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- Borgström Källén, Carina, 1961, et al.
(author)
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Focusing the interplay between context and discourse in exploring music education and gender.
- 2016
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In: The 20th conference of Nordic Network for Research in Music Education. NNMPF. Hamar, Norwey, 8-10 March, 2016..
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper we argue for a need to bring both school context and discourse to the table when exploring music education from a gender perspective. A closer look at the on going interplay between context and discourse can be a way ahead for our understanding of the complexity in the relationships between music education and gender. Music education in conjunction with gender has an existing and on going body of research (Green, 2012), albeit a significant part are focusing questions of gendered representation (Harrison A.C. & O'Neill, 2000; Lamb, Dolloff & Howe, 2002; Harrison S.D., 2007; Abeles, 2009). However gender related research in music education that deepens our understanding of gender norms in conjunction with the specific music classroom appears to be areas that are less explored (Green, 1997; Abramo, 2011; Armstrong, 2011; Wych, 2012). This is a shortcoming, as a greater understanding of the dynamic processes that govern students’ construction of gender in the music classroom can challenge and rethink how issues of gender are understood in music education, and thereby counteract gender marked restrictions when learning music. With this in mind, this paper aims at exploring the significance of school context and discourse in interplay from a gender perspective within three different studies of the Swedish music classroom. The three studies, chosen for this presentation, gather empirical data from music education within three of the Swedish school forms; the lower secondary, the upper secondary and the university. A subordinated purpose is to discuss three newly conducted Swedish research and developmental projects, since these studies are yet to be included in the body of international research focusing gender and music education. One central theoretical point of departure is that gender in relation to school music practices has to be understood discursively where for instance contextually dependent and contextually independent identities, respectively, appear to be exposed in one and the same context, i.e. in the same discursive practice (Foucault, 1969/2002). Social status, sex and age are examples of important discursive factors in the determination of who can have the mandate to take place and create space within a specific context. Another theoretical point of departure is to understand gender as socially constructed and as performative (Butler 1990/1999/2006; Connell, 2000, 2005, 2009). One core concept here is the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990/1999/2006), used to understand how gender is always related to a hetero normative framework that regulates which bodies, genders and desires are assigned to be culturally intelligible and naturalized. Our findings show that doing gender in music classrooms is a matter of what is at stake – music or education. When the context is related towards music, gender is performed in music. On the other hand, if the context regards the music classroom as educational, gender is performed besides music. One important conclusion from this analysis is that neither context nor discourse is static in the music classroom, but constantly constructed and reconstructed in social interaction. The construction of gender always takes place in a context as a part of a social process. Guiding how gender is produced in the music classroom, however, is the students’ adaption to discourse. We therefore argue that the music education has to be analysed as a collective social practice governed by context and discourse in constant interplay. A conclusion is that gendered differentiation has to be understood as a matter of discourse and context in close relationship.
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