We Decided to Stop Saying "Good Job": The Impact of Language Shifts in the Classroom

• In Event: Considering Music Teaching and Pedagogy

Abstract

Working as a group of critical practitioner friends, we designed a participatory action research project to demonstrate how seemingly small shifts in language, those beginning from one’s own understanding of positionality and practices of reflexivity, impact the lives of teachers and shift pedagogical practice. We placed at the centre of our focus Martin Buber’s conception of genuine dialogue, reminding ourselves that each time we meet the other with predisposed ideas, biases, assumptions, we shut down possibilities for ourselves and possibilities for the world. Meeting monthly as music educators (choral / band directors, studio and community) we all focused on the ways in which our responses to students brought each renewed ways of engaging in the teaching / learning process.

Author

• Cathy L. Benedict, Teachers College, Columbia University