Moving beyond resilience education: musical counterstorytelling. (20th October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hess, Juliet
• Is Part Of: Music education research. Volume 21:Number 5(2019)
• Page Start: 488
• Page End: 502
• Publication Date: 2019-10-20
• Subjects: Resilience education -- neoliberalism -- music education -- counterstorytelling -- songwriting -- hip-hop; Music -- Instruction and study -- Periodicals; Music -- Instruction and study -- Research -- Periodicals; Musique -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; Musique -- Étude et enseignement -- Recherche -- Périodiques; 780.72
• DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2019.1647153
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1461-3808

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Education discourse has recently turned toward resilience and grit. This article critiques the neoliberalism embedded in resilience education and the manner in which a resilience focus encourages docility, adaptation and vulnerability in youth in response to oppressive conditions rather than addressing oppression directly. As a site of resilience for marginalised youth, music is implicated in resilience education's failure to address systemic oppression. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT), as a music educator, I challenge the tendency of resilience education to pathologise youth and individualise systemic issues and put forward songwriting within music education as a means to shift a pedagogy of vulnerability to a pedagogy of oppression that interrupts dominant narratives. I assert that a pedagogy of oppression through songwriting allows youth to create powerful musical counterstories that shift deficit discourse to focus on strengths.