Research in Education

DIY is often viewed as a core element of punk, an aspect that enabled activism against an assumed authority and power (Guerra, 2018; Martin-Iverson, 2017). It is therefore often lauded as a means of engaging with/utilising punk in a pedagogical sense (Bestley, 2017; Cordova, 2016). It should be capable of working in tandem with education in developing and encouraging the ‘movement against and beyond boundaries’ (hooks, 1994). However, this is not necessarily simple or straightforward to realise through one’s own pedagogical practices, especially when one considers them through an intersectional lens. We argue that punk scholarship on DIY fails to account for its capacity to support ableist ideologies and structures - incorporating it into punk pedagogy in an uncritical manner risks further deepening asymmetrical power relations in regards to disability and the adversity that people with disability experience. We utilise collaborative auto-ethnography to unpack some of the complexities involved in pursuing punk pedagogical practices and unpacking the aforementioned critique of DIY further. We consider how DIY can/could potentially be a powerful, empowering pedagogical tool and consider the ways DIY purports a damaging, ableist narrative, which at times can even aid the neoliberal agenda within higher education. The necessity for punk pedagogies to be underpinned by considerations of intersectional issues, both from the viewpoint of the teacher and the students, is demonstrated through our use of critical disability theory as an analytical tool.

In recent years a suite of policies and practices that are strongly influenced by efforts to make the work of educators and education providers more accountable, have had a powerful impact across the sector in settings such as Australia. In part, this goes some way to explaining why many working in the teaching profession report being dissatisfied with their role in education, and significant numbers leave the profession within the initial 5 years in Australia. Both in this context and beyond, there is a growing chorus of voices that encourage finding ways to push back and interrupt the impacts of accountability initiatives in education. Teacher education is itself one of the contexts in which this contestation is playing out, and whether it be voiced in terms of reimagining, revolutionising, or reclaiming education, the core sentiment can be interpreted as a type of call to arms for those working with educators. In this paper, I will make the case that punk can productively contribute to efforts responding to the influences of dominant culture in education. Punk in this usage can be thought of as social practices that generate cultural resources that can be utilised to question and critique dominant culture.

This article utilizes looks to punk rock pedagogy or the ways in which countercultural and decolonial ontologies are developed in punk subculture, to theorize Māori-Philippine relations in Aotearoa New Zealand. It uses an agential realist methodology to engage with the creative works of TOOMS, James Roque, and Marianne Infante (three New Zealand performing artists of Philippine ancestry). These works read through historiographic accounts of the Philippine diaspora to theorize how contemporary independent artists are reviving the ancestral bonds that once linked the Philippines and the Pacific. Theorizing Māori-Philippine relations through punk rock shows what Indigenous and immigrant peoples stand to gain when they decenter the colonizer and prioritize communing with one another.

The pervasive Eurocentric model of music education in the United States is hegemonic, pursuing a model of performance excellence in large ensembles that, by the time young people reach high school, excludes most from music making opportunities in school. Despite numerous efforts to challenge the dominant paradigm since the 1960s, little change has happened from within the music education profession. Since 2002, nonprofit organization Little Kids Rock (Music Will) has leveraged outsider perspectives and philanthropic resources to galvanize momentum nationally towards adoption of curricula and musicking practices that focus more on popular musics and lifelong learning. Through a programme of professional development, curriculum provision and instrument donations, Little Kids Rock has both engaged in active resistance against, and established strategic partnerships with, state governments, university departments, school districts, major industry players including the National Association of Music Merchants, and education brands such as Berklee College of Music. Little Kids Rock promotes a new stream of music making called “modern band” as a disruptive phenomenon that emphasizes creativity, cultural relevance and student-centred learning while reinforcing entrenched hegemonic structures. Drawing on the history of Little Kids Rock and the modern band movement, the authors use Kahn-Egan’s (1998) five tenets of punk to frame a critical examination of the modern band phenomenon and the ways which Little Kids Rock operates at various points along punk’s ideological spectrum in attempting to “transform lives through restoring, expanding and innovating music education” in US schools.

The field of education is in dire need of different ways of thinking about attracting, supporting, and retaining school leaders. We see the idea of punk as a space that may offer some leeway for thinking differently about professionalism for school leaders. In this paper, we draw on thinking about punk subcultures to recognise the ways in which leaders hold self-expression and identity as important, while also thinking about how leaders as a collective might push back against some of the narrow ideas of who or what a school leader can be and do. We present findings from a mixed-methods study of women school leaders from around the world. Drawing on an anonymous survey and interviews, and literatures from sociology, fashion studies, and cultural studies, we explore women’s experiences and identities as school leaders. The paper contributes to our understanding of professionalism and identity and also how we can better attract, support, and retain school leaders.

Capitalism and its offspring, neoliberalism, are omnipresent in modern and postmodern societies. Illich, Giroux, and McLaren, among others, point to the futility and inequity of current models of education that focus on standardization, vocationalism, and conformity. Running counter to these powerful hegemonic systems, critical pedagogues and educational philosophers such as hooks and Silverman follow philosophers Frankfurt and Wolf in identifying a teaching approach rooted in love. Such an ethic embodies a robust, punk confrontation to potentially damaging, dehumanizing institutional norms perpetrated by current systems of schooling (Hewitt & Smith, 2020). The authors present and discuss vignettes as a duoethnographic study of one teacher’s work with a high school choir in Colorado Springs, USA, through which she works to engage young people as compassionate artistic citizens (Elliott & Silverman, 2015; Hendricks 2018). By teaching with love and by modeling love, she teaches young people to love, embracing what Noddings (2005) identifies as an ethic of care. This choral community demonstrates the messy, anarchist ideal that Wright (2019) highlights as a necessary future for music education, wherein the educator diverts from teaching solely to standardized expectations to address the affiliative needs of her students through a love that desires good for her students (Fromm, 1956; Noddings, 2005)