DAN SHEVOCK
Dan Shevock is a Ph.D. candidate at the Pennsylvania State University and taught elementary through high school instrumental and general music in the Pittsburgh Public Schools and in Maryland. His experience as an urban music teacher awakened a concern for issues of democratic education, creativity, and freedom. Dan musics on the vibraphone and drums, and is an ardent reader. His research interests include music improvisation, democratic teaching praxes, and critical theory. He has presented research in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, Nebraska, and Ireland. Dan’s degrees are from Clarion University of Pennsylvania (1997), and Towson University (2000).
At the beginning of my third year of doctoral studies, circumstances converged to allow me the opportunity to explore Freirean dialogue in a university jazz setting. First, during auditions for Jazz Combo Class, I realized that uneven instrumentation might cost the weaker auditionees the opportunity to participate in class. This can create a Catch 22 for students wanting to improve but unable to navigate a competitive music audition. I recommended the creation of Jazz Combo Lab, an extension of the combo class that would explore small-ensemble jazz music for these students. The second converging experience was a class I enrolled in housed in the Adult Education department, Politics, Language, and Pedagogy: Applying Paulo Freire Today, brimming with powerful discussion, dialogue, disagreement, and discourse. The course instructor encouraged students to explore how Freirean pedagogy might inform our own teaching praxis. After the first class I realized Freire’s pedagogy might serve as a framework to empower my students, who could have been marginalized by the competitive audition experience. I challenged myself to apply Freire’s ideas in my jazz combo lab.
During the past twenty years, music education pedagogy has become contested space, as many researchers, philosophers, and teachers argue for a critical approach to music education. I agree wholly with Elliott (2013) when he proposed that a “primary” way music education can serve humanity is by, “enabling the development of students’ character, identities, empathy, happiness, health and well-being, personal and social agency, and ethical dispositions to oppose all forms of oppression and injustice with and through critically reflective and creative music making” (p. 3). I want my own teaching to facilitate these qualities. With these qualities in mind, the purpose of this autoethnography was to study my teaching praxis as I integrate Freirean pedagogy in a small ensemble jazz class. Over the course of the semester my teaching praxis evolved through discussions in Politics, Language, and Pedagogy, critical readings of Freirean texts, studying music education thinkers who have used Freirean frameworks, and reflecting-teaching the Jazz Combo Lab.
Because “culture and individual are intricately intertwined” (p. 44) this study employed Chang’s (2008) autoethnographic method. This approach to autoethnography can be distinguished from other self-narrative methods like autobiography, personal essay writing, and performative storytelling by its goal, attaining “triadic balance” (p. 48) between self, culture, and process; the three parts of the word auto-ethno-graphy. The basic unit of analysis was the researcher acting within his sociocultural surroundings, and the primary data were the researcher’s personal experiences. Internal data collected through journaling were complimented with analysis of external data, video-recordings of each class session and dialogue occurring on the social media site Facebook.
Freirean pedagogy aims to avoid banking education and increase student “Conscientizaçāo” (Freire, 1970/93, p. 67). I hoped to create a safe classroom environment where students might experiment, discourse, grow musically, and realize the power they have to make judgments and express musical and verbal positions. I constructed lesson plans around Freirean concepts, and as the semester progressed, students chose and composed much of the instructional material. I video-recorded each teaching session to analyze my success at facilitating robust dialogue. I also created a Facebook page, for the dual purposes of extending conversations and sharing small ensemble jazz YouTube videos. There were four students in the jazz combo lab. I kept a journal throughout the semester. This journal and video-recordings served as the data for analysis.
Christopher Small’s (1998) musicking provided the theoretical framework for the type of representative-political musicking I appreciate as a teacher in the Jazz Combo Lab. According to Small, the ways in which we choose to music are a ritualistic performance, and “… to take part in [ritual] is to take part in an act that uses the language of gesture to explore, affirm, and celebrate one’s concepts of ideal relationships” (p. 98). Incorporating Freirean pedagogy in a university small-group jazz ensemble is challenging, and was approached reflectively. By sharing five germane teaching episodes, recorded in my reflective journal, I demarcate my evolving pedagogy as a synthesis of Freirean adult learning, modified-Freirean theory in music education, musicking, and my teaching experience. This paper is designed to provoke discourse around Freire in music education, in particular in performing ensembles.
REFERENCES:
Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Elliott, D. J. (2013). MayDay Colloquium 24: The aims of music education. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 12(2), 1-9. Retrieved from http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Elliott12_2.pdf.
Freire, P. (1970/93). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
During the past twenty years, music education pedagogy has become contested space, as many researchers, philosophers, and teachers argue for a critical approach to music education. I agree wholly with Elliott (2013) when he proposed that a “primary” way music education can serve humanity is by, “enabling the development of students’ character, identities, empathy, happiness, health and well-being, personal and social agency, and ethical dispositions to oppose all forms of oppression and injustice with and through critically reflective and creative music making” (p. 3). I want my own teaching to facilitate these qualities. With these qualities in mind, the purpose of this autoethnography was to study my teaching praxis as I integrate Freirean pedagogy in a small ensemble jazz class. Over the course of the semester my teaching praxis evolved through discussions in Politics, Language, and Pedagogy, critical readings of Freirean texts, studying music education thinkers who have used Freirean frameworks, and reflecting-teaching the Jazz Combo Lab.
Because “culture and individual are intricately intertwined” (p. 44) this study employed Chang’s (2008) autoethnographic method. This approach to autoethnography can be distinguished from other self-narrative methods like autobiography, personal essay writing, and performative storytelling by its goal, attaining “triadic balance” (p. 48) between self, culture, and process; the three parts of the word auto-ethno-graphy. The basic unit of analysis was the researcher acting within his sociocultural surroundings, and the primary data were the researcher’s personal experiences. Internal data collected through journaling were complimented with analysis of external data, video-recordings of each class session and dialogue occurring on the social media site Facebook.
Freirean pedagogy aims to avoid banking education and increase student “Conscientizaçāo” (Freire, 1970/93, p. 67). I hoped to create a safe classroom environment where students might experiment, discourse, grow musically, and realize the power they have to make judgments and express musical and verbal positions. I constructed lesson plans around Freirean concepts, and as the semester progressed, students chose and composed much of the instructional material. I video-recorded each teaching session to analyze my success at facilitating robust dialogue. I also created a Facebook page, for the dual purposes of extending conversations and sharing small ensemble jazz YouTube videos. There were four students in the jazz combo lab. I kept a journal throughout the semester. This journal and video-recordings served as the data for analysis.
Christopher Small’s (1998) musicking provided the theoretical framework for the type of representative-political musicking I appreciate as a teacher in the Jazz Combo Lab. According to Small, the ways in which we choose to music are a ritualistic performance, and “… to take part in [ritual] is to take part in an act that uses the language of gesture to explore, affirm, and celebrate one’s concepts of ideal relationships” (p. 98). Incorporating Freirean pedagogy in a university small-group jazz ensemble is challenging, and was approached reflectively. By sharing five germane teaching episodes, recorded in my reflective journal, I demarcate my evolving pedagogy as a synthesis of Freirean adult learning, modified-Freirean theory in music education, musicking, and my teaching experience. This paper is designed to provoke discourse around Freire in music education, in particular in performing ensembles.
REFERENCES:
Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Elliott, D. J. (2013). MayDay Colloquium 24: The aims of music education. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education, 12(2), 1-9. Retrieved from http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/Elliott12_2.pdf.
Freire, P. (1970/93). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.