Mapping the "Borders" of a Music-Based Service-Learning Partnership

• In Event: 60.084 - Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 60.084-16 - Music Education SIG Roundtable: Ethics, Policies, and Partnerships

Abstract

Future music educators need to be prepared to respond to the communities that they will serve. They also need to be empowered to recognize and rectify power imbalances in a system that still perceives difference as deficit. Service-learning can reveal the “borders” that define such power imbalances and bring pre-service teachers face-to-face with those who have been labeled as deficit because of their differences. Music education has yet to explore this side of service-learning. The purpose of this project is to map the “borders” of a music-based service-learning project at a Boys and Girls club to show that making music with unfamiliar students, in an unfamiliar setting, in a new community can challenge participants beliefs about the students they serve.

Author

• Brian Michael Sullivan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign