Student Success in a University Music Program: Tapping the Diversity of Social and Cultural Capital

• In Event: 61.055 - Music Education in the Contexts of Race, Religion, Culture, and Current Events

Abstract

It has been observed that college-level music schools perpetuate the sound of whiteness (Koza, 2009) through a repertoire of western classical art music that excludes other traditions. Yet the ability of students to mobilize their extracurricular social and cultural capital is vital to their academic success (Rios-Aguilar & Kiyama, 2012; in music schools, exclude musical traditions are students’ extracurricular capital. How does this exclusion affect their academic success? To address this question, we use a life history approach (Lewis, 1961) to examine undergraduate music students’ extracurricular capital before, during, and after college. Results suggest that academically successful students tap their extracurricular capital to support their studies in spite of institutional barriers, while less successful students focus on the academic repertoire.

Authors

• Richard C. Miller, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Katrina Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas