White Music Educators and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Paradoxes and Promising Practices

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

Abstract

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) has become an accepted response to the “demographic imperative” that a teaching force comprised predominantly of White teachers will need to learn effective ways to communicate with, instruct, and empower students whose cultural identities differ from their own. Accordingly, this study explored the culturally responsive practice of three White music educators who taught predominately students of color in an urban emergent community in the United States. Theoretical literature on CRP and critical studies of Whiteness informed the analysis. Findings illuminated ways that teachers’ practices cohered with and contradicted central tenets of CRP. White raced consciousness, in particular, presented barriers to cultural responsiveness, a finding suggesting implications for teacher education that will be discussed in the presentation.

Author

• Julia Shaw, Indiana University - Bloomington