Sound Pedagogy: Radical Care in Music

by Colleen Renihan (Contributor), William Cheng (Foreword), John Spilker (Editor)

Music education today requires an approach rooted in care and kindness that coexists alongside the dismantling of systems that fail to serve our communities in higher education. But, as the essayists in Sound Pedagogy show, the structural aspects of music study in higher education present obstacles to caring and kindness like the entrenched master-student model, a neoliberal individualist and competitive mindset, and classical music’s white patriarchal roots. The editors of this volume curate essays that use a broad definition of care pedagogy, one informed by interdisciplinary scholarship and aimed at providing practical strategies for bringing transformative learning and engaged pedagogies to music classrooms. The contributors draw from personal experience to address issues including radical kindness through universal design; listening to non-human musicality; public musicology as a forum for social justice discourse; and radical approaches to teaching about race through music. Contributors : Molly M. Breckling, William A. Everett, Kate Galloway, Sara Haefeli, Eric Hung, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Mark Katz, Nathan A. Langfitt, Matteo Magarotto, Mary Natvig, Frederick A. Peterbark, Laura Moore Pruett, Colleen Renihan, Amanda Christina Soto, John Spilker, Reba A. Wissner, and Trudi Wright

304 pages, Hardcover

Published February 6, 2024

Reviews

[Alex Jonker · Rating 5 out of 5]

After my first full year of teaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about care and what that means/looks like as a pedagogical practice. Especially in today’s world, a more care-full approach to interactions in general, and teaching in particular, is so deeply needed. This book really got the wheels turning for me — even though the majority of case studies were focused on the music history classroom (with some on the music university at large, and some on self-care as instructors), the overarching themes and ideas were relevant enough to me as a theorist and sparked some inspiration for how I might shift my teaching practice next year.