Music teachers' constructions of gender in elementary education

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Downloaded by [ ] at 06:52 16 November 2011 (see 115 116). For example, Carole described the emphasis that some parents placed on sports in opposition to music: When I had chorus after school and I was trying to recruit kids to sing ...it wouldn’t just be a time factor: ‘Oh, I have this football practice on this day so I can’t come to chorus’. It was more, ‘No, I’m going to do football. I don’t need to do music’. ‘My dad doesn’t want me to do music. He wants to me to play soccer’. Reflecting on her own experience as a music student in high school, Carole described her own choral director’s strategy of recruiting boys from the football team for the choir. While unable to describe a specific incident about gender, Carole commented that this negative attitude towards singing by boys still exists. I still hear, ‘Boys don’t do that’, ‘No, I’m not going to be in the chorus, I’m going to play football’, occasionally in a large Hispanic community. A lot of the [Hispanic] men are really macho ...While music is ...generally support[ed] ...every now and then, one of [the boys] will say, ‘No, my dad doesn’t want me to do that’. Fiona spoke about taking specific steps to recruit football players for her chorus during her former work as a high school choral director, F: You know [there are some fathers] that really think that music is for sissy boys and not for anyone. And especially when I worked at the high school level, I recruited football players and the other athletes, because it helped build the program. I’ll just be honest, it did. And I think a well rounded education is the most important thing. K: What strategies did you use to recruit those football players? Music Education Research 17 F: I went to their football games. I showed support. We would do pep rallies and our chorus would come up with really cool songs for the pep rallies. And we supported the team. And over time, you know then they would come and sing with the chorus. Brian also described how he had eliminated the labelling of male singers in his chorus as sissies by recruiting football players to the choir. B: I do know that there have been some boys who have called my boys in my choir sissies. But because I recruited so many sports players, I have eight football players in chorus this year, because I have done that, those sort of comments have gone away. Not only had Brian recruited football players, he had been helped in the strategy by the football coach. K: Um do you have any men who are actually involved in any way in your music program? B: I do at my school. The football coach is a former boy soprano. K: Yeah. B: So he helps me get rid of that stigmatism a lot. He will come into the class, we’ll sing some stuff together. And he’ll tell stories about performing and so on when he was at high school. So that helps a lot, and the more I think you can do that as a music teacher. ...My college room-mate has an a cappella group that performs locally. And I always do my best to bring them in. There are five guys, and they sing. And so I bring them in to let the boys see them. I get as many videos as I possibly can of males singing. I introduce them to people like Pavarotti, and Bocelli, [who] is a very famous tenor, and
Downloaded by [ ] at 06:52 16 November 2011 18 K. Roulston and M. Misawa people of that sort. So at least they know that there’s other people out here, and that they’re not considered to be sissies just because of what they do. In this account, the identification of singing with the feminine by boys is counteracted by presenting role models of hegemonic masculinity in this case, the football coach, and specific techniques to recruit football players to participate in choral work. These kinds of strategies have been documented elsewhere (Roulston and Mills 2000). As a teacher, Brian described not feeling pressured to demonstrate involvement in sports himself. He did, however, choose to demonstrate an active interest in students’ sporting activity. This activity is explicitly linked to his work to show boys that the masculine drive to compete in sport is not diminished by one’s involvement in music. Teachers talked about the importance of parents as role models for their children’s musical development, and all but two expressed the view that fathers were potentially powerful role models in contrast to mothers, who were described in supportive roles (e.g. ensuring children had necessary items and attending concerts). The supportive role of mothers particularly those who are middle class in supporting their children in these kinds of ways has been outlined elsewhere by Lareau (2003). Fiona described specific examples of how she provided multiple male role models in music to students at her school. In addition to the three male teachers at the school on faculty who sang in the faculty chorus (of about 19 or 20 members), Fiona mentioned a number of professional performance ensembles who had visited the school, in addition to two local high schoolteachers (dance and orchestra). In this characterisation of her school, children have access to male models in both performing and teaching roles. Unlike Brian, Fiona did not mention sports in relation to the provision of these male role models. In accounts presented in this section, some of the teachers presented constructions of masculinity in which music teachers continually encounter perceptions of others (i.e. students and parents) that ‘sissy boys’ sing, while ‘heterosexual boys’ play football. These portrayals convey descriptions of specific strategies that tend to reinforce particular constructions of masculinity (i.e. heterosexual masculinity is demonstrated through involvement in sports) and do not resist dominant constructions of masculinity. Fiona, while aware of the emphasis given to sport in contrast to music, nevertheless emphasised the importance of providing her students with male role models outside the realm of sports. Discussion In this paper, some insights into how six music teachers conceptualise gender in relation to the work of teaching elementary music were provided. While three teachers rejected gender as a relevant concept in discussing their work even though they also included descriptions of stereotyped gender roles, three teachers described in detail their perspectives of gender in relation to their professional selves and their teaching. We argue that instead of denying gender as a relevant concept, music educators might learn to ‘see’ gender as a relevant concept in music education, and in doing so, might examine their assumptions about teaching and learning music, and the ways in which masculinity and femininity are constructed within school music
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Music teachers' constructions of gender in elementary education

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