Music teachers' constructions of gender in elementary education

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Downloaded by [ ] at 06:52 16 November 2011 Music Education Research 9 Case study 3: Carole Carole described a varied and multi-faceted career in music education in which her interests and teaching experience spanned elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as college teaching. Carole recounted experiencing discrimination as a woman in her years as a middle school band director, although she pointed out that people who treated her as the ‘wife’ of a colleague and band director, rather than as a band director herself, were in the minority. While Carole did talk about how in high school settings some boys thought that for boys, singing was a ‘sissy’ thing to do, she went on to state that for her, gender was neither a relevant issue that arose in teaching in elementary music, nor something that she noticed or tracked. In talking about her observations concerning fathers, Carole drew on her knowledge of parents in her local school community. For boys, she maintained that fathers’ influence on musical activities and participation was pronounced, particularly for those cultural groups that she identified as emphasising high involvement in sports. She commented that: [F]or the boys ...if daddy says, ‘Play football’, they play football. If daddy says, ‘Here is a trumpet, this is how you play it’, that’s what they do ...In a Hispanic community there’s a lot of music. In that community, that’s not as much of an issue as some of the, to me, the African-American families that are so sports oriented ...In the Hispanic community, there’s a little bit [of] you play sports, you don’t [participate] in music. But, they do that to the girls, too, some, not as much. In this account, parents from different ethnic and racial groups are described as exhibiting different responses to children’s participation in music and sports. For Hispanic communities, music is acceptable, although sometimes sports take precedence. For African-American families, participation in sports is emphasised. In Carole’s descriptions, mothers are described in the role of singing lullabies to their children, while fathers give directions that their children follow. In Carole’s interview, differences among ethnic and racial groups were observed as salient features of the school population, rather than gender. This is hardly surprising, since the school in which Carole was teaching had a population that identified as 65% Hispanic, 29% Black, 4% White and 1% Asian and others, with a high rate of economic disadvantage (90% free and reduced lunch). Case study 4: Denise Denise portrayed herself as a teacher aware of the differentiated ways in which teachers can unwittingly respond to boys and girls. Denise described herself fighting her usual inclination to pay more attention to demanding boys, rather than cooperative girls. Denise was well aware of the association that boys made between ‘singing’ and ‘femininity’ and the risk for boys who sing of being labelled as unmasculine. To actively engage boys throughout the elementary school years, Denise had decided that she would have to use activities other than singing folk songs, and she had written an as yet unfunded proposal to obtain guitars for her students to play in the upper grades. Men and fathers, in Denise’s depictions, were portrayed as able to provide powerful role models to their children in their participation in musical activities. Denise described fathers’ roles in children’s musical participation as very powerful.
Downloaded by [ ] at 06:52 16 November 2011 10 K. Roulston and M. Misawa They’re so powerful. It’s so powerful what ...the effect that they have if [the children’s] fathers or their grandfathers are musical ...It’s so powerful. I have had several dads come in and bring their instruments, I had a dad who played the guitar, and he came in and brought his guitar. I had a dad who ...brought his tuba and played it for some class, and those children, his children, these dads’ children are just are, you can just tell that ...they’re just so much more interested in music. In her interview, Denise described very positive male role models in relation to children, rather than only boys. In contrast, Denise had little to say about mothers: K: What about mothers and grandmothers, and females? D: You don’t really hear that much about them, do you? Denise described taking advantage of fathers’ musical participation by inviting them into her classroom to play for her students. In contrast, in the previous year she had found no mothers to perform similarly in the classroom for children. Case study 5: Ellen Ellen described herself as a competent elementary music teacher who regularly sought to develop her skills as a music teacher through further professional development and application of research findings in her work with children. While observing developmental differences between boys and girls (such as motor development and ability to adapt to the use of different vocal registers), Ellen observed that there did not seem to be any noticeable impact on the academic outcomes for boys and girls. Ellen described both fathers and mothers as potentially powerful role models in their children’s musical lives. In her reflections since her graduation from college over 30 years ago, Ellen was unclear about why so few male teachers entered elementary music teaching or why so few women entered band directing. E: I’ve never really thought about gender separation. Let’s see. I do recognize that there were not many elementary music gentlemen. That most of the gentlemen in music went to band programs at the time. But I’ve never thought about why. The only thing I’ve thought about was because maybe they had more time for the extra after school activities. Because at that time it was ...in the 1970s ...maybe it just has to do with role models. Women got married and they were the mothers and stayed home. And we just didn’t have time to be at every football game as the band director. In this excerpt, Ellen speculated that both men and women were conforming to societal roles in which women were likely to stay in the home as wives and homemakers, and men were more likely to perform in the public sphere outside the home. Case study 6: Fiona Fiona portrayed herself as a highly respected and prize-winning teacher for whom gender was not a salient issue. Rather, the delivery of high quality instruction appeared as a recurring theme in Fiona’s interview. In relation to the elementary music classroom, Fiona portrayed both parents as important role models for their children’s musical participation; however, she also acknowledged that ‘some’ (though
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Music teachers' constructions of gender in elementary education

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