The Politics of Diversity in Music Education

Alexis Anja Kallio,Sidsel Karlsen,Eva Sæther,Kathryn Marsh,Heidi Westerlund

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-65617-1

Abstract

This open access book examines the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education. Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist and separatist tendencies highlight the imperative for music education to extend beyond nominal policy agendas or wholly celebratory diversity discourses. Bringing together high-level theorisation of the ways in which music education upholds or unsettles understandings of society and empirical analyses of the complex situations that arise when negotiating diversity in practice, the chapters in this volume explore the politics of inquiry in research; examine music teachers’ navigations of the shifting political landscapes of society and state; extend conceptualisations of diversity in music education beyond familiar boundaries; and critically consider the implications of diversity for music education leadership. Diversity is thus not approached as a label applied to certain individuals or musical repertoires, but as socially organized difference, produced and manifest in various ways as part of everyday relations and interactions. This compelling collection serves as an invitation to ongoing reflexive inquiry; to deliberate the politics of diversity in a fast-changing and pluralist world; and together work towards more informed and ethically sound understandings of how diversity in music education policy, practice, and research is framed and conditioned both locally and globally.

Highlights

The Politics of Diversity in Music EducationAlexis Anja Kallio, Kathryn Marsh, Heidi Westerlund, Sidsel Karlsen, and Eva Sæther
In this chapter, we explore the politics of music teacher reflexivity that emerged in a transnational collaboration between two institutions, the Nepal Music Center (NMC) and the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki when co-developing intercultural music teacher education
We explore the politics of music teacher reflexivity that emerged during a transnational collaboration, by recognizing both the risks for colonial oppression that are omnipresent in intercultural collaboration on the one hand and, on the other, the potential for the transformation of professional identity through such dialogue

Summary

Introduction

The Politics of Diversity in Music EducationAlexis Anja Kallio , Kathryn Marsh , Heidi Westerlund , Sidsel Karlsen , and Eva Sæther. Concluding this section, Alexis Anja Kallio’s chapter argues that many enactments of reflexivity in music education serve to reinforce the very inequities they aim to dismantle, “reaffirming the benevolence of the privileged researcher whilst doing little to disrupt the structures that keep such privileges at the center of academic practice.”. She invites researchers to consider reflexivity not as a source of superior insight or awareness or a solution to unequal power relations in the research process but as a means to locate opportunities for relational learning and engage critically in the politics of diversity Concluding this section, Alexis Anja Kallio’s chapter argues that many enactments of reflexivity in music education serve to reinforce the very inequities they aim to dismantle, “reaffirming the benevolence of the privileged researcher whilst doing little to disrupt the structures that keep such privileges at the center of academic practice.” She invites researchers to consider reflexivity not as a source of superior insight or awareness or a solution to unequal power relations in the research process but as a means to locate opportunities for relational learning and engage critically in the politics of diversity

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