representing a middle-class student and the other a lower-SES student. Teams competed to earn the most “credit” for their team’s “student” to enter college based on scenarios that dictated each team’s ability to access certain resources. Scenarios would either grant or prohibit access to resources based on factors outside of the control of the “student.” Given the time restraints, participants in my sessions were each randomly assigned a scenario. The game concluded when all scenarios had been read aloud. At the conclusion of the game, I asked participants to discuss their impressions of the content of the game and facilitated a brief discussion on the broader sociological implications of differential levels of access between two otherwise similar students who differed significantly only in terms of their SES.
In the second session, Exploring Intersectionality, I gave a lecture on the sociological constructs implicated in the previous session. Like Robinson, I introduced the concepts of intersectional oppression (Crenshaw, 1991) and the matrix of domination (Collins, 2000) to illustrate the various ways in which one may identify (e.g., race, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, and SES) and how each of these identities intersect to reflect varying levels of privilege and marginalization that are dependent on broader sociopolitical contexts. During this session, I cautioned students against making assumptions about individual intersecting identities. As Yuval-Davis (2006) explained, “The point of intersectional analysis is not to find ‘several identities under one.’ . . . This would reinscribe the fragmented, additive model of oppression and essentialize specific social identities” (p. 205). Instead, intersectionality is a tool to locate bodies within historical and political contexts that may otherwise be erased by an analysis of social identity categories apart from one another (Crenshaw, 1991). With regard to privilege, I likewise cautioned students not to generalize or essentialize the categories of privileged groups located within the matrix of domination. I explicitly described how these categories, along with their corresponding levels of privilege or marginalization, are bound by their historical and political context, and that the way in which they were presented was only to introduce the categories in a manner that would be easily recognized given the most common understandings of privileged and marginalized identities in the contemporary United States.
To demonstrate these concepts more concretely, I described to the class my own intersectional location on the matrix of domination and listed my various social identity categories in the form of an intersectionality map (Robinson, 2017). I then asked participants to examine their own intersectionality by listing their various social identities on an intersectionality map and, if they felt comfortable, to share their thoughts on how their identity, privilege, or marginalization may have informed their past experiences in music classes. Last, I facilitated a discussion about how participants might better serve their future music students by understanding their students’ sociopolitical location through an intersectional lens. For a visual representation of the matrix of domination and the intersectionality map used in this session, please see the online supplementary materials for this article.
In the final session, Creating Community, participants viewed the documentary Room 26 about a teacher in an urban elementary school who leveraged his privilege and social power as a White male teacher to positively impact the lives of their predominantly Black students. However, due to the time constraints, I was not able to delve deeper into the topic of urban education as Robinson had. I selected the documentary to serve as a model for how teachers can effectively serve students from backgrounds different than the teacher. After the documentary, participants were given time to reflect on and respond to the following prompts: What aspects of urban education norms did Mr. Smith disrupt with the students in his classroom? How did Mr. Smith use his social power to establish “community” in his classroom? In what ways did Mr. Smith function as a counternarrative to the “norms” of urban education? (Robinson, 2017, p. 21)
I asked any participants who felt comfortable to share their answers. I then facilitated a brief discussion about how the participants may create community in their future music classrooms, tying in relevant content from the previous sessions.
Data Analysis and Trustworthiness
I analyzed the data inductively through the procedures outlined by Creswell (2013). I organized the data by compiling all of the journal entries into one document for each corresponding workshop session and deleting any identifying information. I read through the data to develop a list of “lean codes” (Creswell, 2013, p. 184) and expanded these categories as I read and reread the data. I then aggregated coded excerpts to form common ideas, or themes, which emerged as I reread the data. I constructed themes from data triangulated through multiple comparative processes: identifying excerpts congruent (a) within a participant’s multiple journal entries, (b) among participants’ journals within the same class section, and (c) among participants’ journals across different courses or course sections.
I consulted with a colleague through peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). I received feedback on the clarity of the themes based on their corresponding coded excerpts. I refined, combined, and eliminated initial codes to arrive at a new set of codes that better reflected common responses among the data set according to the feedback I received from the colleague. I eliminated the previous codes from the data set and recoded the data once more with the new set of codes. I grouped this new set of coded excerpts into larger themes and consulted the same colleague once more. Based on our consultation, I refined the descriptions of the themes and the excerpts chosen to better reflect the findings from the raw data. The resulting themes and excerpts were checked for the plausibility of my interpretations by an external auditor (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) with expertise in qualitative research and are presented in the findings of this study.
I acknowledge the potential for bias from myself, as both the researcher and workshop presenter, and from the participants in their responses. Therefore, I designed the study to mitigate factors that would potentially skew the findings and interpretations. First, all data were collected and analyzed from the participant’s own written words, allowing for low-inference interpretations of the data. Second, to help prevent any response bias in the responses, I clarified with the participants that the data would remain anonymous and would not affect anyone’s status in the course. I stressed the importance of being honest in responses and that the responses were truly open-ended; the only expectation would be that the journal entries reflect each participants’ true feelings at the time. While it is impossible to be completely confident that participants were honest and forthcoming throughout all of their reflections, I believe my multiple interactions with each class, my attempt at maintaining a pleasant, safe, and enjoyable environment throughout the workshop, and my status as an outsider all contributed to an appropriate level of rapport for this study.
Findings
Research Question 1: On Issues of Equity and Diversity
Equality Versus Equity
Participants addressed issues related to equity and diversity using either difference-blind (e.g., “[Teachers] have to make sure they treat all their kids the same.”) or difference-conscious language (e.g., “[W]e must . . . teach each student differently depending on their situations.”). Some participants stressed equality: “Since music is a universal language, why can’t we give all of our students equal opportunities?” Others considered differential treatment toward equity: “Not every student has the same starting place and background. Some students may need a little more help and guidance.” Participants also discussed what equity may look like as future teachers: “I can find simple ways . . . to help relieve the financial burden of band . . . from my students who already have so much to bear.” For some, the difference between equality and equity became apparent: “I realized that equality of education does not actually mean equality of opportunity. I had always thought it essentially did.”
Circumstances Versus Merit
Participants most often viewed one’s surrounding circumstances as a significant influence on determining outcomes: “Some people just have it better off than others through no action of their own, and thus gain access to opportunities and other resources which give them advantages” and “There are probably many students that have the capability to be incredible musicians . . . but don’t ever get the chance due to lack of resources.” Participants also related these concepts to their own personal lives, as one participant wrote: “[The access] activity brought back several memories of when I felt disadvantaged or incapable of doing something because of my situation. Little did I realize that other students were able to excel in areas because they had the resources necessary to achieve those goals that would otherwise take me ten times the work.”
Other participants described one’s merits as the dominant influence in determining one’s outcomes. These ranged from short value statements (e.g., “[W]ith hard work and focus, achieving your goals is something we all can do.”) to more nuanced perspectives: “I have always had the mindset that students who are less fortunate financially should not be given special privileges and instead should just be able to work harder for equal opportunities that wealthier students receive.” Some participants recognized the influence of external factors but expressed a lack of personal drive as the main negative influence on outcomes: “Success is highly based upon personal drive. . . . Yes, access plays a huge role in success, but what can we do if a person has no desire to change the evil roots of poverty?”
Several responses exemplified the tensions that arose from the competing notions of “circumstance” versus “merit.” As one participant wrote, “Oftentimes, I feel like upper-middle-class individuals who work themselves through college and overcome low income upbringings are scrutinized for being financially well off.” Another participant discussed the challenge in balancing both points of view in their approach to teaching: Socioeconomic status does not define intelligence, but rather dedication and hard work prove one’s true efforts. Unfortunately, the same hard work is worth more when a student has the resources available to them to use to advance their studies.
Some participants mentioned the judgments we make about people’s character: “I assumed one student [in the access activity] would be good and one bad, but really they just had economic differences” and “I feel as though certain individuals will see a student . . . and mistake their circumstances as a lack of effort or let it change the way they view that individual.” Others discussed the degree to which circumstances may be prohibitive: “I guess I always naively assumed that such challenges would not be really pervasive in the school experience, and that they would be fairly easy to overcome.”
Critical Consciousness
Participants expressed their awareness of the oppressive factors affecting people’s lives: “I was aware of the inequity some demographic groups face but I had never considered how they could be related” and “Unfortunately, harassment and assault have become so prevalent in our society that I have experienced it and know many women my age that have as well.” Participants made connections from the workshop content to issues they had witnessed previously: [T]here is a lot of stigma and negative perception of bisexual people within the LGBTQ community. Because of this they have limited access to community resources. Understanding how all of these factors work together to change people’s circumstances is fascinating.
Participants reflected on systemic issues, such as the factors contributing to inequities between schools: One [factor] that I was thinking about throughout the lesson was geography . . . [A] lot of times [upper-class people] go to the ‘better’ schools because teachers want to teach at the ‘better’ schools. . . . However, it leaves the lower-class people in schools . . . with teachers who don’t want to be there. “This is creating a continuous downward spiral for the lower-income people.” They aren’t getting a good education, so they are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to get the higher paying jobs to raise their socioeconomic status.
Participants also reflected on the desire to combat oppression: This affects me . . . by giving me insight and inspiration to accommodate and help the students who are in a harder situation be the best that they can be even if it means that I have to fight tooth and nail with the school to accommodate and help them.
Another participant emphasized tapping into larger systems to combat oppression: [I]t truly angers me that in the age we live in, something as fundamental as [a college] education is not a right. . . . I think it is important people understand they did not get to where they are without help, and government programs should be funding those who are of a lower socioeconomic status to give everyone a fair shot at being successful.
Interrogating Identity
Participants reflected on their intersecting identities and the relation to their lived experiences. Participants from predominantly privileged backgrounds discussed their position in contrast to others: I am a cisgender White protestant middle class male who grew up in the suburbs . . . I feel like I take it for granted a lot and forget that other people do not have the same access to resources that I do . . . and thus have a more difficult time than I may have doing something through no fault of their own.
Participants from predominantly underprivileged backgrounds also reflected on how privilege and identity intersect in their own lives: What I found interesting was mapping my own identity and seeing on paper how I am a part of majority groups and minority groups. As a nonreligious Hispanic gay male, I don’t always think about my male privilege, or even my privilege as an able-bodied man.
Research Question 2: Perceptions of the Workshop
Relevancy
Participants most often viewed the content of the workshop series as relevant to their personal lives and their future careers: “I felt the topics we discussed in class were relevant to how we will teach in the future and how I had to work for where I am today.” Another participant described how the concepts of access, intersectionality, and privilege apply directly to a school setting: In my opinion, intersectionality is something that needs to be explored more by teachers and administrations in schools, because if those people only look at one part (e.g., race), they will be much more likely to make inaccurate assumptions about a student’s level of privilege. This could negatively affect how much attention teachers give to certain students because they might give more help to students who don’t actually need it or overlook a student who they assume has more access than they actually do.
A few participants did not find the content relevant to other contexts: “As a musician, I don’t believe this affects me” and “I do not think the activity showing the different scenarios [of access] will be applicable in most situations.”
Constructive Feedback
Participants offered both positive and negative feedback on their experience with and the effectiveness of the workshop. Positive feedback centered on the tone of the presenter (e.g., “I was impressed with [Author’s] ability to frame such a serious and potentially discouraging topic in an interactive and light way. It never felt like I was being talked down to or lectured, which I really appreciate.”), the opportunity to “walk in the shoes” of others, (e.g., “Activities like this do actually help me get a glimpse into that world, the world I’ve never been in.”), and participants’ appreciation for the styles of engagement (e.g., “I loved how [the activity] was structured like a game, because it had each of us more involved and engaged than we would be with a simple lecture”). Reflecting on how the students were engaged, one participant wrote as follows: I liked the interactive part where we had to make our own [intersectionality] maps, and I thought it was cool that the [author] shared his map and personal experiences to make it more real rather than just hypothetical. I thought it was good to use [him or herself] as an example, making it clear that sharing was an option if anyone felt inclined but if you didn’t feel comfortable sharing you didn’t have to (which was especially good for this activity because there were some possibly sensitive/more personal topics included).
Other participants appreciated seeing applications of the content we explored in real-world situations: “It is nice to talk about philosophical principles, but another thing to put them into practice. The [documentary] showed one way of doing just that” and “The first two presentations contained a lot of great information on statistics and possibilities of our students’ situations, but [the final session] connected the dots for me.”
Negative feedback centered on the perceived implausibility of some of the content presented (e.g., “I think that the game that we played was very biased though. I had a problem with it because every single time without fail, the kid that was less privileged ended up coming out on bottom” and “[S]ome of the examples [in the access activity] were ridiculous.”), the desire for more time spent on certain topics (e.g., I think it’d be interesting to go more into depth with the concept of urban schools” and “[T]alking more about those basic classroom management strategies would be beneficial.”), and factors that created a less engaging experience (e.g., “[The second session] was a little less engaging than the first presentation because there was no element of a game.”).
Research Question 3: Challenges
Discomfort
Participants often expressed the discomfort that they experienced with the content of the workshop. As one participant wrote: “This presentation is a conversation that needs to be had but I feel is oftentimes overlooked because it is uncomfortable.” Indeed, another participant noticed when the “discussion definitely made the whole class in general become quiet.” This participant posited that “it was because of how no one wanted to say the wrong thing and accidentally offend someone else.” This was echoed by another participant who wrote, The way everybody in the class was afraid to answer the question of what came to mind when one thought of an ‘urban school’ highlighted the prevalence of a much larger issue to me, wherein we are unable to break down existing societal barriers and setbacks because we are too afraid to even discuss the issues.
Participants also expressed feeling vulnerable during the workshop: “I’m not sure how to introduce more discussions about intersectionality . . . because by revealing your intersectionality, you are being vulnerable.” Others described the anxiety they felt from relating to the content of the first session: “The [access] activity made me feel anxious because I am ‘Student B’ [(the less affluent student)].” For some participants, the discomfort they experienced with sensitive topics may have been related to their backgrounds. Reflecting on how they learned “that gender and sex are two separate things,” one participant expressed how they “grew up in a very conservative area and these kinds of personal differences were not accepted or talked about.”
Several participants mentioned or implied a discomfort with the topic of privilege: “I was worried that [the access activity] was going to be a demonstration on privilege. While it was in a sense, I appreciated that ‘privilege’ was not the word you used to describe these differences.” This aversion to the topic of privilege, and specifically White privilege, was echoed by another participant who stated that they “didn’t like the idea of pinning privilege to just one color of skin.” Another participant acknowledged that “this idea of privilege is so delicate with many people in the United States,” but like other participants, they appreciated the content of the sessions, stating that they “did appreciate [a] look at the broader scope of all the kinds of privilege out there.” Some participants took a more defensive stance to the topic of privilege: “It seemed like [the access activity] was nothing more than a privilege check. So what if I have privilege in some aspects of my life?” Others experienced negative emotions from acknowledging their privilege: “Activities like this just make me feel guilty for what I’ve been lucky enough to have, which I know isn’t really a super healthy feeling either.”
Fear for the Future
Participants expressed concern about the challenges they would face as future teachers. Some participants expressed doubt about their abilities as teachers due to their privileged background: I’m nervous to become a real teacher because I don’t know what it feels like to be [poor]. . . . How can I look at a young student and tell them I can be strong for them when I have never experienced anything close to that? I spend a lot of time worrying about this.
Another participant discussed the limitations they felt in adequately addressing social justice issues: In [class] we discussed many problems that each group faces with music, and how to combat a few of the issues. Is that enough? Will what I can do in my music classroom help my students when the rest of their days are spent elsewhere, with people less cognizant of the problems they face?
Other participants highlighted the challenges they may face in urban settings: “When I think of teaching in an urban school, I get kind of nervous about the kinds of situations and problems I know I will be dealing with” and As a future teacher the idea of teaching in these types of schools has always made me nervous, not because I don’t like the idea of teaching in these schools, but because I fear that I will not be good enough. I fear that I will not be the teacher my students deserve.
Discussion
The information explored during each workshop session often challenged participants’ preconceived notions around issues that contribute to inequity. Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017) discussed what it often feels like to experience this type of coursework: “When confronted with evidence of inequality that challenges our identities, we often respond with resistance; we want to deflect this unsettling information and protect a worldview that is more familiar and comforting” (pp. 1–2). Indeed, a strong theme among several of the responses touched on feelings of dissonance, discomfort, fear, and a rejection of some of the content of the sessions. Largely, however, participants engaged with the content in positive ways, integrating what they experienced in the workshop to express their thoughts and attitudes on such issues.
To facilitate thoughtful awareness of and reflection on issues of social justice, the workshop was designed with the limitations of other social justice-oriented music teacher education courses, workshops, and field experiences in mind. In the studies I reviewed, researchers did not specifically address the concept of privilege and its social origins, nor did they ask participants to consider their own varying levels of privilege through an intersectional lens. Nichols and Sullivan (2016) stated that their preservice teachers “had not broken through the internal, sedimented, and inculturated boundary of racial discrimination” (p. 168). Similarly, Ladson-Billings (2006) observed that her own teacher education students would use “culture” (p. 104) as coded language for race in describing racialized differences and difficulties that students of color face. Unlike in these examples, the participants in the current study mostly did not attribute the difficulties of students of color to differences in their respective race or culture, but rather to outside factors; when writing about race or racial differences, participants in the current study frequently approached these topics from either an empathetic or critical perspective. Similar to McKoy et al. (2016), participants in the current study expressed doubts and fears about their ability to connect to students from other backgrounds. However, they also expressed feeling more comfortable making connections with students and understanding their backgrounds by incorporating an intersectional lens.
Allsup and Shieh (2012) stated that “Social justice education begins with adopting a disposition to perceive and then act against indecencies and injustices” (p. 47, italics added). The findings from this study indicate that exploring sociological concepts such as access, intersectionality, and privilege through interactive activities and allowing students safe methods for expressing themselves, such as journaling, may facilitate the adoption of such dispositions among preservice music teachers. Researchers have discussed the importance of meaningfully embedding social-justice-related content across teacher preparation programs rather than as standalone courses or fragmented units (Athanases & Oliveira, 2008; Kindall-Smith, 2013; Robinson, 2017; Whipp, 2013). By incorporating these “tough talks” throughout multiple music education courses, music teacher educators may lay the foundation of sociological concepts related to social justice early in an undergraduate’s tenure and then move toward more specific issues (e.g., students with disabilities and LGBTQ students) as students progress through their teacher preparation program, complete field experience work in diverse K–12 schools (VanDeusen, 2019), and further develop as music teachers.
The inductive analysis did not reveal any substantive differences between the introductory- and upper-level classes’ responses. This may have been due to the lack of social justice content these students would typically experience throughout their coursework or the novelty of the specific concepts explored in the sessions. Researchers might consider studying how preservice music teachers’ perceptions of social justice evolve over time as such content is featured in various courses and applied within field experiences. Researchers may consider using focused prompts to more easily compare participants’ responses and help unpack more subtle aspects of students’ perceptions of social justice issues. Researchers might investigate how music education students’ racial or ethnic backgrounds inform their perceptions of and responses to social justice content. Researchers also might compare the perspectives of preservice music teachers, music education graduate students, and music teacher educators as they engage in critical explorations of culturally responsive teaching and other social justice topics. Courses that integrate social justice content as a curricular precursor to peer teaching, service-learning, and immersive field experiences may allow music education students to be less anxious about responding to sociocultural differences they have not “lived” and reduce the likelihood that negative perceptions of the “Other” will be reinforced during service-learning or field experience opportunities. As one participant described in discussing the exploration of intersectionality, “The realization that connection is about shared understanding, not just shared experiences, was a great revelation to me, and a very freeing thought.”
Supplemental Material
Supplementary_Materials – Supplemental material for Exploring Access, Intersectionality, and Privilege in Undergraduate Music Education Courses
Supplemental material, Supplementary_Materials for Exploring Access, Intersectionality, and Privilege in Undergraduate Music Education Courses by Samuel Escalante in Journal of Music Teacher Education
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
References
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