WAM! Reflecting on the Role of Music Education in Curtailing Diversity Among Music Education Students

• In Event: 67.055 - Critical Reflection and Diversity: Prospective and In-Service Teacher Learning to Teach Diverse Students

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents an examination of the role of music and music education coursework in the formation of preservice music teachers’ understanding of diversity. Results indicate that the presentation of diversity in curriculum materials strongly influences the development of music education students’ own notions of diversity by 1) restricting the discussion of diversity to Western Art Music (WAM), and 2) discouraging music education students from drawing upon their own funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) in understanding the diversity of music experience outside WAM.

Theoretical framework
This paper takes as a framework institutional Whiteness (Howard, 2003; Kohli, 2008, 2009; Ladson-Billings, 1995), arguing that the “sound of Whiteness” (Koza, 2009) in music education actively prevents preservice music teachers from understanding diversity. Musical taste is very tightly linked to personal and group identity (Rentfrow, Goldberg, & Levitin, 2011), so the exclusion of a student’s preferred music can feel like personal rejection—yet music education routinely excludes music preferred by preservice music educators. Researchers have criticized college music education for focusing on WAM performance (Volk, 1998; Legette, 2003; Howard, Swanson, & Campbell, 2014), and some have responded to calls for “cultural competency” (Gay, 1997, p. 7), developing “world music” courses, school residencies of non-WAM performers, and the like (Howard, Swanson, & Campbell, 2014), but this is uncommon. No work has been done with preservice music teachers to analyze their understanding of diversity, nor has research examined how that experience perpetuates the sound of Whiteness.

Methods and data sources
Primary data for this study is curriculum materials for music and music education coursework at a major public university in the southwestern United States, and interview data from students in the undergraduate and graduate music education programs at that university, as well as from inservice K-12 music teachers who graduated from the program. Music education, theory, and history curriculum materials were examined for their presentation of theory and methods of teaching for diverse students and for their coverage of music outside WAM. Interview transcriptions were imported into nVivo and coded using the procedures of thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2013).

Results
There is clear support for the first finding, that the curriculum actively restricts discussion of diversity to WAM traditions. The majority of music history and theory materials deal strictly with WAM; similarly, music education curriculum teaches WAM vocal and instrumental techniques and repertoire. The second finding, that music education students’ own notions of diversity are actively restricted by the standard curriculum, is also supported by student reflection data. The program focus on WAM is explicitly justified in terms of superior technical rigor and intellectual and aesthetic value, constructing a deficit discourse for non-WAM musics.

Scholarly significance
This study examines student reflection on diversity in music education, showing that the structures and practices of music teacher education actively promotes the exclusion of much of the music preservice teachers bring to the program, and encourages them to focus their attention, and that of their future students, on WAM instead of other traditions.

Author

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