JULIE BEAUREGARD
Julie Beauregard is General Music Education Specialist and Director of the Center for Community Music at Oregon State University. Previously, she was a member of the Music Education instructional faculties at the Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University, facilitated online Music Education courses for Boston University, and taught for nine years in K-12 public schools in New York and California. She holds B.M., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in Music Education from the Eastman School of Music, where she also completed a graduate program in Ethnomusicology. A Presser Scholar, her research focuses on intercultural music transmission and music teacher preparation.
Discomfort and Pain as Pedagogical Tools in Music Education
Discomfort and pain – both physical and emotional – are regular parts of musicking experiences. They are not, however, generally considered as overt pedagogical elements. Informed by recent research in intercultural music transmission, I have identified discomfort and pain as aspects of the educational experience worthy of purposeful consideration in music education.
Pedagogies of discomfort (Boler, 1999) and crisis (Kumashiro, 2002) have been put forth, as has the related critical pedagogy (Freire, 2006). Each affords insight into psychosocial dimensions of learning. Physical pain is an acknowledged component of the music learning process but has not yet been studied explicitly. Additionally, the teacher perspective has been emphasized in literature to date; student perspectives are generally underrepresented. Consideration of discomfort and pain in students’ learning processes is needed.
The present examination is an outgrowth of ethnographic research conducted at the Dagara Music Center in Ghana, West Africa. Located in Ghana, the DMC’s curriculum included gyil (a West African xylophone), drumming, and dance. I was involved as both a student and researcher during my time at the DMC, immersed primarily in participant-observation and interviewing. Voices of interview subjects are represented throughout my discourse, including the four primary West African master musicians and teachers at the Dagara Music Center, and three adult American students representative of the overall student population. My personal field notes provide an additional student perspective. Through a detailed case study of music learning at the DMC, I present and analyze perceptions of uncomfortable and painful experiences of learners in an intercultural music education context, contextualized with existing multidisciplinary research.
Music transmission at the Dagara Music Center was an undeniably physical experience. Learning occurred through lengthy engagement in musical activity, as in lessons of 1-3 hours’ duration. There were numerous outcomes from this that bore on students’ learning, including exhaustion and physical distress or pain. Technique required of performance in each curricular area brought a unique set of physical parameters and discomforts. Breaks were infrequent and brief. Instructors “[pushed] the limits of your ability to match their own endurance,” which was informed by “the hardships many Ghanaian musicians face on a daily basis” (Vercelli, 2006, p.136). Students were being broken in. One teacher asserted that the long, challenging lessons and commensurate physical hardships experienced were aimed at “Africanizing your butt” (field notes, June 9, 2010). In his view, the kinesthetic experience cannot be removed from the musical or cultural experience, nor should it be.
Students’ descriptions of negative emotions experienced during instruction were prevalent in data, and are depicted on a three-tiered continuum. Emotions from each tier had an effect on learners’ experiences that differed with external and internal variables, though it was consistently found that some degree of stress was beneficial to the learning process. Most common was a pattern of struggle, perseverance, breakthrough, and plateau. Learners’ personal dispositions and emotional states were most significant as both barriers and conduits to learning, impacted substantially by teachers’ attitudes and guidance.
Discussion considers ethical implications of discomfort and pain as pedagogical tools, and ways in which these can be included mindfully and productively in music education. Pain and discomfort are revealed as inherent parts of embodied music learning experiences such as those at the Dagara Music Center, as memory aides, and as promoters of the emotional work required for learning (Tarc, 2013).
Implications include the need for teachers to be equipped to implement and navigate uncomfortable experiences in tandem with their students, the importance of a positive social atmosphere that will support such work, the necessity of open communication between teacher and student(s) regarding pain threshold, and the benefit of regular inclusion of physical and emotional stressors in music instruction (Janoff-Bulman, 2004). Through engagement in uncomfortable musical situations, students become psychologically prepared to act as “academic risk takers,” to mindfully endure accomplishment-oriented pain, and to become successful in ongoing musicking endeavors (Meyer and Turner, 2006).
The foreignness of this case study’s learning site brings to the fore issues that are likely less apparent in American classrooms. I posit the likelihood of these experiences for music students in any location, and that teachers’ blindness to, or denial of, them is detrimental to students’ learning.
Pedagogies of discomfort (Boler, 1999) and crisis (Kumashiro, 2002) have been put forth, as has the related critical pedagogy (Freire, 2006). Each affords insight into psychosocial dimensions of learning. Physical pain is an acknowledged component of the music learning process but has not yet been studied explicitly. Additionally, the teacher perspective has been emphasized in literature to date; student perspectives are generally underrepresented. Consideration of discomfort and pain in students’ learning processes is needed.
The present examination is an outgrowth of ethnographic research conducted at the Dagara Music Center in Ghana, West Africa. Located in Ghana, the DMC’s curriculum included gyil (a West African xylophone), drumming, and dance. I was involved as both a student and researcher during my time at the DMC, immersed primarily in participant-observation and interviewing. Voices of interview subjects are represented throughout my discourse, including the four primary West African master musicians and teachers at the Dagara Music Center, and three adult American students representative of the overall student population. My personal field notes provide an additional student perspective. Through a detailed case study of music learning at the DMC, I present and analyze perceptions of uncomfortable and painful experiences of learners in an intercultural music education context, contextualized with existing multidisciplinary research.
Music transmission at the Dagara Music Center was an undeniably physical experience. Learning occurred through lengthy engagement in musical activity, as in lessons of 1-3 hours’ duration. There were numerous outcomes from this that bore on students’ learning, including exhaustion and physical distress or pain. Technique required of performance in each curricular area brought a unique set of physical parameters and discomforts. Breaks were infrequent and brief. Instructors “[pushed] the limits of your ability to match their own endurance,” which was informed by “the hardships many Ghanaian musicians face on a daily basis” (Vercelli, 2006, p.136). Students were being broken in. One teacher asserted that the long, challenging lessons and commensurate physical hardships experienced were aimed at “Africanizing your butt” (field notes, June 9, 2010). In his view, the kinesthetic experience cannot be removed from the musical or cultural experience, nor should it be.
Students’ descriptions of negative emotions experienced during instruction were prevalent in data, and are depicted on a three-tiered continuum. Emotions from each tier had an effect on learners’ experiences that differed with external and internal variables, though it was consistently found that some degree of stress was beneficial to the learning process. Most common was a pattern of struggle, perseverance, breakthrough, and plateau. Learners’ personal dispositions and emotional states were most significant as both barriers and conduits to learning, impacted substantially by teachers’ attitudes and guidance.
Discussion considers ethical implications of discomfort and pain as pedagogical tools, and ways in which these can be included mindfully and productively in music education. Pain and discomfort are revealed as inherent parts of embodied music learning experiences such as those at the Dagara Music Center, as memory aides, and as promoters of the emotional work required for learning (Tarc, 2013).
Implications include the need for teachers to be equipped to implement and navigate uncomfortable experiences in tandem with their students, the importance of a positive social atmosphere that will support such work, the necessity of open communication between teacher and student(s) regarding pain threshold, and the benefit of regular inclusion of physical and emotional stressors in music instruction (Janoff-Bulman, 2004). Through engagement in uncomfortable musical situations, students become psychologically prepared to act as “academic risk takers,” to mindfully endure accomplishment-oriented pain, and to become successful in ongoing musicking endeavors (Meyer and Turner, 2006).
The foreignness of this case study’s learning site brings to the fore issues that are likely less apparent in American classrooms. I posit the likelihood of these experiences for music students in any location, and that teachers’ blindness to, or denial of, them is detrimental to students’ learning.