Coping with Discomfort: Understanding Pedagogical Decision-making as Coping with Social Change

Abstract

The social tides of instability present in today’s world often require teachers to cope with social change in their pedagogical practices. Discomfort may be viewed as the beginning of a continuous critical reflective practice rather than a momentary emotive state: a way to see music education founded on an acceptance that nothing will be as it was, that nothing is ever supposed to remain static, and thus, no pedagogy is ever supposed to be the same for everyone. In this paper, I define coping with discomfort as a process of reflexivity that music teachers may already experience; it is continuous, incessant, and can help music teachers develop capacities to respond more actively to their students from diverse backgrounds.