Doctoral Colloquium (Music) | Gabby Smith
The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.
Doctoral Colloquium: Gabby Smith, PhD candidate in Music Education, McGill University
Title: Canadian music teacher-educator perspectives: Liberatory praxis in music teacher education
Biography: Gabby Smith is a Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) based musician, music teacher, music teacher educator, PhD candidate, course lecturer, field supervisor and workshop facilitator. Her experiences teaching pre-school through university, organizing in community, as well as supervising student-teaching in the field have motivated her to engage with abolitionist education, queer and disabled pedagogies, decolonizing and healing-centered approaches to music (teacher) education. She is interested in the messy dynamics of intersecting positionalities; how they inform the ways in which educators perceive themselves, their students, build curriculum and community as well as how they approach pedagogy. She is currently carrying out research on the community-building potentials of healing-informed teaching, common and harmful misunderstandings about liberatory work, and how to begin this work with ourselves as individuals and educators.
Abstract: In response to global protests against the racist murder of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement, many post-secondary music education institutions across Canada have acknowledged the need for a shift towards more equitable, diverse and inclusive practices. However, to date, the change taking place in post-secondary institutions is little more than additive or superficial treatments of diversity. Small gestures of inclusion, such as the addition of a Black composer or a woman conductor to otherwise unchanged course content, pedagogy, assessment, and structures do not result in consequential change.
Music educators uphold this practice in part due to reluctance, inability and/or discomfort in speaking frankly or openly about racism, homophobia, ableism, sexism, and other forms of injustice in education. Rethinking and shifting longstanding systems which have dominated music education for generations is necessarily difficult, complex, uncomfortable, and disruptive. But, if we do begin to draw attention to aspects of our classrooms which have been neutral, static, and limiting due to colonial discourses, the next generation of music educators can perhaps create the space to collaborate, heal and nurture collectively towards a liberatory education.
Post-secondary music education institutions can work towards this goal by introducing liberatory praxis (LP) in the music room. LP as a pedagogical framework places emphasis on the role that bodies, intersectional lived experiences and emotions play in the learning process and focuses on an affirmative vision of education. A teacher applying LP recognizes the complex power relations manifested in the embodied intersectional experiences of race, gender, ability, and class, and seeks to counter them through the creation of learning communities that centre hope, love, and humanity as main pillars of educational change-making. In music education, LP can include but is not limited to: assuming an anti-racist, decolonizing and liberatory stance in all aspects of teaching and learning; de-centering Western art music and fostering culturally relevant, sustaining and affirming materials and pedagogies; applying trauma-informed and healing, justice-centered approaches; creating welcoming spaces for gender and sexuality variant students as well as for students with disabilities; and lastly, working more broadly toward an intersectional Femme-pedagogy.
This research explores how Canadian music teacher-educators come to understand, apply and model LP in undergraduate music teacher education. The findings of my multi-case analysis offer insight into how Canadian music teacher-educators understand, model, and practically engage with LP in their classrooms. Indeed, music teacher-educators perceive LP not as an “add-on” to the work they are doing, but the lens through which they approach each aspect of teaching and learning, including pedagogy, assessment structures, the fostering of classroom communities, curricular content, and the way they structure the physical learning space.
