(Re)hearing and (re)seeing what happens in music education: Re-storying music education with Posthumanism

Cooke, Carolyn (2024). (Re)hearing and (re)seeing what happens in music education: Re-storying music education with Posthumanism. In: Philpott, Chris and Spruce, Gary eds. Debates in Music Teaching (2nd Edition). New York and London: Routledge (In Press).

Abstract

When we observe the world, in this case a music lesson through a story, we are influenced in what we attend to and see based on our backgrounds, experiences, knowledge, and beliefs. As Berger (1972) argues, seeing is never neutral, “we only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice” (Berger 1972, p.6). The same argument can be applied to what we hear. In educational contexts, as argued by Murris (2016), young people become very good at knowing what sounds (whether verbal or in our case musical) will be valued and paid attention to by teachers or by institutions, thereby developing what Kennedy calls a “form of ventriloquism” (in Murris 2016, p.106) where they reproduce what is expected of them. Therefore, what we see and hear are inextricably shaped by our socio-cultural understandings of what is valuable and valued in our contexts, in this case within music education as we know it.
The question is therefore whether what we intrinsically value limits what we see and hear in music education settings? What do we value paying attention to? And what do we push aside? Are the experiences and values we have as teachers, or the socialisation we undergo into educational orthodoxy, bounding us and our ability to respond to all that is happening within music education contexts? This chapter introduces and explores posthumanism, as a different way of storying our practices and those of young people. In doing so it opens up opportunities to think, do, respond differently as music teachers.

Viewing alternatives

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats