Critical perspectives of music pedagogy is frequently motivated from a top-down perspective addressing the need for music education to engage with different inequalities in society connected to aspects of gender, racism, social status, sexual identity and ability to name a few. Critical pedagogical thinkers such as Paolo Freire, Kevin Kumashiro and for example Juliet Hess within the music educational setting all agree upon the need to engage many of these challenges and also highlights the need to adapt the critical education to the local context. The top-down perspectives though might blur the didactical need for the teacher to identify what changes are fruitful to start with in the everyday educational setting. In this presentation I will discuss the possibility to switch to a bottom-up perspective starting with paying attention to interactions within the very educational setting.
Drawing on discursive psychology, positioning theory and conversation analysis attention to details within the interactional patterns within the educational setting could unfold how discourses distributes power unequally to the students. This knowledge of power distribution at the interactions offers, I will argue, a fruitful backdrop do redesign and reinvent your education in order to create a somewhat more inclusive music. Further, attempts to reinvent the music education, the understanding of music could be questioned, resulting in what Elisabeth Langman describes as a crisis of knowledge which goes beyond a critique of power.
The presentation is built upon philosophical reasoning, by putting critical pedagogy in dialogue with discursive psychology in particular revisiting results from my own former studies.
References:
Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and ridicule: towards a social critique of humour. London: SAGE.
Kumashiro, K. K. (2009). Against common sense: teaching and learning toward social justice (2d ed.).
Hess, J. (2019). Music education for social change : constructing an activist music education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Langmann, E. (2019). Mellan maktkritik och kunskapskriser. In L. Björkman & J. Bromseth (Eds.), Normkritisk pedagogik : perspektiv, utmaningar och möjligheter (pp. 161-182). Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed [Elektronisk resurs]. New York: Continuum.
Persson, M. (2019). Inte bara musik. Om elevers positionerande i grundskolans musikklassrum. Kungl. Musikhögskolan/Lunds Universitet
Persson, M., & Sand, E. (2021). En normkritisk blick på musikundervisning. In A. Backman Bister & M. Persson (Eds.), A Prima Vista. Möjligheter och utmaningar med praktiknära forskningsprojekt i musikpedagogik (pp. 121-142). Stockholm: Kungl. Musikhögskolan.