Introduction: The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

Abstract

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education attends to the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education. Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist, and separatist tendencies highlight the imperative for music education to extend beyond nominal policy agendas to critically consider the ways in which understandings about society are upheld or unsettled and the ways in which knowledge about diversity is produced. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly foundations that this book builds upon before introducing the four sections of the book and contributing chapters. The first section of the book focuses on the politics of inquiry in music education research. The second section attends to the paradoxes and challenges that arise as music teachers negotiate cultural identity and tradition within the political frames and ideals of the nation state. The third section considers diversities that are often overlooked or silenced, and the final section turns to matters of leadership in higher music education as an inherently political and ethical undertaking. Together, chapters work towards a more critical, complex, and nuanced understanding of the ways in which the politics of diversity shape our ideals of what music education is, and what it is for.

Visions for intercultural music teacher education in complex societies

“…The research illustrates how music teachers and teacher educators engage with various kinds of processes of censorship and intersectional cultural translation, as teachers work to align their professional boundaries within local and social (e.g., caste, ethnic, race, gender, religious) power structures (e.g., Badarne & Ehrlich, 2019; Miettinen, 2019; Timonen et al, 2021; Treacy et al, 2021; Westerlund, Karlsen, & Kallio, 2021). Above all, it exemplifies how teachers’ knowledge production is intertwined with the multilayered and multifaceted politics of diversity (Kallio et al, 2021) not reducible to simple rules to be adhered, and how transnational collaboration can help in “seeing” one’s own taken for granted starting points more clearly.…”

“…Understand the value of co-constructing shared visions while engaging in critical reflection regarding whose visions shape the shared visions and whose remain absent, unspoken, or silenced, and whose differences are deemed “diversity-relevant” (Kallio et al, 2021; Treacy, 2019);…”

“…Recognize that an individual teacher educator’s responsibility over particular courses needs to be linked to the wider structural challenges of music teacher education through continuous institutional discussions to nurture a more collective understanding on how power is intertwined in cultural distribution and the production of diversity at the institutional level to nurture a collective understanding of the politics of diversity (Kallio et al, 2021; Miettinen et al, 2018);…”

Student teachers’ and teacher educators’ pedagogical reflections on piano courses in Finnish primary school teacher education

“…Many studies have been carried out in the context of music as a school subject, especially considering teaching and music teacher education (see, for example, Kallio et al, 2021; Rikandi, 2012; Westerlund & Gaunt, 2021). Nonetheless, unlike students training as specialist music teachers, most Finnish primary school student teachers have only a general secondary education in music.…”

Listening with ‘Big Ears’: Accountability in cross-cultural music education research with Indigenous partners

“…. as a search for directions in which we might better listen (and listen better)” ( Kallio, 2021a , p. 62). I conclude by proposing a revised understanding of Listening with “Big Ears” as one possible way for non-Indigenous researchers using a CBPR approach to enhance their application of Indigenist research methodology, especially in demonstrating their accountability to Indigenous co-researchers, participants, and communities, as they engage collaboratively in music education research.…”