{"title":"Music Education and the Limbo of Unrealized Possibilities","authors":"Deborah Bradley","doi":"10.22176/act21.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act21.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"In this introductory editorial, I explore whether music education has moved to a stance of moralism rather than one of ethical teaching and action. In this essay, I define morality as the principles that enable one to discern if something is right or wrong, good or bad; ethics guide an individual or group’s behavior or activity based on those principles. 1 Therefore, any ethical action emerges from principles grounded in a moral belief. The questions posed in this editorial arise from a recent opinion article that called for “a less moralistic humanities.” What does this call mean, and how might it look in music education, a discipline classified within both the humanities and the social sciences? Following the discussion, I introduce the six articles in this issue of Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education. Each essay relates in some way to the question of “a less moralistic humanities,” for which the editorial introduction serves as a prompt for consideration.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74395699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Musical Value and Praxical Music Education","authors":"Thomas A. Regelski","doi":"10.22176/act21.1.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act21.1.15","url":null,"abstract":"Since post-war II, music education has advocated its presumed aesthetic benefits. Aesthetic advocacy became instituted through the abundance of publications by Bennett Reimer (e.g., 1970, 1989, 1995, 2003). That aesthetic meme is still influential. The debate about Music Education as Aesthetic Education MEAE may be weakening; still, the philosophically untutored conviction remains that involvement with music automatically promotes an educationally valuable aesthetic experience. Hence, teachers need only to enable music experiences. By definition, however, aesthetic experiences defy explicit evaluation. This lack of noticeably improved ‘aesthetic refinement' creates legitimation crises among school boards and education ministries, doubting music's value in the curriculum. Following a critique of Reimer’s theorizing, I argue for a praxical alternative for music education. Compared to the vagueness of aesthetic experience, praxical music education promotes music as a social praxis that depends on substantial and noticeable musicianship gains capable of continuation in adult life. These demonstrate the evident social values of musicking that make aesthetic rationales unnecessary. I argue for a 'turn' in music education that regards music as a social praxis promoting musical sociality throughout life and society, one that is philosophically and pragmatically warranted, and where long-term practical (praxical) results are gained instead of 'activities' that terminate with graduation. A philosophy that guides music educators to promote musicking responsive to human sociality can instead foster professional teaching praxis that society can respect and value as with the other helping professions.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74987371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coping with Discomfort: Understanding Pedagogical Decision-making as Coping with Social Change","authors":"Gabriela Ocádiz","doi":"10.22176/act21.1.80","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act21.1.80","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80947183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Trauma of Separation: Understanding How Music Education Interrupted My Relationship with the More-Than-Human World","authors":"Tawnya D. Smith","doi":"10.22176/act21.1.172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act21.1.172","url":null,"abstract":"I grew up immersed in the sounds of nature. However, throughout childhood, the ambient soundscape that once thrilled me was usurped by human-made sounds. I conducted an autoethnographic inquiry to seek the ways that my early and middle childhood music education diverted my attention from local soundscapes to a near-exclusive focus on anthropocentric sound. During early childhood, I shed my nature-centric musical identity to conform to a musical community that prioritized human-made sounds over the natural soundscape. In middle childhood, listening became an anxiety-ridden activity as hyper attention to human-made sounds became necessary to navigate childhood complexities and to function in my musical environments. Isolation and dissociation from the natural sounds that I valued as a young child resulted in my trauma of separation from the earth. Conclusions are contextualized so that music educators might draw connections between music and nature to avoid practices that perpetuate the trauma of separation with their students.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74450157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Counternarratives: Troubling Majoritarian Certainty","authors":"K. Hendricks","doi":"10.22176/act20.3.58","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.3.58","url":null,"abstract":"Narratives featuring majoritarian (e.g., White, male, middle/upper class, and/or heterosexual) protagonists are so prevalent in U.S. society that they have become the normative reference point by which some members of society may view and label others. They may, therefore, implicitly consider those who do not fit the majoritarian mold as somehow inferior or deficient. Counternarratives challenge majoritarian biases by normalizing the experiences of minoritized persons and inviting their stories to rupture the dominant narrative. In this article, I engage the concept of counternarratives by relating my encounter with a historical narrative that differed from the majoritarian one I had been taught. I then describe how counternarratives can take a reader on a journey through time, sociality, and place to evoke a sense of connection with a non-majoritarian protagonist and awaken the possibility for seeing the world anew. The article continues with descriptions of counternarrative texts and their potentials, first from literature and contemporary autobiography and then from within music education.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80499651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Background Music: Using Narrative Inquiry to Explore the Hidden Aspects of Musicians’ Career Development","authors":"Nicole Canham","doi":"10.22176/act20.4.146","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.4.146","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered a significant career shock at every level of the music sector, bringing with it renewed recognition of the vulnerability of many creative people. Multiple research approaches are needed to understand the consequences of the pandemic for musicians as workers and the ways in which musicians frame and describe their career choices. In this paper, I offer a way to amplify our listening to musicians’ stories through combining narrative inquiry with a narrative therapy lens as a means of tuning into musicians’ background music—the guiding beliefs that shape professional identity development and artistic practice. Simon’s narrative portrait forms the centrepiece of this article. Through exploring how his approach to informal learning developed and sustained his professional identity, Simon’s story demonstrates how a convergence framework of narrative inquiry and narrative therapy can be harnessed to understand identity continuity in musicians’ careers and the ways in which musicians respond to career development challenges.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86289758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Considerations of Truth and Fact in Narrative Analysis","authors":"J. Nichols","doi":"10.22176/act20.4.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.4.45","url":null,"abstract":"A central understanding of narrative scholarship is that stories are ever in process, taking shape in each recounting according to the needs, purposes, and understandings of the teller. Sometimes participants share accounts that are incomplete or inaccurate, shrink from voicing their feelings, or silence their accounting altogether. In this study, I draw on difficult stories, shared by military bandswomen who endured a traumatic government investigation into their personal lives during the McCarthy era, to examine the distinctions between empirical facts and interpretive truth, trouble the linkage between objective and subjective ways of knowing, and consider the researcher’s ethical responsibility when a participant hides the facts or refuses to voice their truths.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88207229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Narrative is Not Emancipatory, but Affective Moments Might Be","authors":"Laura Kapalka Richerme","doi":"10.22176/act20.3.124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.3.124","url":null,"abstract":"Given that the nature of narrative has gone largely unexamined in music education literature, the purpose of this philosophical inquiry is to consider whether narrative creation and telling might be more inherently liberating or confining than Bowman (2006) suggests. I argue that narratives are ordered, temporarily frozen accounts of complicated prior experiences that individuals justify within prevailing ethical norms. While individuals may feel liberated during the process of forming and telling self-stories, narratives inherently resist emancipation. Subsequently, I examine the nature of affective moments and their relationship with narrative. While both narratives and affect theoryinspired writings represent reality, the latter emphasize sensations and mundane encounters not embedded within a clear plotline. Affective moments serve a crucial purpose in our contemporary precarious and emotionally charged world. Affective moments involve interruption, illuminating the distinction between now and could be. As such, the potential for emancipation, although not necessarily its realization, is an inherent part of affective moments. I end by discussing possible implications for qualitative research, including potential resonances and uncertainties.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85633602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When Narrative is Impossible: Difficult Knowledge, Storytelling, and Ethical Practice in Narrative Research and Pedagogy in Music Education","authors":"Juliet Hess","doi":"10.22176/act20.3.79","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.3.79","url":null,"abstract":"Stories impel us to grapple with the humanity of another. Using story to recount experience, however, raises both challenges and questions. This paper explores the complexities that arise when narrative researchers attempt to render stories of trauma. I draw upon what Deborah Britzman (1998) calls “difficult knowledge” to explore what encounters with stories of trauma may produce, and I consider both the potential of narrative research and the pedagogical potential of both stories and music to facilitate wrestling with difficult knowledge. I grapple with two related questions: 1) What considerations should be taken into account to engage ethically in narrative research, particularly narratives that emanate from trauma or that include stories of trauma? and 2) What considerations should be taken into account when sharing stories of trauma as an educator? I then consider both the impossibility of representation within narrative in light of difficult knowledge, and further examine how Delbo’s (1995/2014) “useless knowledge” unsettles straightforward understandings of difficult knowledge in pedagogy and in research. Finally, I explore implications for researchers and educators, followed by an examination of a politics of refusal in telling, representing, or engaging with story.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88298487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A Peculiar Sensation”: Mirroring Du Bois’ Path into Predominantly White Institutions in the 21st Century","authors":"J. McCall","doi":"10.22176/act20.4.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22176/act20.4.10","url":null,"abstract":"Over 130 years have expired since William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois transitioned from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Nashville, Tennessee, to a predominantly White institution (PWI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While Du Bois’ HBCU experiences were not always peaceful in the then Jim Crow South, when compared to his PWI experiences with regard to race, his HBCU experiences were far more encouraging. Despite centuries of civil rights and legislative efforts toward dismantling an educational system initially created to serve only White students, African Americans today continue to confront racist structures mirroring those encountered by Du Bois. In this paper, I employ Du Bois’ experiences of negotiating his path into a PWI and his double consciousness theory as a reflective framework, asserting that a great deal of work remains in order to provide safe, anti-racist spaces for African Americans pursuing postsecondary degrees at PWIs, particularly in their music programs.","PeriodicalId":29990,"journal":{"name":"Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79960780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}