Music, personhood, and eudaimonia: Implications for educative and ethical music education

Abstract

Abstract. This paper proposes that educative and ethical music making and teaching, which is based on a praxial philosophy of music education (Elliott and Silverman, 2014), can be carried out in a variety of ways that create places and spaces, in schools and community settings, for a variety of human values or "goods" that include, but go beyond, making and listening to classical instrumental music, or any other kind of music, for "the music itself."One premise of this philosophical discussion is that music does not have one value; music has numerous values, depending on the ways in which it is conceived, used, and taught by people who engage in specific musical styles. For example, when music education is ethically guided-when we teach people not only in and about music, but also through music-we achieve what Aristotle and many other philosophers consider the highest human value-eudaimonia-which is a multidimensional term we explain the body of this paper.Following an examination of three community music settings that exemplify educative and ethical musical interactions, the paper provides a brief explanation of the nature of personhood that draws from embodied, enactive, empathetic, and ecological concepts put forth by several contemporary cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind nature. This sections leads to an examination to main constituents of eudaimonia: happiness and wellbeing as conceived by various scholars during the last 2500 years.The discussion ends by integrated the above themes with a discussion of a praxial philosophy of music education and its implications for school and community music education.

A lifelong perspective for growing music teacher identity

“…Music teacher identity is connected to different facets of the self. For example, the "ethical self " determines what counts as correct action for the teacher (Elliott & Silverman, 2014;Regelski, 2012aRegelski, , 2012b. "Self-efficacy" (Bandura, 1997), which is the belief in one's capabilities to act to produce a given attainment, impacts on the effort that teachers make, their resilience, their relationship with students, and their enthusiasm and commitment to teaching (Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2004;Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2014;Tschannen-Moran, Hoy, & Hoy, 1998;Yost, 2006).…”

I drum, I sing, I dance: An ethnographic study of a West African drum and dance ensemble

“…Let your voice be heard (Abraham Adzenyah) 16 One profound outgrowth of musicing can be happiness and joy (Elliott & Silverman, 2014. Past and present discourses in research across numerous fields (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1999;Elliott & Silverman, 2014Haidt, 2006;Noddings, 2003;Silverman, 2010;Turino, 2008) suggest that several interrelated and codependent ingredients are both descriptive and predictive of happiness and enjoyment: a sense of connectedness, security, and personal autonomy; a disposition to play, experiment, strive, and practice toward increasing levels of achievement and repeated flow experiences; a desire to do things for their own sake; and a feeling of being recognized and valued for oneself and one's contribution to a group (Elliott & Silverman, 2014.…”

“…Tying these themes together, I suggest that it is musically, socially, and educationally unfortunate that some university teacher education programs in North America (and, perhaps, elsewhere) remain musically and educationally narrow and detached from the musical and social realities of many students' lives, as scholars have argued for decades (e.g., Asmus, 2001;Campbell, 2005;Volk, 1998;Choate, 1968;Campbell, 2008;Elliott, 1989Elliott, , 1995Elliott & Silverman, 2014Hebert & Campbell, 2000;Humphreys, 2004;Isbell, 2007;Nettl, 1995;Palmer, 1994;Reimer, 2003;Schwadron, 1967;Wang & Humphreys, 2009). Indeed, a central theme in our field's discourse concerns the pressing need to diversify music teacher education curricula to acknowledge, respect, and nurture university music students' awareness of non-Western musics that are made and valued (for a wide range of reasons) by students of different ages in disparate school and community populations.…”

The Enjoyment Cycle: A Phenomenology of Musical Enjoyment of 4- to 7-Year-Olds During Musical Play

“…A philosophical foundation for contemporary explorations of enjoyment is Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia , which scholars have linked to enjoyment via related issues of happiness (Franklin, 2010; Noddings, 2003), personhood (Elliott & Silverman, 2014a, 2014b), and flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Noddings (2003) offered the translation of “human flourishing” (p. 10) for Aristotle’s eudaimonia and argued that human flourishing served as a justification for happiness and as one of the principle aims of education.…”

“…By emphasizing the rigorous curriculum or devoted practice necessary to succeed and progress in music, some educators may further justify their programs and their roles in the school. In contrast to these three stances, others would argue that rigorous learning and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive; enjoyment may indeed contribute to deep learning (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Elliott & Silverman, 2014b; Noddings, 2003).…”