During my undergrad degree, I took several classes in music education towards completing a music minor. It was through these courses that I began to unpack how curriculum and pedagogy favours Western music, and its methods of teaching. This became evident to me through having the honour of exploring music that I had not had the chance to during the pre-undergrad educational contexts that I had been a part of. I began to see just how little my peers and I knew about other music – unless we were otherwise exposed to it through extracurriculars or our heritages. It was through this that I recognized the monoculture of what we know to be ‘best practice’, and how it has preserved a lack of diversity and representation within the Ontario music curriculum. I have come to understand how colonialist practice is stagnant and perpetuated through music education, and how changes made to the current curriculum and pedagogical practices have the potential to foster a more inclusive, diverse, and cross-cultural experience. 

It is through these observations that I recognize change is necessary; however, I understand that it is no easy task. It is layered with a need for unlearning old practices and being open to new perspectives – this must be carried out with a great deal of care. It is because of these matters that I believe it is important to recognize my position as a white, cis-gender female. I have thought deeply about how I could begin work in this area without acting as one who controls access to the very work that must include a diverse set of individuals. For this reason, I have framed this work as a ‘participatory framework’ – it is my intention to initiate the process and help guide its first steps, while also creating a work that allows others to be involved.

For this framework to function, the power relations of ‘facilitators’ and ‘participants’ must be understood (Chinyowa, 2015, p. 14). As outlined by Chinyowa (2015), “for one to assume that participants are being empowered, engaging in dialogue, being given voice and exercising authority and agency in an intervention overlooks the dynamics of power that will be operating within that given context.” (p. 14).

I hope that by presenting this work in the context of professional development days it can serve as a piece of ongoing intervention in the process of producing meaning and interpretation within music education. I envision that during these professional development days music educators will have a chance to evaluate this as a resource, work together to participate in adding to this framework, and in doing so, not hesitate to challenge it.

My position going forward will be to monitor and compile future additions to the framework, to ensure that the inputs maintain inclusive and accurate representations of the values set out in the following explanations. For this reason, I have created this website so that I can do my job best.

Chinyowa, K. C. (2015). Participation as ‘repressive myth’: a case study of the interactive Themba Theatre Organization in South Africa. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 20 (1):12- 23.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2014.975109