Music teachers' constructions of gender in elementary education

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a minority) fathers regarded participation in sports to be more important than music
for children.
I think that we live in an age that we’re so sports conscientious. And there are many
fathers that do not feel that music has a place in their son’s life. And having raised a son,
I feel like both sports and music should be in every child’s life. I mean I think there’s a
need for a balance. And I think when you have fathers or grandfathers that participated
in music as a child, or still do, whether it’s a church choir, or a community orchestra or
whatever, I think that sets terrific examples for their sons. For their daughters also. But
I’ve encountered very few fathers that were not supportive. But I do know that there are
some ...that really think that music is for sissy boys and not for anyone.
Fiona described using recruitment of football players as a specific strategy in
working with high school choruses. With respect to her work with elementary
students, however, she was adamant that gender was not a relevant issue. While
Fiona speculated that perhaps ‘society’ deemed men to have more ‘authority’ and
‘control’, and that was perhaps one reason there are many more male band directors
than female, she did not associate herself with this view. In the school setting that
Fiona described, children had ready access to high quality male role models.
Cross case analysis
In reviewing and comparing these cases in relation to the research questions, it is
apparent that these teachers:
(1) conceptualised the relevance of gender in significantly different ways;
(2) oriented to the male elementary music teacher as rare and dealing with
pressures not faced by women; and
(3) referred to the use of strategies that reinforce gender stereotypes.
The following section explores each theme in more detail.
Music Education Research 11
Teachers’ conceptualisation of gender in music teaching
The descriptions provided by teachers in interviews frequently reflected essentialist
conceptualisations of gender in which masculinity and femininity were portrayed in
opposition and related to stereotypical roles (e.g. women as ‘motherly’ and
‘supportive’ and men as ‘competitive’ and ‘powerful’). Teachers varied considerably
in terms of the relevance that they ascribed to gender in their work as teachers. While
in some descriptions, gender was defined in relation to stereotypical feminine and
masculine activities, in others, it was deemed invisible or not something that they
noticed. Several teachers discussed in detail how feminine associations with music
(Green 1997; Morton 1996) played out in their work with boys (such as recruiting
boys for choirs), and for the male teacher in this study, with his identity as an
elementary teacher working in a feminised environment (resisting others’ inference
that he was homosexual; Roulston and Mills 2000).
Three of the participants (Carole, Ellen, and Fiona) found it difficult to discuss
the issue of gender, and expressed the view that gender was not necessarily significant
to their professional roles as music educators. Interestingly, these teachers were the