Practicing Educational Inclusion in Music Education

Kelly-McHale (2013) has established that teachers’ curricular beliefs and practices play a significant role in welcoming or isolating students. The “include/exclude” choices that teachers make contribute to the role that music plays in students’ emerging identities and the identity that students share in music. Ranging from the posters that hang on the walls, to the music distributed in ensemble folders, to the behaviors deemed acceptable/unacceptable as students make or listen to music, teachers present both explicit and hidden curricular messages.

Too often, music composition is approached through the lens of European art music, where music theory is positioned as the gate through which students must enter. This is an unfortunate curricular choice, indeed an act of curriculum violence already evidenced in music education in the United States and in many nations around the globe where indigenous music and music-making practices are threatened.⁴ A more enlightened approach is possible.

Music teachers can enact culturally sustaining pedagogical practices⁵ as they design and present opportunities for students to compose. This means that teachers purposefully center students’ cultural backgrounds, experiences, and interests by honoring their musical practices as part of composition study. In this way, students can work within their cultural frames and comfort zones as well as explore other compositional practices. This approach reinforces the value of students’ musical heritages while expanding the range of sonic possibilities that may eventually become part of their personal composition landscape.

From Marginalization to Opportunity. For the strategies presented in this chapter to be fully implemented, one more area of exclusion must be addressed: the ongoing curricular marginalization of composition in music education. Research clearly indicates that teachers believe it is important for students to experience composing, but many remain perplexed about how to bring it into their curriculums (Menard, 2015; Shouldice, 2014; Strand, 2006; Orman, 2002). This is not surprising, as globally many music teachers are trained within the performance- dominated conservatory model (Campbell, Myers, & Sarath, 2016; Kratus, 2015), and therefore they graduate underprepared to embrace the potentials that composition offers for the education of students.

Marginalization is not only present in teacher preparation, but also in national curriculum documents. Drawing on the United States as an example, the 1994 National Standards for Arts Education identifies “Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines” as standard #4 within a set of nine standards. In response to composition’s appearance in equal positioning with singing and playing instruments, teachers voiced their discomfort and decried their lack of preparation (Bell, 2003; Byo, 1999). This perhaps influenced the subsequent standards revision in 2014.

In the latter document, composition and improvisation—two separate and unique musical experiences—are merged under the heading “Creating” at the K-8 level while composition is partnered with music theory at the secondary level. Where the 1994 document sparked interest in composition and set forth the pursuit of scholarly work to advance knowledge and support evolving practices, the 2014 document tucked composition out of sight at the elementary level and visually implied music theory to be a precursor to composing for secondary students with a subsection titling of “Theory/ Composition.” Fortunately, the work initiated in response to the 1994 standards has yielded numerous books, book chapters, and articles—even this handbook—to advance pedagogical knowledge and practice in the teaching and learning of composition so that every child can have the opportunity to compose.

Given the wealth of resources now available to music teacher-educators, practitioners, and pre-s ervice teachers, it is time to bring composition fully inside the margins of music education. We can no longer look away from the students who are eager to compose—whether they be enrolled in our present offerings or situated beyond the bounds of our current classroom rosters. Every student deserves the opportunity to exercise the full range of their musical potentials in every direct experience—singing, playing, composing, improvising, and listening—of music. Within this frame, composition provides a unique opportunity for students to find themselves and define their artistic voice. As they compose, they explore their understandings of self, others, and the world around them through music.

Empowered young composers may not be content with being situated at the margins of education, society, or politics once they have found their compositional voices and know how to use them to explore their understandings of themselves, others, and the world around them. They may use their artistry to help create the changes they would like to see—as composers so often do.

References: Ada, E. N., Comoutos, N., Karamitrou, A., & Kazak, Z. (2019). Relationships between dispositional flow, motivational climate, and self-talk in physical education classes. Physical Educator, 76(2), 357-384.

Baird, A. A., Roellke, E. V., & Zeifman, D. M. (2017). Alone and adrift: The association between mass school shootings, school size, and student support. Social Science Journal, 54(3), 261-270.

Beeler, S. B. (1998). Throw your tooth on the roof: Tooth traditions from around the world. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Bell, C. L. (2003). Beginning the dialogue: Teachers respond to the national standards in music. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education (1), 31-42.

Beynon, M. (2016, November). Mindstorms revisited: Making new construals of Seymour Papert’s legacy. International Conference EduRobotics 2016 (pp. 3-19). Springer.

Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. Hazelden Publishing.

Byo, S. J. (1999). Classroom teachers’ and music specialists’ perceived ability to implement the national standards for music education. Journal of Research in Music Education, 47(2), 111-123.

Campbell, P. S., Myers, D. E., & Sarath, E. W. (2016). Transforming music study from its foundations: A manifesto for progressive change in the undergraduate preparation of music majors. In Redefining music studies in an age of change (pp. 59-99). Routledge.

Cooper, C. R., & Seginer, R. (2018). Introduction: Navigating pathways in multicultural nations: Identities, future orientation, schooling, and careers. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 160,7-13.

Desmond, M., &Western, B. (2018). Poverty in America: New directions and debates. Annual Review of Sociology, 44, 305-318