Studying at York
Music Education and Social Justice - MUS00185H
- Department: Music
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
This module explores inclusions and exclusions relating to class, race, gender, disability across popular music education, classical music education and religious music education both within and outside the classroom. It aims to equip students with a broad toolkit of critical perspectives and approaches to enable them to critically assess music education settings through a social justice lens.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 2 2024-25 |
Module aims
Music education is often assumed to be a wholly good thing, regardless of what, how, why, or where it occurs. Furthermore, there can be resistance to thinking about how musical practices within music education might themselves be discriminatory, such as through entrenching the value of some genres over others, therefore marginalising the voices and tastes of certain social groups. As such, critical debates in sociology, musicology, and music education have explored the ways in which music education may reproduce existing social and musical inequalities, and have contradictory consequences.
This module explores inclusions and exclusions relating to class, race, gender, disability across popular music education, classical music education and religious music education both within and outside the classroom. It aims to equip students with a broad toolkit of critical perspectives and approaches to enable them to critically assess music education settings through a social justice lens. It also assists employability through the skills developed in the assessment, which asks students to critically assess a music education setting of their choice through a social justice lens and to recommend approaches for addressing issues that they find. This requires students to think about the process of social, and institutional change within music education as well as to explore how such change might be documented, assessed, and communicated.
Module learning outcomes
By the end of the taught part of the project you should be able to:
-
explore key debates in social justice and music education, internationally and across curricular and extra-curricular contexts
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demonstrate awareness of the ways in which social inequalities including class, gender, disability, and ‘race’/coloniality shape what happens in music education and who gets access to it
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apply critical thinking and learning from the module to analyse specific case study examples
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propose potential actions to mitigate such problems;
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communicate complex ideas with clarity and critical insight, through prose and/or other means as appropriate.
Third years: On completion of the module, in your independent work, you should demonstrate learning outcomes C1-6. https://www.york.ac.uk/music/undergraduate/modules/learning-outcomes/
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
A 3,000 word case study: Critically analyse a music education case study from a social justice perspective
The case study will be chosen by each student, and could be:
- a music education setting from your own lived experience (such as a youth orchestra you have played in or a musical production you’ve been involved in)
- a programme that you have learnt about during the module (such as El Sistema Venezuela or DJ School UK in Leeds)
- a programme that you have found online and/or read about.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
You will receive written feedback in line with standard University turnaround times.
Indicative reading
Baker, G. El Sistema: Orchestrating Venezuela’s Youth. Oxford; New York: OUP USA, 2014.
Baker, G. Rethinking Social Action through Music: The Search for Coexistence and Citizenship in Medellín’s Music Schools. Open Book, 2021.
Benedict, C., Schmidt, P., Spruce, G., & Woodford, P. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Bull, A. Class, Control and Classical Music. Oxford University Press, 2019.
Bull, A, Nooshin, L., & Scharff, C. eds. Voices for Change in the Classical Music Profession: New Ideas for Tackling Inequalities and Exclusions. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Dale, P. Engaging Students with Music Education: DJ Decks, Urban Music and Child-Centred Learning. Routledge, 2017.
Dale, P., Burnard, P. & Travis, R. Music for Inclusion and Healing in Schools and Beyond: Hip Hop, Techno, Grime, and More. Oxford University Press, 2023.
Green, L. ‘Why “Ideology” Is Still Relevant for Critical Thinking in Music Education.’ Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education 2.2 (2003): 1–24.
Green, L. Music, Gender, Education. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Green, L. Music, Informal Learning, and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy. Ashgate, 2017.
Mantie, R. & Talbot, B. Education, Music, and the Lives of Undergraduates: Collegiate A Cappella and the Pursuit of Happiness. Bloomsbury, 2020.
Paynter, J. & Aston, P. Sound and Silence: Classroom Projects in Creative Music. Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Small, C. Music, Society, Education. University Press of New England, 1996.