Two Music Educators' Resistance of Competition

• In Event: Considering Music Teaching and Pedagogy

Abstract

Competition is often an inequitable system in music education that is exacerbated by the use of large ensemble performance scores in music teacher evaluation. The purpose of this intrinsic case study is to describe how contextual stakeholders and structural factors interacted with participants’ agency in their creation of a non-competitive performance festival. We used Priestley et al.’s (2015) ecological framework of teacher agency to examine agency as an emergent phenomenon. We provide a case description of two midwestern band directors’ resistance of competition, and emerging themes include paradigm shifts in graduate school and disillusionment with the status quo. Other participants, who were students, band boosters, and colleagues of the two directors, contributed relational context and verified the directors’ recollections.

Authors

• Olivia Tucker, University of New Mexico

• Robert C. Jordan, Adelphi University

• Christopher Hathaway, University of Wisconsin - LaCrosse