A messy ideal: Re-conceptualizing social justice in music education through the lenses of alterity, critical confrontation and radical democracy

Project summary

Issues of social justice have taken a foremost position in music education scholarship and practice in the past decade. Scholars have become critically focused on the ways in which current teaching and learning practices address or perpetuate a gap between normative educational practices and the needs and abilities of students from a variety of sociocultural landscapes (Allsup 2002; 2003; 2004; Allsup & Shieh 2012; Westerlund, 2006; Jafurs, 2004; Gould et al, 2009; Benedict et al 2015; Griffin, 2009).

However, this increased attention to issues of social justice have led some scholars to suggest that ideals of justice and equality themselves must be interrogated in order to uncover hidden ideologies (Vaugeois, 2007; Gould,2008, 2007).  Vaugeois (2007, p. 163), for example writes that critically exploring positionality and assumptions is necessary to avoid “getting caught up in discourses of charity—discourses that too often result in ‘feel good’ projects that valorize the giver while maintaining the inferior position of the receiver”.

This project aims to critically explore conceptualizations of social justice in music education in the form of a music education journal article co-written by Judy Lewis and Catharina Christophersen. The authors argue that social justice, rather than being informed by a desire for harmony and equality, should be perceived as a “messy” construct that invites interrogation from a range of frameworks. Several such frameworks for problematizing social justice and its expressions in music education literature and practice are explored:  

One is through the concept of “alterity” (Spivak 1988; 1989), meaning “the otherness” of people, events or positions as constructed or defined from dominant worldviews. Another is looking at musical engagement through the lens of critical literacy and deconstructing normative definitions of musical literacy. Finally, a theoretical lens of radical democracy (Ranciere, 2013, 1991; Biesta, 2013, 2010, 2006) is utilized to question and redefine the positionality of teacher and learner in music education.

The researchers/authors are:

Catharina Christophersen, professor of Music Education at Bergen University College.

Judy Lewis: Doctoral candidate at Columbia University, Teachers College in New York City, defending her doctoral dissertation entitled “Musical voices from the margins: Popular music as a site of resistance in an urban elementary classroom" on February 11th, 2016