web viewkoza (2008) introduces a useful concept to illustrate my problem, that of binning, which she...

Curtis PrichardMUS-E518 Foundations of Music Education

Philosophy as Praxis

This paper details an experiment I conducted as an educator, wherein

I attempted to integrate several philosophical and practical changes

into my teaching. I will discuss my sources of inspiration for the

changes I made, and analyze my classroom from the perspective of

several philosophies of music education and education more broadly. I

claim in this paper that willingness to embrace different teaching

styles can help facilitate learner outcomes, despite sometimes

seeming to shrink the role of the teacher in the process. As it went on,

my project persuaded me that letting go of preconceived notions of

teaching, learning, and the roles of both educators and students can

lead to more fruitful pathways. I explore this paradigm disruption and

make an effort to envision the implications for my future classrooms.

Shifting Perspectives

It was 9:06 on a Monday morning, and the second hand seemed to

have slowed to a crawl as I sat facing my students’ silent, downcast

faces. I had only asked a simple question; an open-ended question that

I assured them had no predetermined answer. As we sat in silence, a

wry thought crossed my mind, generated no doubt by the reading of

Paulo Freire I had just been doing – the hierarchy of the oppressors

runs deep. My students, who talk animatedly with one another and me

after class, clam up when asked questions in class. Their eyes turn

down and they shuffle uncomfortably. I read these thoughts into them


because I recognize their caution in my own experiences, both as a

victim and an agent of a system that questions everything but itself. I

had labored wearily in the stratified spaces, accepting my labels as

fact, for many years. This fatigue helped me embrace a new

possibility: that of utilizing nomadic thought. Gould (2009) describes

this in music education as starting with the questions, “…how might

we teach and learn music in ways that go beyond what we already

know about music. How might we explore music by starting from

music, rather than what we think music might be?” (p. 128) In asking

my students simply, “What do you want to learn about horn and

teaching brass?” I was trying to let go and begin wandering. I wanted

to let go of what I thought brass pedagogy ought to be, in favor of

learning what my students had to say. As the experiment progressed,

my goal broadened, and I started attempting to forgo my pre-defined

idea of what I thought teaching might be, and tried to return to

teaching itself as a starting point.

During this first semester of classroom teaching, I had started

to doubt my abilities as an educator. I subconsciously and at times

consciously believed I did not have the disposition to be a teacher at

all. In retrospect, this is because I had a very specific definition of the

word, “teacher.” I had taken classes almost exclusively from teachers

who Freire (1968) might describe as “suffering from narration

sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless,


static, compartmentalized, and predictable” (p. 71). Teachers were to

me those who had the right answers, whose authority in the classroom

was unchallenged. Teachers – my best ones – had often been old white

guys nearing the end of their careers. They called on years of

experience to take command of classrooms, where they doled out

wisdom in ample portions to any willing receptacles. They embodied

Freire’s concept of banking education, where the teacher holds

knowledge and simply gives it to the students (Freire, 1968). I clung

to these techniques because those teachers were at times effective,

producing students who went on to become leaders in the field of

music. While it is obvious now to me that that definition of teacher is

narrow and delimiting of possibilities, for years I labored under the

weight of the belief that teachers were like that – and I was not. I

could aspire to greatness, but never quite reach it without what

seemed like the natural gift of teaching.

Koza (2008) introduces a useful concept to illustrate my

problem, that of binning, which she uses to explain the ways in which

systems retain their power. She says, “binning relies on sets of

criteria that help to distinguish the contents of one bin from another”

(p. 151). I had a clear bin or categorization of “good” teachers and

“bad” teachers, and I felt that I myself did not fit very neatly into the

former. As with Koza’s use of binning to illustrate ongoing racism in

music education, part of this problem is systemic – pre-service


teachers are taught to recognize difference in teachers and

methodologies, and usually we give these differences value

judgments. No one had told me to find my own strengths as an

educator and build on those. Instead, I approached teaching the same

way I had done with performing on my instrument: Find a good model

and imitate. The only models available to me did not share many of my

characteristics, however, and the resultant attempt to become like

them made me feel inauthentic.

Changes

As my dissatisfaction with my teaching persisted, I felt I needed to

make a change. It was during my first semester of regular classroom

teaching when I asked my simple question and became aware of how

difficult creating open, or smooth spaces can be. Richerme (2013)

contrasts smooth spaces with the more prevalent striated or delimited

spaces in music education, calling to attention the “boundaries of

methodologies… class labels such as band, choir, music appreciation,

and music technology, and the long-standing requirements of concerts

and festivals to name a few” (p. 45). These categories and demands

placed upon teachers erect walls between subject matter, students,

and teachers that often go unnoticed. The school administration had

labeled my class as brass techniques, for example, an action that

limited the content that those in charge would consider appropriate.

Asserting that the inhabitants of smooth spaces are nomads,


Richerme (2013) states, “While nomads may follow paths from one

point to another, they emphasize the path rather than the origins or

destinations” (p. 44). Nomadic thought seeks to refocus attention to

process, and it seemed one of the keys for me might be to find a

better balance between product and process. My own education had

trained me to focus exclusively on product. I had an opportunity, then,

to find nomadic perspectives within a somewhat rigidly defined

structure, and hope that by doing so I could create a space where

student learning and creativity could improve.

At the onset of my project, I gave my students a few days’

notice, telling them to come to class the following Monday with some

ideas about what they wanted to learn in the weeks to come. Although

I did not use informal learning to any great extent, I experienced

similar trepidation to what Lucy Green (2008) described in her own

experiments’ teachers – I worried that I might not meet the school’s

or my students’ expectations for the course. I also felt curious as to

what my role as teacher would look like in my brave new world, as her

teachers indicated that they each became “…an observer and guide

who stands back, rather than an expert who instructs” (p. 36). I even

told my students that I had decided to experiment, and I assured both

them and myself that I had a backup plan were disaster to strike. I

placed restrictions on the available topics, of course – we had covered

tuba, euphonium, and trombone, with horn and trumpet remaining.


Going back to that morning, it took a while for students to start

responding. I tried my best not to disrupt the uncomfortable silence.

Eventually one of the students who had known me before August

spoke up, tentatively suggesting that we discuss varying types of

articulation across brass instruments. I smiled encouragingly and

wrote it down. After that, the floodgates seemed to open, and almost

all of the students shared multiple ideas. The exception was the

youngest member in the class, who pulled me aside before he left and

offered a few suggestions in private. I felt satisfied and oddly relieved;

it was the first sign that changes were possible, and, judging from my

students’ reactions, might even help in some way.

Following day one, I mapped out a fairly logical pathway to

traverse through topics on horn pedagogy. My aim was to guide the

students by posing questions and shying away from telling them what

to do or think. Even preparing for the first few class discussions

presented a new challenge for me. I worried about such issues as how

to dress – should I dress casually to show solidarity with my students?

I also felt the pull towards what Dewey frequently referred to as the

“Either/Or” mentality (Dewey, 1938). In typical reactionary fashion, I

thought I had to abandon my old form of teaching altogether in order

to embrace a student-centered approach. I became fearful, to be

honest. I wondered how I should behave if everything went wrong – if

no one talked and they simply ceded the authority to me. What if this


blows up in my face? I also worried that it would go exactly as

planned, and my students and I would talk and have promising

discussions – but then we would not retain what we said. Without

intending to, I had begun wrestling with several age-old questions:

What does it mean to learn? What does it mean to teach? How can

teachers determine whether learning has occurred? I started to

formulate answers to these questions slowly.

The Teacher’s Role

As my class became less lecture-oriented and revolved more around

discussions, I naturally believed I had discovered a straightforward

solution to my problems. Having asked myself whether the teacher is

the sage on the stage, or the guide on the side, a dichotomy first

described by Allison King (King, 1993), I made my choice to embrace

the guide on the side perspective. Selecting between these two

extremes simplified the problem in a satisfying way. Before too long,

however, my reductionism caught up with me, and I found myself

questioning what seemed like a choice between false dichotomies. I

decided to cast aside this Either/Or question in favor of seeking

middle ground.

John Dewey’s writings inspired my conception of the teacher’s

role the most. Dewey states,

“The way is, first, for the teacher to be

intelligently aware of the … past experiences


of those under instruction, and, secondly, to

allow the suggestion made to develop into a

plan and project by means of the further

suggestions contributed and organized into a

whole by members of the group” (p. 71-2,

Dewey, 1938).

This comprised my basic plan for class. I knew my students’

immediate past experiences fairly well, and I started seeking to draw

on their wider experiences, too. Rather than simply lecture, I gave the

students a general topic – such as beginning horn pedagogy – and

asked for their help in deciding which aspects to address. Initially I

reserved the right to make additions or subtractions from the

curriculum, depending on their answers. However, I found I had no

need of worry, as the students were able to generate all of the topics I

had wanted to cover.

Paulo Freire’s conception of the teacher differs slightly, and I

freely borrowed what I pleased from him, again seeking to forge my

own new ground. My primary takeaway from Freire revolved around

the idea of problem-posing education (Freire, 1968). I approached

several topics from this direction, including the idea of teaching

transposition and alternate fingerings. For example, I started a

discussion by displaying a PowerPoint slide with a problem, such as,

“Horn players have to transpose on-sight sooner than the other


brasses. How can we teach this kind of transposition to young

students?” This led to interesting student input in every case, and

highlighted one distinct advantage of the experiment, that I came to

see myself as a learner alongside my students. Of course, Freire

would argue that I did not focus enough on the subject of oppression;

even my selection of topics in some ways limited student freedom. My

response to this assertion is to emphasize my own marginalization in

the situation. As an Associate Instructor at a large school of music, I

was very much at the service of a system with great power over me.

The goals for the class come from the top down, and I have little

influence over what content the university expects me to cover. The

only possible change for me was how I approached and taught the

necessary content.

Interestingly, even as Freire might critique my having not gone

far enough with freedom, Dewey might say that I traveled too far at

times by merely reacting to the existing order without analyzing my

own priorities. One class day in particular comes to mind, when

through happenstance I had nothing planned for the playing portion

of class. I decided to implement an informal approach, telling the

students simply to give each other space, practice whatever they

wanted to on their instruments, and I would walk around, available to

help. I found that withdrawing my input altogether for a brief time

offered students freedom to work on what they wanted; however, to


an outsider this might seem like a reaction without a theory to

support it. Admittedly, I did not think through that day very clearly in

advance. Dewey argued that a theory and practice of education was

essential. “Let us say that the new education emphasizes the freedom

of the learner. Very well… What does freedom mean and what are the

conditions under which it is capable of realization?” (p. 22, Dewey,

1938). Looking back, in not explicitly defining my intentions, I may

have succumbed to being overly reactive at times, experimenting for

the sake of experimentation, rather than student outcomes. Although

it might be a fair critique, the underlying purpose behind all of my

trial and error was to ameliorate conditions in the classroom to make

them more conducive to learning. Occasionally I stepped too far into

the unknown, but I always reined the class in when necessary.

Events Unfolding

My rapport with the students deepened as the semester continued. I

sought out any way to engage them creatively. We did compositional

activities, first by rote with only a few notes, and gradually expanding

to write arrangements by ear as a group during class time. I had the

brass students give private lessons to the non-brass students; I had

the non-brass students give private lessons back to the brass students.

I solicited students’ ideas on the merits of rote teaching and how to

teach hand proper positioning for horn players. We discussed methods

of teaching transposition and when to start. My students and I talked


at length about what they hoped to gain from the class, and we

altered the emphasis from performing brass instruments to teaching

them accordingly.

As the process of approaching the classroom differently

unfolded, a smooth space began to form. I noticed student creativity

flourishing as the semester progressed. As the class and I

contemplated appropriate means of assessment, the idea of having

the students teach each other surfaced. Given that this is a class for

future teachers, the idea seemed fitting, and we ran with it. I broke

the teaching sessions into three settings, each designed to give the

students a taste of teaching brass, sequenced in such a way that we

started with simple situations and progressed to increasingly complex

ones. The first teaching episode was a one-on-one private lesson,

teaching as if the lesson were day one of a new student. The second

episode involved teaching the class a rote song on their instruments.

The culminating episode was also the most open-ended, teaching the

class for twenty to twenty-five minutes, utilizing any or even no

method books, and covering content selected by each student-teacher.

Each student approached the lessons with uniqueness, and I learned a

great deal.

The final teaching episode elicited creative responses from the

students. Some simply emphasized aspects of playing that I had not.

Curiously, the male students stuck to the usual class format most


closely, and the two female students took more liberties. The

enculturation of men and women into separated genders might

explain this variance to some extent. Braidotti (2011) noted the

different results of men’s gender versus women’s by saying, “[Men]

are disembodied, and by this process gain entitlement to

transcendence and subjectivity, [women] are overembodied and

thereby consigned to immanence” (p. 144). One of the points here is

that men’s being conferred authority without earning it does not work

out well for women or men. Perhaps one consequence of this is that

men feel compelled to approach teaching from the position of

authority. As Jorgensen (1997) states, “The notion of teaching as

assisting, helping, and caring has historically been associated with

feminine roles” (p. 16). It is possible that male teachers, less able to

see the dominant order, are therefore less likely to subvert it.

Other students, meanwhile, abandoned the usual rules and

approached the lesson from a wholly different point of view. One such

example is a student who created a board game for the class to play.

Each space had a separate kind of activity on it, such as playing a

repetitive exercise or writing a three-note composition, and the

students took turns rolling die to reach the conclusion. The students

and I enjoyed the game, and its success caused me to reflect on the

merits of keeping assessments and rubrics as flexible as possible to

allow for broad differentiation of approaches. I wonder how that


student might have responded had I set a strict guideline for

achieving certain grades.

Where do we go from here?

One of the topics I never addressed properly during my project was

my own privilege. I still cannot say for certain what role my race and

sex played, or whether I would have felt as comfortable changing my

teaching if I were of a different race or sex. McIntosh (1990) made

clear that white people have an inability to see their own privilege

many times. She says, “My schooling gave me no training in seeing

myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a

participant in a damaged culture” (p. 2). I see this lack of vision in my

own actions, and I wonder how I am perpetuating racial disparities by

my very existence. I am a teacher at a large, supposedly diverse

school of music, and four out of five of my students were white (the

other was Asian-American). In the future I hope to give more thought

to this, particularly if I ever have a position of authority where I can

work to question not only why others are oppressed, but also why I

am given unearned power.

To give an example of the cultural privilege I inherited, I turn to

an instance of teaching my students a Hanukkah song. As I watched a

video recording of myself from that day, I noted that I casually said

something like, “Hanukkah music is happy and upbeat, so let’s play it

with some energy!” I realized afterwards that I know almost nothing


about Hanukkah music; I only know what Western band composers

have presented to me as Hanukkah music. This sort of false

multiculturalism exists in many of the method books I used in class,

and I wish I had discussed this ongoing misrepresentation of cultures

with my students, as suggested by Abramo (2007). Abramo argues

that examples like those above actually serve to reinforce already held

notions of race, including the ethnocentricity of white Americans

(Abramo, 2007).

Of the dispositions I want to focus on for future classrooms, I

believe the most relevant is humility. Turning again to Green (2008),

it is important to note the similarities in what might be called culture

shock experienced by the teachers and by myself as we made

changes. Her experiment of course differed greatly from mine in its

scope and methodology; however, the necessity of humility on the part

of the teacher in making such changes can be clearly seen in both

instances. We ought to question the assumption that being good

teachers should be our ultimate goal, because that places the

emphasis on us instead of our students. Instead, we might concentrate

on which processes produce the greatest learner outcomes. The

problem is that the goals of being a good teacher and helping our

students learn do not always look the same. Quoting Green (2008),

“[These findings] include the notion that pupils seem capable of

progressing even when teachers do not help them…” (p. 37). The idea


that students can grow without teachers’ explicit aid should give us

pause.

Early in my private lesson teaching, when I was only a few years

older than the students I taught, I often found myself accidentally

inhibiting student learning by various means. Whether talking too

much or having my own ego overly involved in the process, I stalled

student progress from time to time. Of course, I thought I was being

very teacher-like in the process. I assigned one student an etude that I

myself liked, and the student complained about it. I rebuffed him,

telling him to practice anyway. The results were predictable: The

student failed to practice, and I tried to guilt him into working on it

the following week. We fought a passive-aggressive battle over the

course of our lessons together, and neither of us was made a better

human by it. I faced what Jorgensen (1997) called the challenge of “…

celebrating pleasure as an end as well as a means…” (p. 89), and I

answered with a strong No to pleasure as a means, trying to be like

those who had taught me.

This project showed me that I have something valuable to offer

to my students without becoming like my mentor teachers. Indeed, I

have value to offer without trying to become like anyone else at all. I

learned that I can utilize numerous tools to teach, and that through

the process I will learn and my students will, too. I plan to structure

curriculum for brass techniques in the spring using more of these


methods of student-centered education. Richerme (2014) speaks to

the importance of considering not only how we differ from each other,

but also how we differ from ourselves over time (p. 27). More than any

other time in my life, I have observed noticeable changes in myself. I

have started to become more attuned to the “continually different” (p.

27) in myself and my teaching. Earlier in my writing I noted that I

began engaging with questions such as what it means to learn and to

teach. I am satisfied to say that I do not have more answers – rather, I

have more questions. How can I engage my students in the learning

experience? What does the experience of my class need to look like to

encourage future growth in both my students and myself? In what

ways am I inhibiting student growth through my actions? The

questions have grown more specific, and I hope to live the answers

through action, not simply talking about them.

Jorgensen spends many pages urging music educators to move

away from Either/Or thinking in order to embrace a This/And

mentality (Jorgensen, 1997). Her writing indicates that balancing

between such extremes as musical understanding and pleasure, for

example, is the vocation of the music teacher. I agree, and I argue

that this can be much more strenuous on a teacher than simply

following the well-worn scripts of previous generations. Our best

option is to forge ahead in whatever ways seem possible and helpful

to our students. In doing so, our traditional role as teachers may


appear to diminish, and our humility will help us gracefully,

courageously, let go.

Works Cited

Abramo, J. (2007). Mystery, fire and intrigue: Representation and commodification of race inband literature. Visions of Research in Music Education, 9/10.

Braidotti, R. (2011). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporaryfeminist theory (2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). New York: Continuum.

Gould, E. (2009). Women working in music education: The war machine. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 17(2), 126-143.

Green, L. (2008). Music, informal learning and the school: A new classroom pedagogy. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Jorgensen, E. (1997). In search of music education. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

King, A. (1993). From sage on the stage to guide on the side. College Teaching, 41(2), 30-35.

Koza, J. E. (2008). Listening for whiteness: Hearing racial politics in undergraduate school music. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 16(2), 145-155.

McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 90(2), 31-35.


Richerme (2013). Nomads with maps: Musical connections in a glocalized world. Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education, 12(2), 41-59.

Richerme, L. K. (2014). Difference and music education. In C. Randles (Ed.), Music education: Navigating the future (pp. 16-28). New York: Routledge.

web viewkoza (2008) introduces a useful concept to illustrate my problem, that of binning, which she...

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