Navigating (un)popular music in the classroom:

Censure and censorship in an

inclusive, democratic music education

Alexis Anja Kallio

Studia Musica 65
 The Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki
Studia Musica 65

Sibelius Academy Faculty of Music Education,

Jazz, and Folk Music (MuTri) Doctoral School

Navigating (un)popular music in the classroom: Censure and censorship in an

inclusive, democratic music education

(Epä)populaarista musiikista neuvottelu koulussa: Sosiaalinen tuomitseminen

ja sensuuri inklusiivisessa, tasa-arvoisessa musiikkikasvatuksessa

© 2015 Alexis Anja Kallio

Cover design: Steve Smid

Artwork in dissertation: Mauro Italiano
Layout: Alexis Anja Kallio and Kalle Kallio
Printhouse: Unigrafia

ISBN: 978-952-329-013-6 (print)

ISBN: 978-952-329-014-3 (PDF)

(ISSN 0788-3757)
Then shall we thus lightly permit the children to hear any chance stories anyone
chances to invent, and to take into their souls opinions for the most part contrary
to those we think they ought to have when they grow up?

Plato’s Republic, Book II, 377b

Abstract
Kallio, Alexis Anja (2015). Navigating (un)popular music in the classroom: Censure
and censorship in an inclusive, democratic music education. Sibelius Academy of the
University of the Arts Helsinki. Studia Musica 65.

Popular music has often been promoted as an accessible, readily intelligible,

engaging, authentic medium for young music students. Including a variety
of popular musics in school lessons has also been regarded as a more relevant
approach to teach young people, establishing a continuum between school
activities, and their musical worlds beyond classroom walls. In this way, these
musics have been seen as particularly democratic, in the sense that they offer all
students equal opportunities to participate in a hands-on approach to music-
making in the classroom. However, a number of researchers have noted that many
popular musics exist in apparent contrast with the aims and values of formal
education. This raises questions regarding how school music teachers decide which
of these musics to include as part of, and which to exclude from, school repertoires.
Moreover, if adolescents construct individual identities and social groupings in
relation to, and through, music, excluding certain popular musics from the school
classroom as offensive or inappropriate may send students the message that ‘your
music is not welcome in school, and accordingly, neither are you’.
This dissertation is a synthesizing text, drawing together and expanding
upon research reported in four refereed, international journal articles. Assuming
an interdisciplinary approach, this research combines the fields of music education
and cultural criminology, as a means to understand the processes by which certain
musics are excluded from school contexts. The social conflicts and negotiations
of meaning by which certain popular musics are stigmatized, are understood
as processes of social censure, that is, the social interactions and ideological
negotiations that construct certain musics as problematic. In turn, judgements and
assessments of musical value provide frames and constraints for teacher decisions
and actions. These frames may be seen as censorship processes that simultaneously
legitimize certain musics through the reinforcement of moral boundaries, and
delegitimize others, deeming them inappropriate. Adopting a theoretical lens
incorporating Deweyan pragmatism, cultural criminological theories of deviance
and critical pedagogy, this research discusses the implications of the processes of
social censure and censorship for the ideals of inclusion and democracy in schools.
Designed as a multiple, instrumental case study, data was collected through
semi-structured interviews with five Finnish secondary school music teachers,
and through the writing and sharing of four factional stories, a methodological tool

i
developed during the research process. Data was approached through the analysis
of narratives, emphasizing the close connections between the interview data, and
emerging thematic classifications. The findings of this research suggest that in
selecting popular repertoire for their students, teachers navigate what I term the
school censorship frame: broad and specific social narratives that draw associations
between particular musics or songs and socially constructed notions of deviance.
Guided by these censorious narratives in making decisions regarding a music’s
inclusion or exclusion from classroom repertoires, teachers also identified four
aspects of popular music that were considered in understanding the social censure
of certain musics: lyrics, imagery, mood and emotional affect. It was found that in
navigating the narratives of the school censorship frame, and attending to the aspects
of popular music that raised or highlighted concerns, teachers could not rely upon
a stable ethical framework in classifying popular musics as prudent or problematic.
Rather, each student, each music and each situation required a (re)definition of the
good, entailing a situational moral deliberation.
This dissertation argues that if schools are envisioned as fully participatory
spaces, music classrooms are inherently diverse. Accordingly, the sometimes
uncomfortable tensions and disagreements that accompany this diversity may be
regarded as resources for inclusive, democratic practices in music education, rather
than as a hindrance. Through recognizing, reflecting upon and engaging with the
political processes of legitimation and exclusion in popular repertoire selection,
new possibilities and promises are presented whereby teachers and students may
learn beyond bias and assumption, engage in collaborative critical inquiry and
interrogate who music education serves, when, why, how and to what ends.

Keywords
Censorship, Censure, Cultural criminology, Finland, Inclusion, Music education,
Music teacher, Narrative Inquiry, Popular music, Repertoire, School

ii
Tiivistelmä
Kallio, Alexis Anja (2015). (Epä)populaarista musiikista neuvottelu koulussa:
Sosiaalinen tuomitseminen ja sensuuri inklusiivisessa, tasa-arvoisessa
musiikkikasvatuksessa. Taideyliopiston Sibelius-Akatemia Helsinki. Studia
Musica 65.

Helppotajuista populaarimusiikkia on usein pidetty sopivana itseilmaisun muotona

yläkoululaisille. Koulussa populaarimusiikki on nähty merkityksellisenä, sillä sen
on myös ajateltu rakentavan jatkumoa koulutyön ja oppilaiden oman musiikillisen
maailman välille. Musiikintunneilla populaarimusiikin asemaa on niin ikään
korostettu, sillä sen on ajateltu olevan demokraattista eli tarjoavan oppilaille tasa-
arvoiset mahdollisuudet käytännön musisointiin. Tutkimukset kuitenkin osoittavat,
että eräät populaarimusiikin tyylit kyseenalaistavat kouluopetukseen sisältyviä
arvoja ja tavoitteita. Voidaan kysyä, millaista populaarimusiikkia opettaja voi
sisällyttää kouluopetukseen, ja tulisiko osa siitä sulkea pois. Jos nuoret rakentavat
omaa identiteettiään ja sosiaalisia ryhmiään musiikin avulla, sopimattomana
pidetyn musiikin poissulkeminen saattaa toimia negatiivisena viestinä oppilaalle:
”Sinun musiikkisi ei ole tervetullutta kouluun, ja näin ollen et ole sinäkään”.
Tämä väitöstutkimus koostuu neljästä, kansainvälisessä vertaisarvioidussa
lehdessä julkaistusta artikkelista sekä yhteenveto-osasta, joka kokoaa ja
laajentaa artikkeleissa esitettyjä näkökulmia. Tutkimus on luonteeltaan
monitieteinen, ja se yhdistää kaksi tieteenalaa, musiikkikasvatuksen tutkimuksen
ja kulttuurisen kriminologian, tavoitteenaan joidenkin populaarimusiikin
tyylien poissulkemisprosessien ymmärtäminen koulukontekstissa. Mekanismi,
jolla musiikillisista merkityksistä neuvotellaan ja jolla osa populaarimusiikin
tyyleistä saatetaan leimata sopimattomiksi, ymmärretään tässä tutkimuksessa
sosiaaliseksi tuomitsemiseksi (social censure). Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että
nimenomaan sosiaalinen vuorovaikutus ja ryhmän sisäinen neuvottelu tekevät
joistakin musiikinlajeista ongelmallisia, sillä juuri musiikin arvottaminen
määrittää opettajan toimintaa ja päätöksentekoa rajaavat kehykset. Nämä
kehykset voidaan ymmärtää sensuuriprosessina (censorship process), joka
samanaikaisesti sekä oikeuttaa osan musiikintyyleistä moraalirajojen vahvistajina
että kieltää muun musiikin tuomiten sen sopimattomaksi. Teoreettisesti tutkimus
yhdistää John Deweyn edustamaa pragmatismia, kulttuurisen kriminologian
poikkeavuusteorioita (cultural deviance theories) sekä kriittistä pedagogiikkaa.
Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan sosiaalisesta tuomitsemisesta ja sensuuriprosesseista
aiheutuvia seurauksia koulun inkluusiolle ja demokratiaan liittyville ihanteille.
Tutkimus edustaa monialaisen, instrumentaalisen tapaustutkimuksen

iii
perinnettä, ja tutkimuksen materiaali on kerätty haastattelemalla viittä suomalaista
yläkoulun musiikinopettajaa. Puolistrukturoitujen haastattelujen analyysissä
hyödynnettiin narratiivista menetelmää (narrative analysis). Haastattelujen
pohjalta tutkija kirjoitti ensin neljä faktionaalista kertomusta (factional stories),
joista keskusteltiin opettajien kanssa. Kertomuksia käytettiin tutkimuksen
metodologisena työkaluna.
Tutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat siihen, että valitessaan oppilailleen
populaaria ohjelmistoa opettajat navigoivat koulun sensuurikehyksessä
(school cencorship frame). Tämä tarkoittaa laajaa ja eriytynyttä sosiaalisten
narratiivien joukkoa, joka synnyttää assosiaatioita joidenkin populaarimusiikin
tyylien tai yksittäisten laulujen ja kulttuurisen kriminologian mukaisten
poikkeavuuskäsitysten (constructions of deviance) välillä. Haastatteluissa opettajat
määrittelivät neljä populaarimusiikkiin liittyvää tekijää, joilla oli vaikutusta
tietyntyyppisen musiikin sosiaaliseen tuomitsemiseen luokkatilanteissa. Näitä
luokkatilanteeseen liittyviä, sosiaalista sensuurinarratiivia rakentavia tekijöitä
olivat laulujen sanat, musiikkiin liitetty visuaalisuus, tunnelma ja tunnevaikutus.
Tutkimus osoittaa, että navigoidessaan koulun sensuurikehyksessä ja
luokitellessaan populaarimusiikkia sen hyväksyttävyyden ja ei-hyväksyttävyyden
mukaan opettajat eivät voineet turvautua vakiintuneisiin ja eettisesti kestäviin
käsityksiin valintaperusteista. Pikemminkin kukin oppilas, musiikki ja tilanne
erikseen vaativat hyvän käsitteen (uudelleen)määrittelyn, mihin samalla sisältyi
tilannesidonnainen, moraalinen ajatteluprosessi.
Tutkimuksen perusteella todetaan, että mikäli kouluissa
pyritään lisäämään oppilaiden osallisuutta, tulee opettajien huomioida
musiikkikasvatukselle luonteenomainen moniarvoisuus. Tästä moniarvoisuudesta
aiheutuvat jännitteet ja erimielisyydet voidaan kuitenkin ymmärtää
musiikkikasvatuksen inklusiivisuuden ja tasa-arvon kehittämisen voimavaroina
eikä niiden estäjänä. Populaarimusiikin ohjelmistovalintojen oikeuttamisen
ja poissulkemisen prosessien tunnistaminen ja reflektoiminen sekä niihin
liittyviin poliittisiin seurauksiin syventyminen tarjoaa opettajille ja oppilaille
uusia mahdollisuuksia ennakkoluulojen ylittämiseen sekä ilmiöiden
yhteistoiminnalliseen kriittiseen tutkimiseen. Samalla voidaan kriittisesti pohtia,
ketä ja mitä musiikkikasvatus palvelee sekä missä, miten ja miksi tämä tapahtuu.

Hakusanat
Inkluusio, Koulu, Kulttuurinen kriminologia, Musiikkikasvatus, Musiikinopettaja,
Narratiivi, Ohjelmisto, Populaarimusiikki, Sensuuri, Sosiaalinen tuomitseminen,
Suomi

iv
Acknowledgments
Both research and popular articles abound describing the stress of writing a
doctoral dissertation, but I have yet to come across anything on how much fun it
can be. I think the fun can be attributed to the people involved, and I have been
fortunate to have been surrounded by the very best.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the five school music teachers
who participated in this research. It is never easy to talk about the insecurities and
doubts that accompany our work as teachers, and I feel privileged that you shared
your experiences and stories so openly with me.
The words ‘thank you’ do not begin to express my gratitude to the two
strong, capable and inspiring women I have been fortunate to have as supervisors:
Professors Heidi Westerlund and Sidsel Karlsen. Heidi, thank you for your
democratic vision, for challenging my writing and my thoughts, for your patience
and persistence and for repeatedly throwing me in the deep end. Thank you for
the adventures that are between the lines of this dissertation: musicking and
researching in Cambodia (surviving the monsoons and massages); mushroom
picking; dog-sitting Amalia; co-writing days, evenings and weekends around the
world and in international airspace; and wrangling a very active toddler during
philosophy seminars in Athens, to name just a few. Sidsel, thank you for your
endless encouragement, your belief in my abilities even when I lacked it, an
attention to detail that surpasses anyone I know and for never hinting that you
were anything but happy to read another draft. I look forward to continuing to
learn from, and together with, both of you in the future.
Although my name appears as sole author on all of the products of this
research, writing this dissertation and the articles accompanying it has been
a collaborative effort. Thank you to the strong community, both in terms of
academic standards and collegial support, of doctoral researchers that I have had
the joy of sharing this journey with: Tuulikki Laes, Heidi Partti, Albi Odendaal,
Anna Kuoppamäki, Guillermo Rosabal-Coto, Inga Rikandi, Hanna Nikkanen,
Laura Miettinen, Sari Muhonen, Eeva Siljamäki, Danielle Treacy, Aleksi Ojala,
Katja Thomson, Olli-Taavetti Kankkunen, Sigrid Jordal-Havre, Susanna Mesiä,
Analia Capponi-Savolainen, Tuula Jääskeläinen, Vilma Timonen, Timo Pihkanen,
Tuulia Tuovinen and others. Thanks also to the Professors and post doctoral
researchers at the Sibelius Academy, including Lauri Väkevä, Liisamaija Hautsalo
and Marja-Leena Juntunen. I have learnt from each and every one of the members
of Sibelius Academy’s music education research community, not only how to write
(and revise, revise, revise) articles and this dissertation, but what it means to be a
scholar. Thank you also to my extended doctoral community: Johan Nyberg, Cassie

v
White and Christian Hakulinen, for your proofreading, encouragement, and
advice that was always cheerfully forthcoming when I asked for help.
I had the good fortune of beginning my studies just as a community
of researchers was forming, focused on music and censorship. The meetings,
discussions, and networking that took place during the four year Researching
Music Censorship project were invaluable. Thank you in particular to Annemette
Kirkegaard for organizing such a dynamic network and for making me justify and
refine my use of the term censorship each time we met. Thanks also to doctoral
candidates (now already and soon to be, doctors!) Kristine Ringsager, Johannes
Skjelbo and Salli Anttonen, for our lively and challenging discussions that always
leave me with new articles to read and ideas to get my head around. I hope we
have many more of them.
In addition to providing me with work as a research assistant that made
this research financially possible, and travel grants that allowed me to present
this work at numerous conferences, the Sibelius Academy generously provided
for supervision by a number of external scholars. Margaret Barrett, Karen
Hammerness, Liora Bresler, Philip Alperson, David Hargreaves, Petter Dyndahl,
Minna Muukkonen, Randall Allsup, Sandra Stauffer, Keith Hayward, Panos
Kanellopoulos and others each challenged me in different and inspiring ways. I am
also grateful for the thoughtful comments on this text and suggestions for future
research that I received from the two pre-examiners of this dissertation: Professor
Michael Apple from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and Associate
Professor Julie Ballantyne from the University of Queensland, Australia.
A doctoral degree may be a collaborative effort, but in many ways it is
also a selfish endeavour. I wish to thank my parents and parents-in-law, who have
encouraged and supported my studies and growing family unquestioningly and
generously.
My darling Jaspar and Amalia-Armas (yes, I’m thanking the dog), your
love and cuddles are always there when I need them most. Thank you for your
beautiful distractions and so many moments of unbridled creativity and joy. You
are my happy thoughts.
Finally, Kalle, this is your achievement too. Without your strength and
support, this would not have been half as good and I would have not have survived
as unscathed. As proud as I am of this, I am exponentially more proud of us and
what we can do together.

Helsinki, September 2015

Alexis Kallio
vi
Published works by the author as part of the dissertation

I Kallio, A.A. (2015). Drawing a line in water: Constructing the school censorship
frame in popular music education. International Journal of Music Education, 33(2),
195-209.

• As included in Appendix 1

II Kallio, A.A. (forthcoming). Popular ‘problems’: Deviantisation and teachers’

curation of popular music. International Journal of Music Education: Research.

• As included in Appendix 2

III Kallio, A.A. (accepted). Popular outsiders: Censorship frames and the
deviantisation of popular musics in school music education. Popular Music and
Society, Special issue: Music and Censorship.

• As included in Appendix 3

IV Kallio, A.A. (2015). Factional stories: Creating a methodological space for

collaborative reflection and inquiry in music education research. Research Studies in
Music Education, 37(1), 3-20.

• As included in Appendix 4

vii
Additional published works by the author relevant to the
dissertation
Kallio, A.A. & Väkevä, L. (forthcoming). Inclusive popular music education?
In A. Kärjä & F. Holt (Eds.) The Oxford handbook of popular music in the
Nordic countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kallio, A.A. (2014). Repertoire and (a)religiosity in Finnish school music
education [Koulujen musiikkivalinnat ja uskonto]. Issue X Taideyliopiston
Lehti. 4: Faith.
http://www.issuex.fi/en/koulujen-musiikkivalinnat-ja-uskonto/.
Kallio, A.A., Westerlund, H. & Partti, H. (2013). The Quest for Authenticity in
the Music Classroom: Sinking or Swimming? Nordic Research in Music
Education Yearbook, 15, 205-224.
Kallio, A.A. & Partti, H. (2013). Music education for a nation: Teaching
nationalist ideas and ideals in global societies. Action, Criticism and Theory
in Music Education. 12(3), 5-30.
http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/KallioPartti12_3.pdf.

Presentations by the author relevant to the dissertation

Kallio, A.A. (2013, June) Popular problems: The deviantisation of popular musics
in secondary school music education. Paper presented at the Researching
Music Censorship Conference. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Kallio, A.A. (2013, April) Drawing a line in water: Constructing the school censorship
frame in Finnish secondary school popular music education. Paper presented
at the Eighth International Research in Music Education Conference
(RIME). Exeter, United Kingdom.
Kallio, A.A. (2012, August). The perils of the popular: Popular repertoire selection
and the school censorship frame. Paper presented at the 4th International
Narrative Inquiry in Music Education Conference (NIME). Helsinki,
Finland.
Kallio, A.A. (2012, April). Narratives of popular repertoire inclusion/exclusion in
Finnish secondary school music classrooms. Paper presented at the
Researching Music Censorship Conference: Censorship and Self
Censorship: Theory and Ethics. Oslo, Norway.

viii
Robertson, A.A. (2011, May). The criminalization of culture? The inclusion/exclusion
of popular repertoire in Finnish secondary school music lessons. Paper
presented at the Researching Music Censorship conference: Contested
Spaces: War, Torture, Violence, Suppression and Power. Copenhagen,
Denmark.
Robertson, A.A. (2011, March). The criminalization of culture? Selecting
repertoire for Finnish secondary music classrooms. Paper presented at
the Nordic Network for Research in Music Education Conference:
Philosophical positions in music education from a Nordic perspective
(NNMPF). Copenhagen, Denmark.
Robertson, A.A. (2010, November). Narrating transgression in the music classroom:
Reflecting on personal experience in working towards a theoretical framework.
Paper presented at the Narrative Soundings: Narrative Inquiry in Music
Education Conference (NIME). Brisbane, Australia.
Robertson, A.A. (2010, August). Teaching popular music in Finland. Paper
presented at the European Educational Research Association (EERA)
Conference for Educational Research: Education and Cultural Change.
Helsinki, Finland.
Robertson, A.A. (2010, June). Dancing in the dark: Reconsidering (im)morality
in the music classroom. Paper presented at the International Symposium on
the Philosophy of Music Education Conference (ISPME). Helsinki,
Finland.
Robertson, A.A. (2009, October) The criminalization of culture? Teaching popular
music in Finland. Paper presented at the Nordic Network for Music
Educational Research Conference: Nordplus Democracy in Music
Education from a Nordic Perspective: Social Justice and Inclusion in
Music Education. Hamar, Norway

ix
Contents
Prelude  2

1 Introduction  4

1.1 Research context 5

1.1.1 Schooling as a democratic public good 6
1.1.2 Becoming a Finnish music teacher 7
1.1.3 Secondary school music education 9
1.1.4 The content of music lessons 10
1.1.5 Popular music in Finnish schools 11
1.2 Rationale and focus of the research project 12
1.3 Research task 13
1.4 Researcher’s story 15
1.5 Structure of the dissertation 18

2 The project in relation to earlier research   20

2.1 (Un)popular music in the classroom 20

2.2 Towards a democratic popular music education 22
2.3 Popular problems 26
2.4 Whose problem is it anyway? 28

3 Theoretical framework of the research project   34

3.1 A philosophy of flux 34

3.2 Tales of morality and deviance 38
3.2.1 Beyond ethics 38
3.2.2 (Re)constructing deviance 39
3.3 From deviance to censorship 44
3.3.1 Constructing new censorship theory 45
3.3.2 An interactive new censorship theory for the
music classroom 48
3.4 Politicized topographies and a critical sense of direction 49

x
4 Implementation of the research project  52

4.1 Methodological framework 52

4.2 The cases of five Finnish secondary school music teachers 54
4.2.1 Case selection 54
4.2.2 Introducing the teachers 55
4.3 Stage one: Asking questions and telling stories 57
4.4 Stage two: Constructing factional stories and engaging in
collaborative inquiry 62
4.5 Reflections on the methodology of the research project 66

5 A discussion of findings as reported in the four research articles 72

5.1 Constructing the school censorship frame 73

5.2 The social presence of deviantized popular musics 79
5.3 The teacher as critical, post-ethical agent 85
5.4 The uncertainties of factional stories 91
 

6 Beyond and between dichotomies of democratic music education 96

6.1 Alienation – Affiliation and understanding 96

6.2 Oppression – Emancipation 98
6.3 Exclusion – Inclusion 100

7 Final words: Expanding the discussion of inclusion and democracy in

music education   102

References  109

  125

xi
Appendix 1: Article 1  126
Appendix 2: Article II   152
Appendix 3: Article III  176
Appendix 4: Article IV  200
Appendix 5: Participant information form   228
Appendix 6: Interview guides  230
Appendix 7A: Factional Story Information   232
Appendix 7B: Factional Stories   234
(I) Trust 234
(II) Real rap? 235
(III) Music speaks what words cannot 237
(IV) We wish you a rockin’ Christmas 239
Appendix 8: Interview excerpt   242
Appendix 9: Illustration of thematic categorization   246

xii
1
Prelude
It was my first year of teaching in Sydney Australia, working in a secondary, all-
boys comprehensive school – perhaps a challenging task for any young, female
teacher. The music department was thriving and I enjoyed a fairly relaxed, banter-
filled relationship with most of my teenage students. They spent lunchtimes in the
music staffroom, occasionally asking for clarification on guitar chords or how Kurt
Cobain really died. ACDC, Green Day, and Deep Purple blared from amplifiers
before, during and after school, and heavy rock bands played to open-mouthed
parents watching their ‘usually quiet’ twelve-year-old sons head-bang at school
functions. My year 9 class (14–15 year olds) were in the middle of a unit of work
on rap music. Discussions about the ways the music portrayed gangs and violence
had taken place, rhymes about fast cars, politics, race and rebellion had been
analyzed and composed. The classroom was a forum for open, critical thought and
I was fairly proud of my students, and myself. I had encouraged them to bring
in their own music, the students had responded enthusiastically and so far this
venture seemed successful. One particular afternoon, a boy brought in a video of
a live performance by 50 cent. 50 cent has some controversial lyrics, but I knew
the particular song well and it contained nothing that the students hadn’t been
confronted with and asked to comment on before.
The video began with the usual light show, throbbing beats and ‘uh’ ‘uhuh’s
and ‘yeah’s. The students were sitting on their desks, heads bobbing and feet
tapping along with the music. The performance was a good and interesting one,
and I noted a number of points to discuss after the video had finished. 50 cent
was his usual self, strutting around on stage with his air of superiority and pride,
and the crowd (and my students) lapped it up. The camera occasionally panned
to a hysterical crowd, hats askew and bling swaying as they jumped. The camera
zoomed in, focusing on a young girl sitting on a male companion’s shoulders. Her
hands raised, rhythmically punching the air in time with the performance. A look
of delight came across her face when she saw herself on the big screen, and her
hands lowered to her waist. In a matter of seconds, her shirt was raised above her
head and her breasts exposed, still rhythmically jiggling to the beat. The students’
eyes widened and as I instinctively launched myself towards the stop button, the
whistles, catcalls, jeers and cheers began.
It is one thing being in control of an open, frank and critical discussion
of sexuality and ethics in the classroom, but quite another to have your lesson
hijacked by jiggling breasts on a television screen. I felt unprepared to meet with
this portrayal of female sexuality in an all-boys school and although it was bound
to be raised at some point during a unit of work on rap music, it arrived without
2
warning. As the only female in the room, I felt some obligation to address the
typical teenage boy responses of ‘aw Miss… you stopped the video at the best part!’
‘Press play, press play’, but didn’t quite know how to. After a few mumbled words
and a few failed attempts at diverting their attention to other points of the video,
the class ended and I retreated to the staff room, questioning the things I could or
should have said or done.

3
1 Introduction
The role popular music plays in the lives of adolescents, and the role it ought to
play in formal schooling, raises questions fraught with contention, ambiguity and
contradiction. Envisioning the school as an institution committed to the safety,
wellbeing, personal and social growth of students in a democratic society, there are
numerous pedagogic incentives for teaching musics that students are interested in;
enjoy alone and with peers; identify with; are motivated to learn; and may safely,
vicariously and cathartically explore and release negative emotions. Yet, doubts
may be raised when taking into consideration that both the media and research
have drawn associations between the very same musics and adolescent feelings
of alienation, drug use, suicide risk, sexual permissiveness, anti-authoritarianism,
rebellion and belonging to any number of counterculture social groups. Indeed
it may be asked whether certain popular musics, often defined as students’ own
musics and in opposition to the authoritarian, regulated, conventional adult worlds
of which school is a part, have a place in the classroom at all.
In this research project I investigate the negotiations of popular music
meanings in school contexts, as teachers make decisions regarding which popular
musics to include as part of their teaching, and which to exclude. In doing so,
I combine the field of music education with the sociology of deviance – in it’s
later iteration of cultural criminology – as a way to understand how it is that
certain musics come to be seen as deviant or problematic, potentially leading to
their marginalization or exclusion from school activities. Emerging in the mid-
1990s, cultural criminology (see Ferrell, Hayward & Young, 2015) is an inherently
interdisciplinary, distinct branch of critical criminology, understanding crime and
crime control as cultural processes of ‘power and conflict… constituting the terrain
on which conflicts over morality and identity are fought’ (Ferrell & Hayward,
2011, p. xi). Focused on dynamics of deviance and transgression that extend
beyond matters of law and order, cultural criminology has attended to the ‘social
and cultural processes by which situations are defined, individuals and groups are
categorized, and human consequences are understood’ (Ferrell, 2013, p. 258; see
also Ferrell & Hayward 2011). In line with this approach, I view the ways in which
certain musics are stigmatized in school contexts as processes of social censure.
Colin Sumner (1990) argues that these processes of social censure arise ‘within
the politics of social democracy’ (p. 17), as moral definitions of certain practices,
objects, or individuals are negotiated. In this way, negative understandings and/
or portrayals of certain popular musics may be seen as produced ‘within [the]
dominant ideological formations’ (Sumner, 1990, p. 17) of the school.
Whether popular musics are promoted as constructive in the lives of
4
adolescent students, or are censured as deviant and inappropriate for school use,
both views suggest that music is powerful. As Tia DeNora (2000) argues, music ‘is
implicated in every dimension of social agency’ (p. 17), influencing the parameters
of ‘feeling, perception, cognition and consciousness, identity, energy, perceived
situation and scene, embodied conduct and comportment’ (p. 20). Accordingly,
with the teacher in control of the music classroom soundtrack, selecting which
popular musics to listen to, play, watch and compose in the classroom and which
to exclude, s/he has a profound impact on the ‘organization of social agency, a
framework for how people perceive (consciously or subconsciously) potential
avenues of conduct’ (p. 17). As the interactive and negotiated processes of social
censure cast certain musics as problematic, judgements and assessments of
musical value provide frames and constraints for teacher decisions and actions.
These frames may be seen as censorship processes that reinforce selective ideas of
propriety and certain moral boundaries in the classroom.
This has significant implications for the participatory ideals of inclusion and
democracy in the music classroom. If adolescents construct individual identities
and social groupings in relation to, and through, popular musics (Frith, 2004),
pressing the ‘stop button’ and excluding certain popular musics from the school
classroom on the bases of (potential) offense delegitimizes such musics, casting
them as unworthy of scholarly attention. In turn, the students who listen to,
enjoy or identify with such musics may be positioned as outsiders to the music
classroom, implicitly told ‘your music is not welcome in school, and accordingly,
neither are you’.
As music education research and practical initiatives have fought long
and arduous battles to introduce popular music to schools, the complexities
and ideological conflicts involved in selecting and teaching popular repertoire
have perhaps been sidelined. As an established practice in Finnish schools, this
research aims to delve deeper into teachers’ decision-making processes by which
popular musics are included, marginalized or excluded, from formal education,
and the ethical challenges and implications of these popular music selections for a
meaningful, inclusive, democratic music education.

1.1 Research context

The design and goals of its education system make Finland a particularly apt
context in which to investigate not only teachers’ popular repertoire decision-
making, but also issues relating to inclusion and democracy in music education.
In addition to being the international PISA darling of recent years (e.g., Simola,
2005), the Finnish music education system has been promoted as exemplar for
many nations introducing or expanding upon popular music practices in the
5
classroom, having included popular repertoire in school lessons since the 1960s
(Kallio & Väkevä, forthcoming; Väkevä, 2006). In explicating why this particular
context offers important insights on teachers’ popular repertoire selections, I first
outline Finland’s educational aims and goals, as a system committed to the ideals
of inclusivity and democracy (1.1.1). Following this, I offer a brief description of
music teacher preparation studies as one means by which Finnish policy makers
have sought to achieve this democratic ideal (1.1.2). Focusing on the particular
context of this research, I then outline the curricular demands of secondary school
music education (1.1.3) and describe the popular music emphasis of many school
music lessons (1.1.4). Finally, I provide a short definition of popular music, as it is
discussed in Finnish educational policy and practice (1.1.5).
1.1.1 Schooling as a democratic public good
The national education reforms of the 1970s, and consequent developments in
educational policy have constructed a narrative of Finnish education as a public
good (Sahlberg, 2015, p. 49), and related to the intellectual, physical, social and
cultural welfare of the entire population. In striving to provide all children with
access to high quality education irrespective of individual differences, background
or circumstance, there has long been a considerable emphasis on issues of
democracy. Music education researcher Marja Heimonen (2014) has explained
that the principles of Finnish schooling focus on both the individual and the
collective, developing the individuals’ knowledge and skills as well as their abilities
to work together. Schools thus aim towards ‘self-determination and autonomy
based on reason, a life in freedom and mutual respect between human beings’
(Nielsen, 2007, p. 279), involving the broad ‘education of autonomous human
beings capable of living and acting collectively in a democratic society’ (Heimonen,
2014, p. 197).
As opposed to liberal understandings of democracy as individualistic and
dependent on market economies, democracy in the Finnish education system
is taken to mean what Gandin and Apple (2002) refer to as of the thick variety.
Taking the etymological roots of demos and kratos as a point of departure, thick
democracy is by definition, inclusive and participatory. Finnish education
researcher Pasi Sahlberg (2015) describes this democratic and participatory
approach to education as one focused on ‘student access to decision-making
regarding their own lives and studying in school’ (p. 167; cf. Simola, 2005).
Carlgren et. al. (2006) have noted that Finnish schools are not only seen as
democratic institutions within and of themselves, but as contributing towards
the cultivation of thick democracy in the public sphere. In this sense, the Finnish
education system aligns with a Deweyan view of schooling, whereby a democratic

6
education is concerned with producing an active citizenry, emphasizing inclusion
and communality in affording individuals and social groups with the opportunity
and means to participate in, and influence, schools and Finnish society.
Understanding democracy in this participatory and active way, it may be
seen that consensus is not only unachievable, it is wholly undesirable. Rather, thick
democracy is concerned with critical and emancipatory engagement (Carr, 2008;
Giroux, 1988), political literacy (Guttman, 1999), and political action (McLaren,
2003). The idea of democracy as a uniform, end-point destination to which schools
aim, is thus replaced with the idea of democracy as a never-ending enactment
(Apple & Beane, 2007; Giroux, 2011); a process of democratization rather than a
state of democracy. In Dewey’s words, democracy is a ‘mode of associated living,
of conjoint communicated experience’ (MW9: 93, Democracy and Education);
democracy is a way of life (see also Väkevä & Westerlund, 2007; Westerlund, 2002).
Thus, when Finnish education policy or schools speak of equity, it does not mean
that all students learn the same curriculum, or are expected to achieve the same
learning outcomes. As Sahlberg (2015) states, equity in Finnish schools relates to a
vision of ‘a socially fair and inclusive education system that provides everyone with
the opportunity to fulfil their intentions and dreams through education’ (p. 62).
1.1.2 Becoming a Finnish music teacher
In working towards an equitable, inclusive and democratic education system,
Finland has invested in teacher education and teacher professionalism for all
levels of schooling and education. Indeed, as Finnish education researcher Hannu
Simola (2005) notes, the ‘success story’ of Finnish education has ‘unequivocally’
been attributed ‘to the excellent Finnish teachers and high-quality Finnish teacher
education’ in public discourse (p. 456). Teaching is a profession that enjoys high
social status and is trusted ‘by the general public… and… the political and even
economic elite’ (Simola, 2005, p. 459). Perhaps as a result of this positive image,
teaching, whether in general education or specialized in particular subjects
such as music, is a popular career choice for school leavers and admittance to
teacher training studies is highly competitive (Simola, 2005). Studies in music
pedagogy are offered at a number of polytechnics qualifying graduates to teach
music in extracurricular music schools, folk academies, and conservatoires. In
general, a university master’s degree in music education is required to teach in
comprehensive primary schools (students aged approximately 7–12 years old),
secondary schools (students aged approximately 13–15 years old) and high schools
(students aged approximately 16–19 years old).
Three universities offer these graduate studies: the Sibelius Academy
of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Oulu University and the University of

7
Jyväskylä. Entry to the five and a half year teacher preparation programmes is
highly competitive, and applicants are selected on the basis of their versatility as
musicians and aptitudes for teaching. Applicants thus represent not only skilled
backgrounds in classical musics, world musics, folk musics, jazz and/or popular
musics, but also possess skills in more than one genre, and often in more than one
instrument. Often seen as a more democratic medium for classroom instruction
than for example western art musics, popular musics feature as a key component
of teacher preparation studies (Väkevä, 2006). Through these studies, students
develop competences ‘in the use of the instruments commonly associated with
rock bands, as well as knowledge of studio techniques, making arrangements in
different popular music styles and on-stage performance’ (Westerlund, 2006, p.
119). For instance, the Sibelius Academy’s music education programme includes
units of study such as,

Basic Studies in Rhythm Section Instruments where students learn the ‘basic
techniques of comping instruments (electric bass and guitar, percussion,
drums)’ and to ‘be able to apply the key accompaniment rhythms in
African-American music’;

Afro-American Music, where students ‘develop their skills with ensemble

instruments (keyboard, guitar, bass, drums, percussion, voice) and ensemble
playing… become familiar with the different genres and arrangements/
pedagogical applications of African-American music; and be familiar with
the basics of studio work’; and,

Band Pedagogy, where students ‘deepen their skills with [rock] band
instruments and pop singing, become more competent in teaching [rock]
band playing skills to pupils of different ages and skill levels, be familiar
with the equipment necessary for teaching [rock] band playing and be
familiar with the basics of finding a good sound and be familiar with
writing pedagogically appropriate arrangements and transcriptions’ (Sibelius
Academy, Curriculum and course descriptions, 2012–2013).

Alongside the development of a variety of musical skills, teacher preparation

involves the ‘systemic integration of scientific educational knowledge, didactics (or
pedagogical content knowledge), and practice to enable teachers to enhance their
pedagogical thinking, evidence-based decisionmaking [sic], and engagement in
the professional community of educators’ (Sahlberg, 2015, p. 108). For instance, at
Oulu University, music education students study the,
8
 methods of music education such as Kodály, Orff, Dalcroze and Suzuki,
theory and practice of musicality, formal and informal music education,
paradigmatic discussion of music education philosophy, conceptions of
learning, knowledge, the human and music, music in the lives of individual
and members of social groups, societies and cultures, tenets and policies of
general education in music and the arts (Oulu University, Curriculum and
course descriptions, 2014–2015).

All students complete a scientific thesis as part of the music education bachelor’s
degree requirements. The majority of students who continue to a master’s
degree in music education also complete a more substantial scientific thesis,
with the expectation that they are able to contribute to academic discourses
in music education and continue to doctoral level study if they wish. Having
undergone such rigorous teacher preparation, the secondary school music teachers
participating in this research project may all be seen to be experienced and
knowledgeable in popular musics, popular music pedagogies, music education
methods, and some scientific educational research.
1.1.3 Secondary school music education
On entering the workforce, Finland’s highly qualified and popular music savvy
music teachers are afforded considerable responsibility and trust, as comprehensive
schools function free from external inspection, and school or teacher performance
is not measured by external tests. Teachers are given the freedom to design their
own school-based syllabi, within the broad guidelines offered by the national
curriculum, as well as freedom to select their preferred pedagogical methods and
school repertoires. As this dissertation was being finalized, a new curriculum
was being published. However, the focus of this research is on the 2004 Finnish
National Core Curriculum for Basic Education published by the Finnish National
Board of Education, as it was the curriculum all teachers were using at the time of
data collection.
The National Core Curriculum (Finnish National Board of Education,
2004) for secondary music education (relating to students aged 13–15 years old in
compulsory music classes in grade 7, and elective classes in grades 8 and 9) is less
than two pages long. Within this brief overview of school music studies, teachers
may construct their own situational, school-based approaches to music teaching
and learning. In keeping with the student-centred maxim of education, the task
of the Finnish teacher is not ‘in teaching music but in teaching the pupil’ (Antila,
2010, p. 243), focusing on the role of music in the lives of adolescent students,

9
rather than prescribing lesson content for students to learn. Accordingly, the
National Core Curriculum (2004) emphasizes practical, experiential, hands-on
music making as a means ‘to help the pupils find their objects of interest in music,
to encourage them to engage in musical activity, to give them means of expressing
themselves musically, and to support their overall growth’ (p. 230). School music
lessons also aim to help students understand the situational and contextual
nature of music, reflecting the broader educational policies of inclusion, and
diversity. The National Core Curriculum (2004) emphasizes the social benefits of
musical engagement as developing ‘social skills such as responsibility, constructive
criticism, and the acceptance and appreciation of a diversity of cultures and skills’
(p. 230).
Many Finnish classrooms are equipped with rock band instruments such
as guitars, bass guitars, keyboards, drum kits, and microphones, and classes have
been described as resembling the working model of a garage band (Westerlund,
2006), playing either as a class, or in small peer groups, rotating instruments and
roles. Student achievement is monitored and evaluated by teachers themselves,
and although there are no external examinations, the present curriculum does
offer some guidance on final assessment criteria for the end of grade 9 (Finnish
National Board of Education, 2004, p. 231). These criteria are fairly broad, and
include students’ participation in group singing; playing an instrument in an
ensemble; listening to music and commenting in an informed, critical manner;
listening skills in order to make music with others; recognition and ability to
distinguish between musical genres, eras and cultures; knowledge of Finnish
musical culture and history; knowledge of, and an ability to apply musical concepts
and elements in music-making and listening.
1.1.4 The content of music lessons
As in many other Nordic countries, the music repertoires in Finnish schools
are not predefined. In neighbouring Sweden, music education researchers Eva
Georgii-Hemming and Jonathan Lilliedahl (2014) have questioned what should
form the content of music didactics courses in tertiary education, in helping
future music teachers decide what to teach. Although focusing on Swedish music
teacher education, the concept of didaktik is relevant to the Finnish context as well
(as mentioned in section 1.1.2), with ‘didactically oriented educational science’
forming the ‘knowledge base’ of Finnish teachers’ work since the 1970s (Simola,
Heikkinen & Silvonen, 1998, p. 74). Didaktik, as part of teacher training, attends
to the intersection of educational theory and practice by asking ‘what education
should contain, why, and how… who should learn, with whom one should learn,
through what as well as where and when’ (Georgii-Hemming & Lilliedahl, 2014,

10
pp. 134-135). Georgii-Hemming and Lilliedahl (2014) suggest that teachers’
repertoire decisions are multifaceted, taking into consideration teachers’ ‘personal
experiences, their view on student learning, and the music subject, but also
the character and activities of the subject, as well as contextual and historical
dimensions’ (p. 134). In this way, Swedish teachers do not simply implement
predefined curricular directives regarding what they should teach. This is similar
to the expectations placed upon Finnish teachers, to construct their own localized
syllabi and units of work within the broad guidelines of the National Core
Curriculum (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004), relevant to their own
students and the resources they have to work with.
In line with the participatory ideals of schooling, repertoire decisions may
also be made democratically together with students (cf. discussions of content
selection in Finnish general education, Simola, 2005, p. 463). As such, the teacher’s
background, priorities and musical preferences are only part of the decision-
making process. Although the teacher may source musics from libraries, online or
a number of available textbook publications (many of which contain both ‘classic’
– or at least presented as such, with songs by bands like Creedence Clearwater
Revival or the Beatles – and recent popular music hits), students often bring their
own musics to share with the class. As a result, what to play, arrange and learn,
is often a collaborative decision. In addition, school repertoires include students’
own compositions, with curricular directives for students to experiment ‘with one’s
own musical ideas by improvising, composing, and arranging’ (Finnish Board of
Education, 2004, p. 232). Accordingly, it may be seen that although the teacher
is ultimately responsible for what is, and what is not, played or performed in the
classroom, school repertoires are not wholly within his/her control, and
s/he is required to decide how to engage with the musics that enter the classroom
unexpectedly.
1.1.5 Popular music in Finnish schools
Although there are no stipulations as to what musics should be taught in schools,
the focus of teacher preparation programmes and the long held expectation that
lesson content should ‘embark from an analysis of the society and the musical
environment of its youth’ (POPS 70, the first Finnish music education curriculum
for comprehensive schools in Muukkonen, 2010, p. 71) means that popular music
often forms the bases of classroom teaching and learning, alongside art musics,
jazz, folk, world musics and others.
Historically, the study of what is here referred to as popular music has
been assigned various labels in Finnish music education research and practice.
Introduced to the comprehensive school curriculum in the 1970s as viihdemusiikki

11
(light, or entertainment music), this music has also been, and still is, referred to
in various curricula or policy documents as Afro-American music, rytmimusiikki
(rhythmic music) or popular music. However, none of these terms provide adequate
delimitations to determine what is, and what is not, considered popular music.
Professor of politics and renowned scholar on popular music and culture
John Street (1997) argues that defining popular culture is in itself a political act,
‘selecting particular cultural forms from amongst others, and making evaluations
of their worth’ (p. 8). With regard to the musics learnt in schools, these selections
have often focused on defining popular musics in opposition to art musics, as a
means to advocate for one or the other. Defining a cultural product as high art
often considers it as removed and immune from the manipulations of market
forces, reifying it as intellectually and aesthetically worthwhile. In contrast,
defining something as popular culture positions it as belonging to the masses, and
‘representing a democratic voice’ (Street, 1997, p. 9). These definitions are fraught
with false distinctions and oversimplifications that warrant considerably more
exploration and explanation than I am able to do here. Thus, in the interests of
brevity, popular music in this dissertation refers to its application in Finnish music
education policy discourse. This includes pop/rock styles; metal; punk; rhythm and
blues; soul; funk; disco; hip hop; house, techno and other dance genres; Caribbean
derivatives such as reggae and dancehall; country; and local variations such as
iskelmä (Finnish Schlager music).
In providing this definition I acknowledge that popular music is not
determined solely by ubiquity, ‘mainstream’ popularity or mediated cultures.
Popular music is not solely the music so intimately connected with the recording
industry and consumer culture. Popular music is not necessarily youth culture.
Popular music is not a homogeneous, stable categorization, as artists, educators,
producers, the media and other social actors are constantly applying the popular
label to new musics and musical cultures. Popular music, or the act of labelling
any music as such, is neither neutral nor trivial. In this dissertation, distinctions
between popular and other musics are made recognizing the political processes
and implications of applying definitions and delimitations. The definition of
popular music in this dissertation thus aligns with Street’s (1997) suggestion that
popular culture is a constantly evolving and unsettled categorization, ‘conditioned
by history, by ideology and by institutions’ (p. 9) as well as people’s interactions
with popular culture more generally.

1.2 Rationale and focus of the research project

Due to its long history of popular music education in schools, and democratic
approach to formal education, many nations have looked to the Finnish success
12
story for lessons on how to introduce, or expand upon popular music practices
in schools (Allsup, 2011). However, although popular musics have been seen as
more accessible and inclusive, by opening classroom doors to popular musics,
or students’ own musical preferences and practices, the teacher’s job is not
necessarily simplified. Nor are school music practices necessarily democratized.
This is especially true taking into consideration arguments that the norms and
values associated with certain popular musics exist in stark contrast with those
of formal education, raising questions regarding what is taught, and what ought
to be taught in the music classroom (e.g., Allsup & Westerlund, 2012; Law &
Ho, 2015; Väkevä, 2006). As Dillon (2007) reflects, ‘the issues of the value and
appropriateness of popular music in music curriculum are still being argued
some 50 years after the beginnings of what can be referred to as ¨youth music¨’
suggesting that ‘this issue is not one which is simply about musical knowledge
or relevance’ (p. 13). If we understand curriculum as ‘part of a selective tradition,
someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge’ (Apple, 1996, p.
22), the teacher’s popular repertoire decisions are not made in isolation, and hold
serious implications for achieving the inclusive and democratic ideals of Finnish
education policy. Whilst the teacher may be seen to make the final decisions
regarding what musics are included and excluded from school repertoires, these
decisions may be framed, influenced and negotiated with others, and are always in
relation to perceptions and understandings of the musical material itself. Which
popular musics are selected to comprise the content of school music lessons and
activities may be seen as a matter of legitimation, concerning questions of who has
‘the power to decide what (and whose) music is taught in schools, and on whose
terms’ (Väkevä & Westerlund, 2007, p. 97).
The focus of this research is on the experiences of five secondary school
teachers, working with teenage students that many researchers regard as at
formative stages of identity development and rapid biological, psychological
and emotional change (Tarrant et al., 2002). Through these teachers’ stories, this
research investigates both the social narratives that frame their popular repertoire
selections for these young students, and teachers’ considerations of the musical
meanings that frame their decisions. In doing so, this research aims to better
understand the complex and ethical roles teachers play in enacting the inclusive
and democratic ideals and policies of everyday school life.

1.3 Research task

Conducted in Finland, a country where popular music has long been established
as a field of study in schools and universities, and student-centred informal
learning strategies have long been implemented, this research project is concerned
13
with what comes next. As teachers are afforded the freedoms to make situational
decisions regarding the methods and content of their lessons, new challenges
arise regarding what to teach, and why. As a multiple instrumental case study
(Stake, 1995), this research aimed to both investigate teachers’ everyday practices
and experiences of selecting popular music, but also contribute towards the
development of a theoretical framework with which to better understand the
meanings ascribed to the processes of popular repertoire selection in the school
music classroom.

The central research task of this research was thus to develop theoretical and
practical understandings of music teachers’ experiences of the censure and
censorship of popular music in school contexts.

This task was realized through an inquiry of Finnish school music teachers’
popular repertoire selection processes for students aged 13–15 years old. In
this way, this research aimed to combine knowledge gained through a strong
theoretical tradition with that grounded in the everyday experiences of teaching
and learning music.
The research task was investigated through a number of research questions.
It is important to note that these research questions are formulated differently to
the research questions of the journal articles that comprise this dissertation. This is
a result of theoretical maturation, and a more focused understanding of what the
phenomena under investigation was. These refinements occurred during the course
of writing the articles, writing the dissertation text, and as a result of reflecting
upon the research findings in light of a developing theoretical framework.

The research questions of this project are:

1. In what ways do censorious narratives frame teachers’ popular repertoire

decision-making?
2. Which musical features do teachers identify as contributing towards the
censure of certain popular musics?
3. What are the implications of popular repertoire selections for enacting
inclusivity and democracy in formal music education?

14
During the course of investigation, a fourth question was added to attend to
the methodological changes implemented in responses to particular challenges
experienced (as discussed in chapter 4 of this dissertation):

4. What can be learnt about the teaching of music, if story is viewed as both
the source and representation of knowledge and experience?

1.4 Researcher’s story

Understanding knowledge as continually constructed and reconstructed in terms
of experience (Dewey, LW13, Experience and Education), past experiences, present
action and future predictions, in interaction with social context, may all be seen to
play a pivotal role in meaning-making. Accordingly, the stories that I bring with
me in understanding others’ experiences of teaching and learning popular music
are also stories of my family, my education, my colleagues and students. It is with
this in mind, and in keeping with qualitative research custom, that I here offer my
own version of the beliefs, values, experiences and ideas that have led me to this
particular research topic and approach.

There has always been popular music in my family. Some of my earliest musical
memories are of my father playing Dan Fogelberg and Cat Stevens songs on the
guitar, and the lyrics of James Taylor songs are as familiar to me as any lullaby. I
began classical piano lessons in Sydney, Australia at the age of nine, playing on
a four-octave keyboard for years before my parents were able to buy an upright
piano. I remember the frustration and persistence with which I tried to recreate
the demo song, pounding the drum pads and synth sounds onto the two-track
recording feature.
My family moved to Hong Kong in 1991. I attended a secondary school
that catered for approximately 1200 students of 33 nationalities, following the
British curriculum from grade 7 to A levels. Students were afforded considerable
freedoms, and played a role in shaping their own learning from a young age. The
fairly relaxed school uniform was only worn during the lower grades, a mentoring
system meant that younger students interacted with older students on a daily
basis, students would chat with teachers before or after class, school trips were
mutual adventures, and extracurricular activities were as important as, if not more
important than, classroom based lessons. I spent most school lunchtimes with my
friends in the music classroom arranging Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals for one
piano, six hands, two clarinets, a cello and a tap dancer. I was fortunate to have a
music teacher who turned a blind eye to our repeatedly breaking the piano stool
15
(thanks to many more hands on the piano than six), and who lent a generous,
critical ear to many of our performances. Although I can only remember this
school through the experiences of a 12–16 year old, I held, and continue to hold,
this vision of teaching and learning as my ideal school.
Returning to Australia and starting at a new school, I tentatively made two
new friends and headed for familiar territory during our lunch hour – the music
room. With a sandwich in one hand and a drum stick in the other, a half full
mouth harmonizing with half remembered lyrics, we were all startled when the
classroom door was swung open by a glaring music teacher. We were scolded for
being in the classroom outside of formal lesson time and were quickly bustled out
into the playground where we belonged. I was, and am still, horrified. Being a fairly
precocious teenager, I gathered support to petition the music department to not
only have an open door policy, but to buy electric guitars, a bass, a better drum kit
and some microphones. A compromise was reached whereby the school bought
two guitars, and arranged for a ‘rock band programme’ to be run one afternoon per
week. The same two friends and I formed a band, invited local music celebrities to
join band workshops and composed many angst-ridden songs to perform at school
functions. It is with a little embarrassment at my relentless pestering of teachers,
but also a little pride, that I note that the ‘rock band programme’ still exists.
On completing school I enrolled in a Bachelor of Social Science
(Criminology) without really knowing what the degree entailed or what one
would do with it. Largely quantitative and policy focused, I was interested in the
subject matter, but the approach left me envisioning a future at a desk repeating
the same actions on SPSS for the rest of my life.1 In order to financially support
myself during my university studies, I began teaching classical piano to a number
of children and adults in the evenings and soon established a busy home studio. I
loved these lessons. At the end of my criminology degree, I followed this love of
teaching and applied to a music education degree. To my surprise, I was accepted
and instantly felt like I had found my vocational home. I immersed myself in
pedagogical theory and practice, and by necessity devoted myself to classical
piano in order to ‘keep up’ with the other students. My focus was never really on
performing music, but on my growing love of teaching as a process of continual
learning and sharing.
After graduation I began working at a public, all-boys secondary school (the
same described in the prelude of this dissertation), where popular music had long
been the focus of music lessons for the 12–18 year old students. My colleague, an
older male teacher with many years of teaching experience, had already established

1 I have since come to appreciate SPSS, but I admit that it took many years.

16
my dream open door policy, and there were students and guitars everywhere,
at all times. Our small music staff room was always overrun with kids, and the
makeshift school recording studio was booked by the swing band, the choir, heavy
metal bands, ukulele bands and everything in between, every lunch hour, after
school and weekends. During my first week on the job I was (half seriously) told
by the art teacher not to smile in the first term, ‘they will walk all over you’ she
warned. Thinking she was mad, I ignored her and tried to approach my students
how I had wanted to be taught when I was a student. The first year was hard
and for some reason I felt as though I ought to have known how to deal with the
numerous confrontations that arose between students, or between students and
myself. There were many situations that I had no idea how to predict or handle,
but I did my best – which hardly seemed good enough. Although I loved teaching,
music, the students I taught and the uncertainty that each day held, I often
retreated to the bathroom or my car in tears. My narrative in the prelude of this
dissertation was only one instance of many – and a tame example at that.
And so, I write this dissertation from a number of relevant standpoints,
two of which I have briefly mentioned here. The first is an interest in the
construction of deviance and how we come to understand certain people or things
as problematic, particularly in public education settings that are intended to serve
everyone. The second, and perhaps most important, is as an early career teacher
who felt unprepared and unable to think clearly about the ethical issues relating to
popular music and teenage students, and unable to raise these challenges with her
colleagues. This project is thus an endeavour to explore these kinds of situations,
and to learn from (and with) other teachers about what they mean.
I am not searching here for definite answers or solutions, as I don’t think
they exist. Rather, with this project as just one step on a long road of teaching and
learning, I hope to understand just a little more than I did before. I love teaching
because I love learning, and over time I have come to realize that this is most
effectively done in collaboration with others. This dissertation is an extension of
that for me.

17
1.5 Structure of the dissertation
This dissertation is a synthesis and extension of the research reported in four
articles, as included in appendices 1–4. The structure of the dissertation is in
seven parts, the first of which is this introductory chapter. Chapter two outlines
the relevant research and scholarly discussions that form the foundations of
this research project. This includes the changing perceptions and attitudes
towards popular music in formal school contexts, from a harmful distraction to
democratizing, inclusive practice. I also address the social constructions of certain
popular musics as problematic for adolescent students, and the role of teacher as
critical, ethical agent in navigating such popular musics in the classroom. Chapter
three presents the theoretical perspectives that have been adopted as lenses to
conduct and interpret this research, drawing together Deweyan pragmatism,
cultural criminological theories of deviance and critical pedagogy. The fourth
chapter explicates the methodological approach, including the challenges
experienced during the course of study, and the changes implemented in order to
attend to these. The fifth chapter offers a discussion of the findings of the research
project as reported in the four articles. This chapter extends and expands upon
what was covered in the articles in light of the four research questions and the
theoretical framework of the research. The sixth chapter extends this discussion
to broader matters of inclusion and democracy in music education, through
problematizing three key dichotomies that may be seen to have guided popular
music education thus far. The final chapter summarizes the main contributions of
this dissertation to the field of music education, and offers some final remarks in
considering how teachers may select popular repertoire in, and for, an inclusive,
democratic music classroom.

18
19
2 The project in relation to earlier research
Although recent decades have seen an increase in popular music content and
pedagogies in school classrooms internationally (e.g., Allsup, 2008; Pitts, 2000;
Rodriguez, 2004; Väkevä, 2006), this has not gone uncontested. This chapter
is structured in four sections, focusing on different aspects of popular music’s
inclusion in formal schooling as they pertain to this research project. The first
two sections outline some of the debates surrounding the introduction of
popular musics to the classroom, particularly discussions aligned with the liberal
education paradigm (2.1) and in contrast, those that have valued a more pluralist
approach to cultural and musical diversity (2.2). The third section presents some
of the literature that has constructed certain popular musics as problematic
for adolescents, raising important questions regarding their place in school
curricula (2.3). The final section turns to writings in music education that have
hinted at the ideological conflicts involved in teaching popular musics in schools
(2.4). This chapter suggests that in positioning the teacher as ethical agent, and
conceptualizing popular musics as laden with competing ideological and political
meanings, the issue is altogether more complicated than a simple process of
creating taxonomies of musics as problematic or prudent, and selecting school
repertoires accordingly.

2.1 (Un)popular music in the classroom

As many nations are only beginning to explore the role that popular music could
play in school curricula (Allsup, 2008), the introduction of popular musics into the
Finnish and other Nordic school curricula during the late 1960s and early 1970s
was in many ways ahead of it’s time. However, this does not mean that Nordic
school music education policies and practices have existed in isolation or have
remained unscathed from broader debates regarding the place of popular music
in formal education. Internationally, the 1970s and 80s saw a flourishing of the
liberal education paradigm, as led by American and British educational leaders
Allan Bloom and E.D. Hirsch Jr., which regarded the purpose of school music
education as to induct students into a high art canon, notably, a narrow selection of
western art musics.
Perhaps the most often quoted claim relating to music in Allan Bloom’s
seminal work, The Closing of the American Mind (1987) is that ‘[c]lassical music is
dead among the young’ (p. 69). He argued that whereas classical music once held
some status in society and amongst young listeners, distinguishing the middle
and upper educated classes from others, popular music offers a brutish, instant
gratification, and is the prevailing, and unquestioned culture of youth (p. 75).
20
Bloom was concerned by the welcoming of these unquestioned, diverse musics to
education contexts, without submitting them to some sort of valuation processes
that would allow teachers to distinguish certain musics as better than others.
Through illustration of a thirteen-year-old boy with rock music blaring through
his headphones, Bloom worried that he would remain oblivious and ignorant to
any music or knowledge of substance, as illusions of sex, rebellion, homosexuality,
drug use, nihilism, sexism, racism and violence fill the boy’s mind (p. 75-78). The
blaring headphones shut out any truth or good in the world, as high art is silenced.
The role of liberal education was thus to offer students an alternative to the
numbing, prurient throbs of popular rhythms, and the aimlessness of anything-
goes musical relativism. Accordingly, the content of lessons was seen to be of
utmost importance, as E.D. Hirsch Jr. (1988) asserted, ‘we must be traditionalists
about content’ (p. 126). The utilitarian and social aims of progressive education
were seen to have failed, resulting in a disordered and fragmented curriculum.
Liberal education proposed that through the stipulation of prerequisite, quality
content, as determined by a selection of masterworks (from the western art
tradition), students would bear witness to a shared reservoir of the greatest cultural
knowledge and gain the ‘flexible skill of mature literacy’ (Hirsch, 1988, p. 126).
This call to preserve the status of high art in schools has continued
internationally, including in Finland where popular musics may be seen to have
long taken a firm curricular hold. Recent public debate has seen the popular music
focus of Finnish music education and teacher training programmes accused of
‘ruining the taste of the Finnish public’ (as reported in Väkevä & Westerlund,
2007, p. 98; see also Allsup & Westerlund, 2012), as though the purpose of music
education were to guide the ignorant masses toward a more refined, intellectual
appreciation of high art. Concerned with the public’s taste for Culture (with a
capital C) in the United Kingdom, Roger Scruton (2007) has appealed for music
education to provide students with ‘images of the ideal and the transcendent’ (p. 2)
in preparation for the transition ‘out of adolescence’ (p. 65). However, he laments
that these aspirations are undermined by an ‘undemanding’ popular culture that
idolizes immaturity and interferes with the ability of young people to pay close
or critical attention to the ‘licentious messages’ it contains (p. 62). In a similar
vein, Robert Walker (2007) suggests that Australian parents opting to enroll
their children in the Catholic school system is symptomatic of a yearning for a
traditional curriculum ‘where student choices are not so freely available, especially
if they clash with the school ethos’ (p. 133).2 However, he argues, that in many

2 Whilst the selection of a more traditional curriculum may be one consideration of parents choosing
Catholic schools for their children, Walker neglects to note perhaps more important factors such as a faith-

21
western nations (including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and
Australia), if teachers do not pander to the popular music tastes of youth, they
quickly find themselves in want of employment, as there is a ‘likelihood… that
there would be few, if any, students choosing music’ as a subject (p. 132). This
statement is illustrative of the conflicts that have long surrounded the introduction
of popular music to many school curricula: positioned in dichotomous opposition
to a narrow, centuries-old traditional canon, questioned with regard to moral
virtue, accused of dumbing down schooling, reducing lessons to entertainment or
simply failing to meet the standards established by (and perhaps only pertinent to)
western art musics.

2.2 Towards a democratic popular music education

Partly in reaction to such reductionist approaches to education, researchers and
theorists have questioned the limiting of teaching and learning to such a narrow
corpus of masterworks. In serving increasingly heterogeneous student populations,
it has been argued that music education is no longer able to promote a singular
musical truth or good through the elevation of any one music as the sole focus of
academic attention. Instead, it has been recognized that contemporary culture is,
and should be seen as multimusical (Reimer, 1993). In moving away from school
music as a peculiar idiom with little relevance to students’ lives and aiming to
reflect the diversity of the out-of-school musical world, a new focus has been
placed on music in schools (Stålhammar, 1997). In attending to this multimusicality,
Bennett Reimer and Keith Swanwick’s writings have been instrumental in
opening classroom doors to popular musics, though in a very different form to
how it is currently taught in Finland, with both Reimer and Swanwick viewing
the purpose of music in schools as aesthetic education. By aesthetic education,
Reimer (1989) suggests that music education should articulate ‘what characterizes
music as art’ and should attempt ‘to teach music in ways that are true to its artistic
nature’ (p. 26). Swanwick (1979) defines the aesthetic as but one part of musical
performance and learning, referring to music as a discourse. The aesthetic is thus
seen as of concern to the music educator in connecting what is learnt in schools, to
experiences and meanings beyond classroom doors. As Swanwick (1979) argues,
‘the peak of aesthetic experience is scaled only when a work relates strongly to the
structures of our own individual experience’ (p. 36, emphasis added).
In arguing for a multimusical school curriculum, Reimer (1970) envisioned

based educational ethos, the perception of higher quality teachers on account of being better trained and
paid than teachers in the public school system, and the parents seeking a ‘grammar elitist school culture’ at a
fraction of the cost of private schooling (McLaughlin, 2005, p. 219).

22
schools as reflecting the diversity of the world. However, whilst he claimed that
‘it is fruitless to deem any particular style of music, say, as inherently more or
less worthy than any other style’ (1984, p. 199), qualitative judgements could be
made within a style or genre, and the task of the teacher was to select musical
exemplars. Through this, the teacher was positioned as expert, leading students
towards cultivated appreciation through ‘listening as the fundamental behavior’
(p. 185). Keith Swanwick (1979) built upon Reimer’s calls for music education
to include a more diverse array of ‘great’ musics, extending the activities of the
music classroom to composition, literature studies, audition (his term for listening
with intention), skill acquisition and performance. Swanwick (1968) also made
a strong case for the inclusion of popular musics in schools, as a means to reach
the ‘three-quarters’ of adolescents in schools who were not interested in classical
music. Education scholar Graham Vulliamy and music education scholar Edward
Lee (1976) adopted a more sociological approach, objecting to the hierarchical
distinctions between so-called ‘great’ music and music of the masses, even within
popular genres. They also argued against the separation of social values and context
from the characteristics of popular music. Pitts (2000) recognizes Vulliamy and
Lee’s endorsement of popular musics inclusion in schools as part of a broader aim
‘to move away from the classification of musical styles, towards a music classroom
which engages with all genres through their common musical processes’ (p. 104).
However, Vulliamy and Lee (1976) were critical of consumer media culture, to
which much popular music was seen to belong, as they hoped that,

an increase of creative pop music making in schools where, given resources

and encouragement, children will find that they are capable of producing
more interesting pop music than is sold to them by the mass media, will
lead to schools creating an alternative teenage musical culture based on
doing rather than just listening. This could prove a formidable rival to the
‘establishment pop’ of the mass media. (p. 121).

In this way, school music education was envisioned as improving the quality of
popular music in society, devaluing the music that students already identified as
popular, listened to and enjoyed.
Expanding upon the focus on a youth culture based on doing music, the
praxial music education tradition has emphasized the processual nature of musical
performance and learning. However, rather than valuing certain musics over others
according to predetermined criteria, praxialism has acknowledged ‘the values
and meanings evidenced in actual music making and music listening in specific
cultural contexts’ (Elliott, 1995, p. 14). Music education philosopher David Elliott
23
(1995) reconsidered music in schools from a more distanced aesthetic education
based on listening, to music as performative action, as a verb ‘to music’ through
his term musicing. Musical practice was seen as a way to relate to students’ diverse
backgrounds, values and preferences, and as a justification for a hands-on approach
to teaching and learning popular music in the classroom (e.g., Elliott & Silverman,
2015). Questions of content and which musics were to be included were somewhat
sidelined, considered as a byproduct of the educational ideal of music making. As
Elliott and Silverman (2015) explain, ‘the what of education cannot be realistically
decided apart from the why and who, and because matters of when, where, and how
inevitably circle backward and forward to teachers’ decisions about why, who and
what’ (p. 393). As such, the curriculum is not seen as a rigid set of requirements
imposed by outside authorities, or one that aims to refine and elevate students’
musical valuations. Instead, in making decisions regarding what to teach, teachers
are instructed to ‘look to themselves and their own teaching circumstances’ (Elliott
& Silverman, 2015, p. 406).
In addition to being seen as a means to attend to students’ own preferences
and musical experiences, popular musics have also been perceived as more
accessible and more readily intelligible for novice learners (cf. Johansson,
2010). This has been seen to provide more opportunities for relevant, inclusive
and democratic music making and learning, encouraging students to engage
in authentic musical experiences (Campbell, 1998; Green, 2002, 2006, 2008;
Westerlund, 2006). The introduction of popular musics to the classroom has
occurred in parallel with new approaches to teaching and learning music in
schools, as it has been argued that popular musics require unique teaching
strategies as a means to teach these music on their own terms, rather than
abdicating to the hierarchical pedagogical structures so often associated with
western art musics (e.g., Green, 2002; 2006; 2008). These so-called informal
approaches to music learning have been seen to bridge the divide between music
in the ‘real’ world and music in schools (Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010;
Green, 2002; Folkestad, 2006; Karlsen, 2012; Lindgren & Ericsson, 2010, Väkevä
& Westerlund 2007), motivating and engaging students in a meaningful, authentic
music education (Väkevä, 2009). Informal learning, and similar approaches in
Finland that have been referred to as student-centred or student-led learning,
are in line with a Deweyan idea of experiential learning (Allsup, 2003), and a
pragmatist philosophy that conceives of an education centred upon a ‘pedagogy
of communicative action’ (Biesta, 1995, p. 106). These ideas are implemented by
involving students in decisions regarding the musical content and pedagogical
approach of lessons, and developing their skills and music knowledge through
hands-on engagement, asking ‘what do they want to achieve now, this minute, and
24
what is the main thing they need to achieve it?’ (Green, 2008, p. 34).
With music conceptualized as a social activity rather than artefact (e.g.,
Small, 1998; Regelski, 2008), it has been suggested that ‘people’s music is
something that they are, both during and after the making of music and the
experiencing of music’ (Elliott, 1989, p. 12, emphasis added). Although it has been
noted in musicology, popular music studies and other fields that popular music is
by no means the domain of young people alone (if at all), nor is it representative
of a universal youth culture (e.g., Bennett, 2014; Frith, 1996), these have been
persistent assumptions in music education, and have only recently been called into
question. Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010) caution that the introduction
of informal pedagogical strategies (associated with the teaching and learning of
popular musics) in Sweden, may not have achieved the inclusive, participatory or
motivating environment they aimed to promote. They note that music lessons in
Swedish schools have largely focused on a limited selection of popular repertoire
as a ‘new form of school music based on easy-to-play pop and rock songs’ (p. 24).
Consequently, the introduction of popular music and informal pedagogies to the
classroom has not necessarily aligned with the ideals of reflecting students’ out-of-
school worlds or empowered students themselves.
Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010) conclude that in order for schools
to enable democratic processes, informal learning and formal learning need to be
combined, through the creation of ‘a dialogue and an exchange organized, initiated
and guided by the teacher… where musical creativity in different forms could
contribute to the development of individuals as well as the development of society’
(p. 31). This may, however, be a matter of perspective, as Lindgren and Ericsson
(2010) argue that the division between informal and formal learning has long
been blurred in Swedish schools (p. 36), and that classifications of the approach
as informal only touches the ‘surface’ of the complexities of teaching and learning
(p. 41; see also Folkestad, 2006). Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010) suggest
that the narrow selection of pop and rock musics in Swedish schools ‘might more
accurately be characterized as teachers’ everyday culture’ (p. 36), representing the
‘hits’ and classics circa decades ago. In addition, they suggest that the absence
of the teacher from garage band style learning arrangements may have resulted
in ‘anti-democratic tendencies of marginalization and exclusion’ (p. 46) through
the musical, gendered and social positioning of students as part of group work.
Accordingly, these researchers argue that it is necessary to attend to the forms
of governance at play in the classroom, and that exclusionary or marginalizing
power relations have not disappeared with the introduction of informal learning
approaches to formal education.

25
2.3 Popular problems
In their (2009) book, Dark side of the tune: Popular music and violence, Bruce
Johnson and Martin Cloonan argued that in establishing popular music as a
legitimate area of research and study in the academy, the proponents of popular
musics have been somewhat defensive, ‘inclining towards unreflectively celebratory
accounts’ of popular music in musicology (p. 5). Similarly, whilst scholars
advocating for popular musics and pedagogies in schools have done much to
attend to issues of democracy, diversity and inclusion in formal education, in
defending the place of popular musics in relation to the established canons of
western art musics it is possible that the celebrations of popular music practices
in schools have overshadowed questions of content, and that the dichotomies
of exclusion within the popular music realm itself have been overlooked
(Hesmondhalgh, 2008; Kallio & Väkevä, forthcoming). In claiming a space for
popular musics in schools in the first place, it has perhaps been easy to forget
that ‘[p]opular music has often been cast in antipathy to education’ (Green, 2002,
p. 159) and the concerns, conflicts and controversies that have long surrounded
young people’s attention to sex, drugs and rock’n roll.
For decades, popular music has ‘inflame[d] the sensibilities of the guardians
of public morality’ (Street, 1986, pp. 13-14). The burning of Elvis records in the
1950s; the threatening of excommunicating Beatles fans from the church in the
1960s; numerous censorship campaigns targeting musics ‘promoting’ drug use
or socialist politics in America during the 1970s; the monitoring of lewdness,
violence and profanity by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) in
the 1980s; threats of litigation and formal letters of complaint from the police
force and F.B.I addressed to rap artists N.W.A and Ice-T in the 1990s; and
more recently, the cancellation of performances by Finnish metal band Impaled
Nazarene in response to school shootings, the charges of hooliganism and
blasphemy against Russian artists belonging to the group Pussy Riot, the banning
of Jamaican dance hall artist Sizzla Kalonji from performing in the U.K. and
Germany on account of homophobic lyrics, the imprisonment of Moroccan
rapper and human rights activist El Haqed; the list goes on. The social censure
of popular musics has often focused on the relationship between such music and
young people, and the influence of the music on such vulnerable members of the
population, at a time of intense identity construction and social development.
North and Hargreaves (2005, 2006, 2008) have referred to the popular
musics that have been associated with arousing or inciting deleterious behaviours
in young people as problem music. The problem music label has mostly been
applied with regard to the potential social impact (Frith, 2004, p. 23) of hard

26
rock, hip hop/rap and punk musics, characterized as sexualized, racialized and
violent genres. Numerous studies have been conducted in recent years exploring
the possibilities of a causal relationship existing or testing correlations between
these musics and teenage delinquency and criminality (e.g., ter Bogt, Keijsers &
Meeus, 2013), drug usage (e.g., Mulder et al., 2009), permissive sexual attitudes
(e.g., Beentjes & Konig, 2013), sexual and racial discrimination (e.g., Fischer and
Greitemeyer, 2006; Turner, 2011), eating disorders (e.g., Prichard & Tiggemann,
2012), self-harm and suicide (e.g., Young et al., 2014). However, a number of
assumptions that underlie many studies conducted on the relations between
problem musics and problem behaviours raise significant concerns.
Firstly, there has been a largely unquestioned assumption that music
functions as agent and is able to influence the behaviour, thoughts or emotions of
the listener. This is problematic not only in terms of establishing an etiologically
robust relationship between musics and certain behaviours, but also in the design
of studies in the first place. As Paul Willis states in his pioneering work Profane
Culture (2014), ‘[o]bjects, artefacts and institutions do not, as it were, have a single
valency. It is the act of social engagement with a cultural item, which activates
and brings out particular meanings’ (p. 252). In this sense, music is neither passive
object nor agent. DeNora (2000) suggests that we may think of music as ‘a cultural
vehicle… as a kind of aesthetic technology, an instrument of social ordering’ (p. 9)
that acquires meaning through engagement with it, as contextualized in relation
to musical, natural and social situations (p. 13). These social orderings are not
necessarily as simple as inclusion into mainstream society or social exclusion. As
explored by Sarah Thornton (1995) in her work on the club cultures and rave
scenes in the UK, seemingly pejorative labels applied to certain music styles and
their fans may indeed be worn as a badge of honour and identification, a source of
subcultural capital.
Secondly, despite the fears surrounding popular musics and their effects
on the growing minds of adolescents, there have been few justifications for
characterizing certain musics as problematic, or the behaviours they are linked to
as particularly negative (Frith, 2004). For example, a study conducted by ter Bogt,
Keijsers and Meeus (2013) on adolescent music preference in relation to minor
delinquency (such as shoplifting, petty theft, and vandalism) found that ‘noisy,
rebellious, nonmainstream music genres [are] a strong predictor of concurrent and
later minor delinquency’ (p. 7). The researchers point to ‘hip-hop, heavy metal,
gothic, punk, and techno/hardhouse’ (p. 7) as problematic without acknowledging
the diversity within each of these musical genres, nor specifying why they are
seen as any more ‘noisy, rebellious’ or ‘nonmainstream’ than other genres they
include in their analyses. Similarly, labelling certain behaviours as deviant assumes
27
a consensus on what is, and what is not acceptable social behaviour, irrespective
of circumstance or reasoning. In an essay titled What is bad music? Simon Frith
(2004) has argued that judgments of certain musics as bad or harmful are thus a
muddle of aesthetic and ethical judgments (p. 26). Understandings of social values
in relation to music, and deviances from these established or perceived norms, have
not been sufficiently explored or explicated in research.
Thirdly, through focusing on the affects of music on the listener (rather
than performer, creator, composer and so forth), much research has assumed that
adolescents are relatively uncritical, passive consumers of (problem) music rather
than actively engaged with its interpretation, reconstruction and performance.
North and Hargreaves (2008) have also noted that there are a multitude of
additional variables that come into play when drawing links between particular
musics and adolescent behaviours, meaning that it is difficult to conclusively
establish the direct affect of any music on any individual. This is not to argue
that there is no connection between popular musics and instances of adolescent
deviance, but rather that these relations are complex and far from established.
So what of popular musics in schools? As governments and various social
campaigns have argued that certain popular musics are inappropriate for young
people (through the application of parental advisory stickers or restriction of
record sales for example), it has also been suggested that such musics may be
particularly inappropriate for ‘celebrating’ in school contexts. This is been seen as
particularly pertinent given the commitments of formal education institutions to
the cultivation of social responsibility, certain societal values and a moral citizenry
(Allsup & Westerlund, 2012; Senyshyn, 2008; Väkevä, 2006). It may thus be seen
that the role of popular music in formal education contexts is far from secure,
and even if, as in Finland, it has become an established tradition, there is little
guidance for teachers in navigating those popular musics deemed problematic or
deviant.

2.4 Whose problem is it anyway?

As a democratic institution, pragmatists have conceptualized the school not as a
site where students are prepared for society, but as a microcosm of society itself
(Allsup & Westerlund, 2012; Westerlund, 2002). In this sense, it has been argued
that schools should not only mirror the world outside of classroom doors, but
should also actively engage with, and encourage the development of ‘the sorts of
habits that will optimise the chances of a flourishing democratic life’ (Boisvert,
1998). Although popular musics have been introduced to schools as democratizing
practices, researchers have recently raised questions regarding the all-inclusivity,
and by implication, participatory potentials of popular musics in school settings.
28
In addition to the concerns raised by Georgii-Hemming and Westvall (2010)
and Lindgren and Ericsson (2010) mentioned earlier, popular music’s democratic
potentials have been critically investigated with regards to gendered practices in
music education (Björck, 2011), multiculturalism (Karlsen & Westerlund, 2010),
and the recontextualization of popular musics when ‘transformed into a school
task’ (Stålhammar, 2003). As observed by Petter Dyndahl and Siw Graabræk
Nielsen (2014), although the pluralist welcoming of popular musics to school
classrooms has neutralized discussions of value, seeing all musics as equally
valid, ‘there are still hierarchical distinctions, yet along new dividing lines. Even
now there is music being marginalised and excluded from education’ (p. 106).
The questions raised now are which – or rather whose – musics are excluded,
and why? How is the content of music lessons decided upon, if classrooms are
conceptualized as fully participatory spaces?
As part of her considerable contribution in legitimizing the place of popular
music in school classrooms, Lucy Green (1999) has proposed that students may
have celebratory, ambiguous or alienating experiences of school repertoires. Her
(1999) analysis rests on a distinction between intra- and extra- musical meanings,
which she refers to as inherent, or inter-sonic, and delineated musical meanings.
The inherent/inter-sonic meanings refer to the ‘interrelationships of musical
materials’ (Green, 1999, p. 161). Delineated meanings occur simultaneously, as
Green suggests that music is mediated ‘as a cultural artefact within a social and
historical context’ (p. 162). Green claims that when a student is familiar with
the style of music or particular piece, secure in understanding the intersonic
meanings and musical syntax (a response Green terms, affirmation), and also feels
positively towards the music’s delineated meanings, they will have a celebratory
experience (p. 164). In contrast, and of particular interest to this research project,
when ‘aggravation by inherent meanings is accompanied by negativity towards
delineations’ (Green, 1999, p. 164), Green proposes that students experience
alienation from music. In other words, when students ‘do not understand the
music’ and do not feel it has any relation to their identity, social class, position in
society, or other characteristic of the self, they will have an alienating experience.
The task for the school music teacher is thus twofold. Green suggests that the
easier task is for the teacher to explain the inherent meanings of music in a way
that the students may understand it. More challenging is to consider and question
the social constructions of musical meanings, for instance what makes a style
feminine, or masculine, or ethnic. In this way, Green’s work aligns with the calls of
critical pedagogy to ask ‘how our everyday common-sense understandings – our
social constructions or ¨subjectivities¨ – get produced and lived out’ (McLaren,
2003, p. 196) as part of the teaching and learning in schools.
29
 Green (2002) points to the potential ideological challenges involved in
addressing the delineated meanings of popular musics in school settings. With
the anti-educational sentiments of Pink Floyd’s 1979 song Another Brick in
the Wall, Pt. 2 as illustration, she argues that ‘[s]ome lyrics, visual associations
or other connotations of popular music are often unsuitable for classrooms’ (p.
160), without explaining what exactly is meant by unsuitable, or what is unique
about the classroom context that makes it so. Green (2008) gives little guidance
to teachers or students in selecting popular musics for the classroom, referring
to ‘critical musicality’ in purely positive terms (p. 80). For Green (2008), critical
musicality entails a more attentive and knowledgeable approach to musical
listening (p. 91), resting on instances of ‘musical celebration’ (p. 80).
Eva Georgii-Hemming and Victor Kvarnhall (forthcoming) extend
Green’s (2008) restriction of critical musicality to positive musical engagements,
arguing that a critical approach to teaching and learning music in the classroom
is essential in moving beyond the taken for granted meanings and associations
we often ‘load music with’. In particular, it is important to attend to the meanings
that may inhibit equality and social justice such as gender, class or ethnicity (n.p.).
They suggest that in order to enhance equality and social justice in schools, music
listening tasks may be directed by the teacher in such a way that ‘connects listeners
own perceptions with that of other people – namely argumentation and critical
analysis’ (n.p.). This approach demands a lot from the teacher, who ‘must be clearly
aware of and consider equality issues’ (n.p.), requiring them to possess certain skills
and insights, not only relating to recognizing what constitutes an equality issue,
how to raise it pedagogically or reflect upon it critically, but also with regards to
the contents of, and meanings associated with, the musics selected for study. This
appears to be a return to conceptualizations of the teacher as expert, though not
so much in terms of transmitting content knowledge (as argued for instance by
Hirsch, 1988 as discussed in section 2.1), but in terms of teaching students how
to think, and what to think about, standing in apparent contrast with the calls of
informal learning for the teacher to relinquish control and discover music together
with students (Green, 2008; Rodriguez, 2009). The teacher’s expertise lies in
critical liberatory practices, raising questions as to whether this expertise welcomes
dissenting voices and diversity, or works to produce ‘a new citizenry with a shared
set of values’ (Miller 1998, p. 14). Whilst relocating the teacher back to the role
of expert may be clear when discussing issues relating to race, or gender, where
the moral high ground has long been established in the Nordic countries (though
is undoubtedly an ongoing project), this role is perhaps more problematic when
value questions of what is right, for whom, and when, are less stable or certain.
The risk of such an approach lies in teachers adhering to ‘classroom narratives of
30
conversion and redemption’ (Miller, 1998, p. 26) with teachers ‘filled with the very
false consciousness that they’re determined to eradicate in others’ (p. 15).
Music education researchers Randall Allsup and Heidi Westerlund (2012)
offer some suggestions on how the teacher may navigate a plurality of musical,
social, and moral values in the classroom. In reconceptualizing the teacher as
ethical agent informed by certain ideals and values, they suggest that teachers
work towards ‘ends-in-view’ (p. 134), referring to a Deweyan view of teaching as a
deliberation of situational ethics,

at least there is a possibility, a chance that there are a lot of discrepant

forces, not just one contradiction, a number of forces and contradictions
that are pulling in different directions, and therefore we are obliged to
consider a number of possibilities regarding the method in which these
conflicts of forces and conditions will work out. (Dewey LW17: 444).

Allsup and Westerlund (2012) claim that when music education is seen as a
pursuit of ‘a priori goods, the ethical action and moral imagination that is required
in teaching… are curtailed’ (p. 125). However, they provide the example of
death metal to illustrate a music that may be ‘inappropriate’ to perform in music
classrooms, and also identify a number of more general problematic aspects
of popular musics (the performance of religious or nationalistic musics, music
that promotes sexual promiscuity, homophobia or misogyny) for school contexts.
Similarly to Georgii-Hemming and Kvarnhall (forthcoming), Allsup and
Westerlund (2012) imply that such musics may be included, but not in a manner
that permits students to freely explore, experiment, perform and ‘¨celebrate¨
certain preferences or values’ (p. 134). Although on the face of it these suggestions
are socially responsible, even if ‘at odds with student rights’ (Allsup & Westerlund,
2012, p. 134), there are a number of assumptions that warrant problematization.
Identifying any music as unambiguously problematic and relegating it to
critical discussion rather than performance, may assume a consensus on morality
in classroom contexts. The danger in this lies in including problem musics only in
a form that either pasteurizes popular musics from their socio-historical context
and meanings (e.g., as what Ericsson, Lindgren and Nilsson 2011 refer to as ‘safe
simulation’, p. 113), or reappropriating these musics in a way that leads students to
a narrow vision of what constitutes the right and the good. This perhaps downplays
the inherent conflicts that exist regarding the social censure and stigmatization
of such musics as deviant or problematic, the complexity with which adolescents
understand and engage with such musics, and risks education policy and practice
assuming a consensus of who students (and indeed teachers) are, and who they
31
ought to be (Mantie & Tucker, 2012). In other words, welcoming diversity and
difference in a manner that further confirms a singular vision of the ‘we’ (or who
‘we’ should be) may be seen to exist at odds with ideas of thick democracy. Dewey
comments on the uncertainty of such moral decision-making,

The more conscientious the agent is and the more care he expends on the
moral quality of his acts, the more he is aware of the problem of discovering
what is good; he hesitates among ends, all of which are good in some
measure, among duties, which obligate him for some reason. (MW5: 415).

This highlights an important contradiction: that of viewing diversity and

difference as a resource, within a cohesive classroom community bound together
by the overarching values of the school as institution. If the values of the school
are assumed, rather than the diversity and difference that are contained within
it, ideas of which musics are appropriate and which are problematic may remain
unquestioned. This potentially results in a view that ‘it is obvious that certain
explicit themes just do not fit within school curricula’, limiting students’ (and
teachers’) opportunities to ‘construct their own social attitudes and develop a
critical consciousness of contemporary culture’ (Väkevä, 2006, p. 128, emphasis
added).
The project of democratizing school music lessons places the questions:
who is excluded, how, when, why? at the core of practices striving towards equity
and social justice. If repertoire selection is a process of deciding what, or whose,
knowledge ‘counts as legitimate knowledge’ (Apple, 2004, p. 181), the complexities,
conflicts and exclusions of music education cannot be overlooked when enacting
and justifying inclusive, democratic policies and practices.

32
33
3 Theoretical framework of the research project
Schooling in Finland, similarly to educational systems in many other parts
of the world, has historical links with the project of nation building (Karlsen,
2011; Ramnarine, 2002). This endeavour was one of establishing a cohesive
national Finnish identity and a sovereign, unified nation, with Finland gaining
independence in 1917 after decades of foreign rule (Kallio & Partti, 2013;
Karlsen, 2011). Teachers played an important role in constructing the notion of
‘Finnishness’, responsible for literacy and basic education, but were also (supported
by the Lutheran church) expected to include the arts and culture in their lessons,
fulfilling their roles as ‘candles of the nation’ (Niemi, 2012, p. 21). These formative
nationalist beginnings stand in stark contrast with the situation Finnish teachers
now face, with increasing immigration and diversity, globalization, economic and
technological advances, and an altogether new sense of who schools are educating,
and what for.
In this chapter I outline the theoretical underpinnings that have framed my
understandings of the relations between teacher’s popular repertoire decisions and
democratic schooling in a diversifying, contemporary Finland. As a philosophy
contending with uncertainty and change, I draw upon Deweyan pragmatism as
an approach to teaching and learning that hinges on interaction and experience
(3.1). Taking education as not only concerned with the inculcation of facts, but
ideals and values, I turn to writings by John Dewey and Zygmunt Bauman in
understanding the moral and ethical tasks of education as situationally defined
and determined. As moral boundaries are negotiated, notions of deviance emerge,
as the flip side of what is considered good, for whom and when. In discussing
deviance I turn to the discipline of cultural criminology, outlining theories that
conceive of deviance as relational, processual and political (3.2). In the next section
of this chapter I look at censorship as one strategy in which deviance is contended
with, attending in particular to the New Censorship Theory that takes process
and complexity as central (3.3). Finally, I turn to critical pedagogy in giving the
aforementioned theoretical views a sense of direction and critical purpose (3.4).

3.1 A philosophy of flux

Although change and uncertainty are by no means conditions exclusive to the
present, the speed at which information is shared, and at which students and
teachers have the potential to learn and revise knowledge in any multitude
of directions, is undoubtedly increasing (e.g., Bauman, 2000; Hansen, 2011).
Such a climate has been referred to by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (2000) as
Liquid Modernity, emphasizing the continuity, fluidity, flexibility, instability and
34
impermanence of identities, institutions and meanings in everyday life.
One response to this culture of uncertainty, particularly in Finland, has been
a reconceptualization of the purpose of schooling. Whereas the task of schools was
once seen as inculcating students with right or true facts, Finnish schools are now
seen as sites that prepare students for active participation in a democratic society,
and as democratic societies in themselves (Sahlberg, 2015). In music education,
this has meant a broadening of school repertoires, student-centred curricula and
a constructivist approach to teaching, by which students engage in individual
or collective processes of meaning-making and knowledge construction, rather
than passively sitting on the receiving end of a one-way barrage of information
(Dewey, MW9: 56). However, the abundance of musics that have been made
accessible to the music teacher and student may be seen to reflect a ‘culture of
overwhelming plenitude’ (Reimer, 1997, p. 21). With this increasing availability
of musical practices and repertoire, teachers are faced with the question, ‘what
to include and what to leave out?’ (Pitts, 2000, p. 210). The student-centered and
pluralist approaches that have embraced difference, and promoted a welcoming
of all musics as a means to offer a meaningful education and reflect this diversity,
have offered the teacher very little guidance on what to teach and how to choose.
As Bauman (2010) has noted, ‘[t]he art of living in a world oversaturated with
information has yet to be learned’ (p. 101).
The choice of pragmatism as part of the theoretical framework of this
dissertation is in keeping with the view of the world as one characterized
by uncertainty and change, described already by John Dewey as one of the
‘philosophies of flux’ (LW1: 49, Experience and Nature). With a particular focus
on education engaging with uncertainty and change as prerequisites for realizing
democratic practices in the school and society, Dewey’s writings are seen here
as a particularly appropriate lens. Dewey’s philosophy may be seen as a holistic
approach to knowledge and learning, viewing the individual in relation to others
as they interact in social context (Dewey LW10, Art as Experience). In this
way, Dewey dismisses the Cartesian dualism between mind and matter, rather
addressing learning and the acquisition of knowledge ‘within the framework
of a philosophy of action’ (Biesta & Burbules, 2003, p. 9). As a philosophy of
action, human behaviour is not thought of simply in terms of responses to
external stimuli, but as an ‘interaction between elements of human nature and the
environment, natural and social’ (MW14: 9). In other words, ‘[a]n organism does
not wait passively and inertly for something to impress upon itself from without; it
acts upon its surroundings and undergoes the consequences of its own behaviour’
(Kivinen & Ristelä, 2003, p. 365).
Dewey understood the manner in which people behaved as habitual,
35
not in the sense of performing repetitive actions unthinkingly, but through the
development of ‘patterns of possible action’ (Biesta & Burbules, 2003, p. 11) that
allow for, and frame future interactions. These habits are the basis of organic
learning (Dewey, LW13, Experience and Education) in that they signify a ‘special
sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections
and aversions’ (Dewey, MW14: 32). This idea forms the foundation of Dewey’s
conception of meaning as ‘a property of behavior’ (LW1: 141), knowledge and
learning, as habits allow us to reconfigure the world from ‘a vast penumbra of
vague, unfigured things’ to ‘a figured framework of objects’ (Dewey, MW14: 128).
According to Dewey, learning is experimental and always active, coining
the often-quoted pragmatist maxim: ‘learning by doing’ (Dewey, MW9: 192,
Democracy and Education). Through such a perspective, experience is central to
learning and education. Experience refers to ‘the whole matrix within which the
human being confronts the world – the material and social environment, the
ever-chancing [sic] flux of every-day life, and simultaneous doings and sufferings’
(Westerlund, 2002, p. 49). Accordingly, like human behaviour, experience is not
apart from social life, and may be understood as arising in connection with others,
and contextualized within a broader historical framework of meaning and values,

Experience is already overlaid and saturated with the products of

the reflection of past generations and by-gone ages. It is filled with
interpretations, classifications, due to sophisticated thought, which have
become incorporated into what seems to be fresh naïve empirical material.
(Dewey, LW 1: 40).

One task of schooling is then to attend to the habits and actions that function
unreflectively in line with ‘stupid and rigid convention’ (Dewey, MW14: 115) as a
means to enhance growth.
Highlighting the importance of experience in learning, Dewey called upon
schools to recognize that the majority of what people learn is not done with
their heads buried in books, reciting facts ad nauseam or through rote repetition.
In focusing on learning by doing – as action – the purpose of schooling is not a
matter of pouring information into the empty heads of the naïve and immature,
but rather to direct growth in a manner that encourages students to continue
learning and growing (I think here of the current research and policies promoting
lifelong learning). This growth not only develops the student’s capacity to live
within the existing society, but to exert influence upon it, to change it (D’Cruz &
Hannah, 1979). It may thus be seen that tension, or resistance, is a prerequisite for
such growth, as Dewey explains,
36
 Nor without resistance from surroundings would the self become aware
of itself; it would have neither feeling nor interest, neither fear nor hope,
neither disappointment nor elation. Mere opposition that completely
thwarts, creates irritation and rage. But resistance that calls out thought
generates curiosity and solicitous care, and, when it is overcome and
utilized, eventuates in elation. (LW10: 65, Art as Experience).

Schooling is then not concerned with the inculcation of habits, but their
disruption in such a way that requires individuals to reconstruct experience. The
manner in which experience is reconstructed is referred to as deliberation,

an experiment of finding out what the various lines of possible action are
really like. It is an experiment in making various combinations of selected
elements of habits and impulses, to see what the resulting action would be
like if it were entered upon. (Dewey, MW14: 132–3).

As such, the individual thinks of or imagines ‘various competing possible lines of

action’ (Dewey, MW14: 132) and through this process of experimental learning,
habits are modified. This disruption of habits does not concern the individual
in isolation, but in interaction with others, in a process of mutual adaptation
and change (Dewey, LW1, Experience and Nature). As Dewey states, ‘all human
experience is ultimately social: that it involves contact and communication’ (LW13:
21). This is what he referred to as transaction, as the means by which meanings are
produced, contextualized in action.
The purpose of growth, as the aim of education, is for all of the members
in a society to have equal access to participation in the activities of a community
(both within the school and external to it), requiring constant reflection,
disruption and adjustment of habit in transaction with others. This is what Dewey
envisioned as a democratic society (MW9, Democracy and Education). The role of
the school is thus to equip the child with the skills required to participate fully
in democratic life. By this, Dewey argues that we should ‘demand for and from
the schools whatever is necessary to enable the child intelligently to recognize all
his social relations and his part in sustaining them’ (MW4: 270). In other words,
to recognize the political influences that construct and confine the opportunities
for experience. The school is a continuum of democratic social life, ‘school cannot
be a preparation for social life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, typical
conditions of social life’ (Dewey, MW4: 272). So, schooling should be democratic,
facilitating equal opportunities and access to participation and promoting
37
‘constructive change’ (Westerlund, 2002, p. 89). Thus, when the ‘typical conditions
of social life’ are fragmented and fluid, the role of the teacher and the school –
more than ever – cannot rely on fixed notions of content or values. Identified
by Dewey over a century ago (MW3, Essays, Democracy and Education), the
challenge of integrating knowledge and practice in an education that serves, and
is of relevance to, an increasingly diverse student (and teacher) population is only
intensifying.

3.2 Tales of morality and deviance

Locating the school in a liquid modernity with diverse and changing student
populations, traditional notions of ethical standards as a fixed set of agreed upon
values, may no longer be appropriate (if indeed they ever were). Accordingly,
notions of morality and deviance emerge through interactions with others, and
undergo constant reconstruction and negotiation. In this section I first look
to writings by Dewey and Bauman in proposing that morality and ethics, as
judgements, choices, and actions deemed good and right, are situational, and
socially negotiated (3.2.1). Secondly I outline the sociological and criminological
theories of deviance that this dissertation relies upon, as the other side of the
proverbial coin to morality (3.2.2).
3.2.1 Beyond ethics
Part of Dewey’s holistic understanding of human growth and education was
related to ‘moral motives and forces’ (MW4: 285). For the purposes of this
dissertation, morality is not seen as a fixed set of beliefs and values, but as socially
negotiated ideals determining which values and conduct are considered good and
right (Dewey, LW7: 11, Ethics). Dewey understood the moral imperative of the
school as a matter of promoting ‘social intelligence -- the power of observing
and comprehending social situations, -- and social power -- trained capacities of
control -- at work in the service of social interest and aims’ (Dewey, MW4: 285).
In striving to develop such an inquiring social intelligence, Dewey’s ethical theory
stands in contrast with the absolutism of institutionalized ethics that ‘tend to
distrust the capacity of human intelligence to find innovative ways of coming to
terms with experienced problems’ (Pappas, 1998, p. 102). Rather, Dewey’s ethical
theory is grounded in experience, and thus is neither a framework of universal
absolutism nor moral relativism. This approach to ethics may be seen as situational
(see also Allsup & Westerlund, 2012), in that applying Dewey’s ethics is unique
to specific contexts and interactions. The actors involved may be seen to engage in
moral decision-making and experimentation, informed by the moral experiences
of one’s family, one’s culture, and the experienced past. Thus, individuals act on
38
moral principles, as ‘general maxims of frequent validity but their validity ultimately
depends on their applicability to a situation; they alone have no normative force’
(Pappas, 1998, p. 115).
Similarly, Bauman (1995) has proposed that we live in a post-ethical world
(p. 36). By this, he argues that ethics, as (ideally) ‘a code of law that prescribes
correct behaviour ¨universally¨ – that is, for all people at all times; one that
sets apart good from evil once for all and everybody’ (p. 11), is impossible in a
diverse and fragmented liquid modern world. Such views resonate with Dewey’s
situational ethics, in dismissing the purpose of ethics as aiming towards a singular,
overarching good for all and recognizing a plurality of goods dependent on
context. However, Dewey suggests that individuals do not toss the moral baby
out with the bathwater as it were, and that there is a difference between ‘throwing
away rules previously developed and sticking obstinately by them’ (MW14:
165). As habit-forming beings, the meanings individuals construct through the
figured frameworks (Dewey, MW14: 128) of experience are already imbued with
historical and cultural meanings. Accordingly, although teachers may approach
moral decisions situationally, they are not approached naïvely. As Bauman (1995)
notes, moral deliberation is not a ‘straightforward preference for good or evil, each
clearly, unmistakably defined’ (p. 2). Moral deliberation is thus a matter not only
of deciding on the values or actions that are good, but also of defining the good in
the first place.
3.2.2 (Re)constructing deviance
If, for Dewey, ethical deliberation requires a moral agent to imagine possible
consequences of ‘various competing lines of actions’ (LW14: 132), moral problems
are those in which competing values and ideas of what is good, meet. Such
conflicting moralities may be seen to result in the generation of power, and the
negotiation of moral boundaries (Ben-Yehuda, 1990, p. 13). It is through these
conflicts and negotiations that notions of deviance arise, defined as ‘behaviour
which somehow departs from what a group expects to be done or what it
considers the desirable way of doing things’ (Cohen, 2009, p. 35). In this section
of the dissertation, I outline the approaches in cultural criminology that have
framed understandings of deviance as (re)produced through moral deliberations
and negotiations. As cultural criminology has built upon the sociology of deviance
of the 1960s and 70s, I begin from the starting point of labelling theory as advanced
by sociologist Howard Becker in the early 1960s, including its application to
education contexts. I then turn to two more recent theories that have built on the
labelling theory legacy: the notion of stigma contests as devised by Edwin Schur,
and Colin Sumner’s censure theory.

39
 In his groundbreaking book Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance
(1963), Becker’s labelling theory described the process by which individuals become
thought of as deviant as one dependent on social interaction. Deviance is thus
socially constructed as ‘…groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction
constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling
them as outsiders’ (p. 9). In this sense, the concept of deviance is dependent on
the creation of a set of moral norms to which an individual, event, object or action
stands in opposition (Kotarba, Merrill, Williams & Vannini, 2013, p. 84). In
other words, deviance is ‘always the result of enterprise’ (Becker, 1963, p. 162) on
the behalf of individuals creating and/or enforcing social moral norms and rules,
individuals Becker terms moral entrepreneurs. The role of moral entrepreneur may
be seen to resonate strongly with the role of educator, as these individuals are
‘not only interested in seeing to it that other people do what he thinks right. He
believes that if they do what is right it will be good for them’ (Becker, 1963, p.
148).
Labelling theory has a long history in sociological research on educational
cultures, dating at least as far back as Becker, Geer, Hughes and Strauss’ (1961)
study Boys in White. The researchers investigated the student culture of a medical
school, stating that ‘human behaviour is to be understood as a process in which the
person shapes and controls his conduct by taking into account… the expectations
of others with whom he interacts’ (p. 19). This view resonates with Dewey’s
(MW9, Democracy and Education) understanding of the school as a society that
not only exists ‘by transmission, by communication, but it may be fairly said to
exist in transmission, in communication’ (MW9: 7). As such, ‘what rules are to
be enforced, what behaviour regarded as deviant and which people labelled as
outsiders must… be regarded as political questions’ (Becker, 1963, p. 7).
With the idea that behaviour is influenced by others’ expectations, there has
been a focus on how school institutions shape student behaviour and educational
outcomes, depending on the labelling of students as high or low achievers (see
Rist, 2015). For instance, Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) looked at the effects of
labelling certain primary school children as intellectual ‘growth spurters’ based
on imaginary test results. Focusing on teacher expectations as a ‘self-fulfilling
prophecy’ (p. 20), they argued that telling teachers that certain students were
‘bright’ and intellectually promising would result in the increased academic
achievement of these so-labelled children. The results of this provocative study
align with consequent studies in the early 1970s that suggested that teacher
expectations of particular students led to differential treatment (Rist, 2015). The
differential treatment was seen to shape the students’ achievement and behaviour,
with high-expectation students’ performance increasing, and low-expectation
40
students failing (Good & Brophy, 1973).
Rising to prominence in the 1960s, labelling theory has its limitations when
considered in the diverse and dynamic contemporary contexts of liquid modernity.
When acts of labelling are seen as one-directional, deterministic actions, deviance
may be understood as a relatively arbitrary phenomenon. However, if positioned
as the antonym of a dialogical, negotiated and processual morality, deviance
may better be understood as processes of becoming (Matza, 2010). Sociologist
Edwin Schur (1980) referred to processes of deviantization as resulting from the
negotiation and (re)construction of moral boundaries. Schur (1980) termed the
processes that produce deviance stigma contests. Stigma contests arise as individuals
or social groups seek to (re)enforce moral boundaries in order ‘to obtain general
social acceptance of their particular values and world views’ (Anleu, 2006, p. 174).
In this way, Schur expanded upon the political dimensions of Becker’s (1963)
notion of moral entrepreneurship (p. 147), suggesting that the act of labelling
involves moral dialogue and deliberation. As Schur (1980) summarises,

In these continuing struggles over competing social definitions, it is relative,

rather than absolute power that counts most. (p. 8).

Deviance-defining is not a static event but a continuous and changing

process. This is so because… it is a way of characterizing and reacting,
exhibited by individuals and groups whose interests and favored values, and
their ability to impose them, vary greatly and in many instances change over
time… the distribution of power among persons and groups crucially shapes
deviance outcomes. (p. 66).

Deviantisation is thus seen as an attempt to control (Anleu, 2006, p. 173), and the
moral legitimation of power in assigning meaning and value, may be understood
as a strategy of domination (Ben-Yehuda, 1992, p. 76).
Researchers’ critiques of traditional labelling theory have also raised the
need to recognize the institutional politics that frame and constrain interactive
potentials and stigma contests (see Apple, 2004, p. 132). These views are echoed in
Georgii-Hemming and Westvall’s (2010) claim that ‘[o]ne can never escape the
fact that a school is an institution with some, more or less, defined frameworks
and conditions’ (p. 23). Thus, schools may be understood as part of the ‘cultural
apparatus of society’ that provides the foundations and frames for the stigma
contests that determine ‘what is socially valued as ¨legitimate knowledge¨ and
what is seen as merely ¨popular¨’ (Apple, 2013, p. 21). As Apple (2004) argues,

41
 As children learn to accept as natural the social distinctions schools both
reinforce and teach between important and unimportant knowledge,
between normality and deviance, between work and play, and the subtle
ideological rules and norms that inhere in these distinctions, they also
internalize visions of both the way institutions should be organized and
their appropriate place in these institutions. (p. 134).

Expanding upon labelling theories in order to attend to these multileveled social

layers of deviantization, sociologist Colin Sumner (1990) refines the concept of
deviance, as

not defined by a set of distinguishable behaviours offending collective

norms, but by a battery of flexible, interconnected ideological terms and
feelings of disapproval which are expressed, in varying strength, regularity
and openness, in the practical networks of domination. (p. 17).

Thus, it may be seen that stigma contests are not waged on neutral ground, and are
‘highly acculturated terms of moral and political judgement’ (Sumner, 1990, p. 26).
The idea of contests and negotiations of morality and deviance as they manifest in
music classroom contexts, may thus be seen to resonate with Dewey’s (LW4, The
Quest for Certainty) assertion that discrepancies of value are reliant on taste.
Dewey referred to taste as a ‘sense of an appreciation at once cultivated
and active, one may say that the formation of taste is the chief matter wherever
values enter in, whether intellectual, esthetic or moral’ (LW4: 209). Similarly,
Bourdieu (1979) argued that judgments of taste, may be used as a means of social
orientation, a guide for

the occupants of a given place in social space towards the social positions
adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods which befit
the occupants of that position. (p. 466).

Taste may thus be employed not only in asserting and identifying oneself and
one’s community, but also as part of the processes of classifying what (or indeed
who) is considered deviant, undesirable and inappropriate. Thus, musical taste is
not wholly a musical matter, but also a sociological one. As Frith (2004) explains,
labelling something as bad music is often ‘a judgment of something else altogether,
the social institutions or social behavior for which the music simply acts as a sign’
(p. 20).
Extending Bourdieu’s (1979) writings to contemporary music practices,
42
Bennett et al (2009) have suggested that such tastes and corresponding social
hierarchies are not clearly divided between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture (problematizing
the educational arguments put forth by Bloom, Hirsch, and Scruton for example).
Indeed they suggest that music ‘is the most divided, contentious, cultural field’
(Bennett et al., 2009, p. 75). Related to values and social positioning, tastes are
then culturally and historically informed. In the classroom context, this supports
a pluralist understanding of the classroom, as a thick democracy. As such, rather
than envisioning the teacher as an undisputed expert with regard to matters of
taste, tastes ‘are the one thing worth disputing about’ (Dewey, LW4: 209).
As unstable and negotiated matters of taste, Sumner (1990) advises that
‘it makes most sense to treat [social categories of deviance] as elements of highly
contextualized moral and political discourses, i.e. as negative ideological categories
with specific, historical applications’ (p. 26). He thus proposes a theory of social
censures (1990, 1997, 2004) offering a perspective by which the complexity of
stigma contests may be understood as competing ideological agendas that are
enacted through multiple levels of censure. By censure, Sumner (1997) refers to
‘the practical process of disapproval and stigmatization which arises so frequently
in situations of relational conflict’ (p. 48). These censures, he explains, ‘are not
just labels, or mere words uttered in the heat of the moment, but categories of
denunciation or abuse lodged within very complex, historically loaded practical
conflicts and moral debates’ (1990, p. 28).
Without a stable, monolithic ethical framework, and understanding
censures as the result of stigma contests and moral conflicts, censure theory allows
for a more complex understanding of the processes of deviantization. For instance,
Sumner (2004) suggests that the roles of deviant and labeller are constantly
reconfigured and negotiated, according to the power relations embedded in
changing political ideologies. He provides (2004) the illustration of Nelson
Mandela as an example of how the role of deviant, in the sense of a departure
from the status quo, may be productive, even desirable. Here, the once ‘outsider’
is exalted as hero of progressive change, and the familiar becomes increasingly
disrespected and distrusted (p. 24). Sumner (2004) argues that understanding
deviance as the product of social censure requires a focus on the social and
interactive ways in which processes of deviantization occur. It may be seen that
labelling theories still hold relevance, highlighting the consequences of censure
and stigma contests. However, recognizing these social interactions is not the
answer to the question of deviance, but merely the beginning of an inquiry
(Sumner 2004, p. 27) as to what, or who, constitutes the social in the first place, and
how interactions are manifest in different contexts.

43
3.3 From deviance to censorship
Johnson and Cloonan (2009) have criticized the focus of media censure and
research on deviantized musics on the ‘¨usual suspects¨ such as rap or Marilyn
Manson’ (p. 161, see also Muzzatti 2004 for a discussion of the contextual
meanings and understandings of Marilyn Manson’s public persona and
performances). Instead, they argue that any music may ostensibly be consumed
or performed in a way that arouses, incites or causes harm, and be considered a
problem. However, understanding morality and becoming deviant as processual,
politically, and socially (re)constructed, the stigmatization and censure of certain
popular genres as problem music (e.g., North and Hargreaves 2005, 2006, 2008)
is not an inherent characteristic of the music itself. However, neither is it the
result of arbitrary labelling based on majority disapproval. Rather, the censure and
deviantization of popular musics in formal music education may be understood as
contextualized within the interactions and conflicts between ideological discourses
– what Street (1997) has termed the ‘politics of judgement’ (p. 168).
As stigma contests are waged between agents of unequal power, one
strategy to reinforce certain moralities and sanctify social censure has been the
censorship of deviantized voices, and teacher’s decisions to exclude certain popular
musics from school repertoires may certainly be understood in this light. However,
Johnson and Cloonan (2009) note that many forms of music ‘are deployed by
all sectors, all generations, ethnic groups, gendered positions, classes, by public
and private corporate interests, in ways that create conflict or attempt to control
behaviour’ (p. 186), suggesting that the censorship of music in the classroom
cannot be operationalized in a way that positions the teacher as autocratic censor.
For the purposes of this dissertation, censorship is rather understood through
the complex processes proposed through what has been termed New Censorship
Scholarship by legal scholar Robert Post (1998) or New Censorship Theory by theatre
scholar Helen Freshwater (2004) and historian Matthew Bunn (2015). Although
this theory does not represent a unified approach to understanding the objects
and contexts of censorship study, there are a number of consistencies that have
extended understandings of censorship from negative acts of state repression,
to a multifaceted, inclusive and even productive process. The New Censorship
Theory has built upon the work of four key philosophers: Karl Marx, Michel
Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler. This section of the dissertation offers
a brief schematic presentation of the contributions of these philosophers as a
means to explicate how the term censorship has been applied in this research and
dissertation.

44
3.3.1 Constructing new censorship theory
As an antecedent to major developments in censorship theory, the Marxist
traditions have not made significant departures from the more conventional
conceptions of censorship as acts of state repression that control speech or
behaviour. The contribution of Marxist scholarship was rather through asking
the questions: what for? Why censor? In keeping with Marx’s analysis of the
social sphere, these approaches have attended to the ways in which censorship is
employed to maintain a certain social order, reinforce class-divisions and conceal
oppressive power relations. As Bunn (2015) notes, ‘[a]lthough the state does act
as a repressive force in Marxist society, it does not do so at the expense of civil
society but rather at its behest’ (Bunn, 2015, p. 34). Post (1998) alerts us to the
ways in which Marxism unsettled traditional understandings of censorship, noting
that the concept ‘used to be… [a]ligned along predictable and venerable divisions
separating liberals from conservatives, oriented toward ancient and well-rehearsed
chestnuts such as obscenity and national security’ (p. 1). Marxism’s reconstruction
of censorship as not only a (albeit justified as necessary for the greater good)
repressive force, but as benefit, dissolves these simplistic distinctions in bringing
to the fore notions of censorship as acts of domination and power. If censorship
was for the people, Marxist scholarship interrogated the assumptions of who these
people were, and whether censorship and similar acts of repressive power were for
the greater good of society as a whole, or for the good of a select few. In addition
to this contribution, New Censorship Theory is indebted to Marx’s concept, or
rather troubling of the concept of free speech. Whereas traditional understandings
of censorship envisioned free speech as the absence of regulation and control,
freedom – or at least absolute freedom – for Marx, is a fiction. In this sense, state
censorship may be best understood as a subsidiary of broader, ideological forms of
social control.
Applying these ideas beyond the analysis of social life in terms of class
divisions, many scholars aligning with New Censorship Theory have turned to
writings by Michel Foucault in seeing ‘a multiplicity of possible loci of power/
knowledge that produce and regulate docile bodies and ideological conformity’
(Bunn, 2015, p. 37). Foucault’s (1980) writings suggest that in attending to matters
of power and politics in social life, we (also as researchers) ‘must escape from the
limited field of juridical sovereignty and State institutions, and instead base our
analysis of power on the study of techniques and tactics of domination’ (p. 102). In
this way, the focus is shifted from individual acts of censorship, to the techniques
of power (p. 39) - active processes of domination and subordination between
censorious agents (Freshwater 2004, p. 225). As film scholar Annette Kuhn (1988)

45
explains,

[C]ensorship is not reducible to a circumscribed and predefined set of

institutions and institutional activities, but is produced within an array
of constantly shifting discourses, practices and apparatuses. It cannot,
therefore, be regarded as either fixed or monolithic. [It…] is an ongoing
process embodying complex and often contradictory relations of power.
(p. 127).

Foucault’s contribution to contemporary views of censorship may also be

seen in a reconceptualization of censorship as an act of silencing, to productive (in
the generative sense) processes. For instance, in the History of Sexuality, volume 1
(1978), Foucault noted that during the Victorian era, what could be said about sex
and/or sexuality was tightly controlled,

where and when it was not possible to talk about such things became much
more strictly defined; in which circumstances, among which speakers, and
within which social relationships. (p. 18).

The effects of this censorship were not (only) seen in the deployment of discretion
and tact when discussing such topics, or the silencing of the subject altogether
in public discourse. Foucault (1978) notes that the censorship of talk about sex
and sexuality resulted in ‘a veritable discursive explosion’ (p. 17). Thus, censorship
not only created new forms of discourse or ways of speaking that permitted
communication in a way that avoided the moralizing gaze of the censors, but
functioned as an ‘incitement to speak about it’ (p. 18) in the first place. New
Censorship Theory has relied upon these ideas in considering the effects of other
forms and instances of censorship, as not only silencing, but productive.
With such a polyvalent, multitudinous reconceptualization of censorship,
some scholars aligning with New Censorship Theory have also turned to
Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of discursive fields, for an analysis of how power
intertwines with the frames and potentials for communication. Bourdieu (1991)
conceptualized the ways in which power and language construct and constrain
one another, beyond the dichotomy of freedom versus repression. The overt act of
repressive censorship is recognized as only one force governing ‘access to expression
and the form of expression’ (p. 138). In his essay Censorship and the Imposition of
Form (1991), Bourdieu writes, ‘it is the structure of the field itself which governs
expression by governing both access to expression and the form of expression’ (p.
138). In other words, one’s values, lifestyle, background, socially constructed norms
46
and everyday experiences function in a way that permit certain thoughts and
actions, and prohibit others a priori, and determine the manner in which they may
be expressed. This means that censorship may not only be seen in overt repressive
acts or exclusion, but as manifested in the authorization of certain voices in certain
spaces. Censorship then may occur in seemingly consensual relationships, as
Bourdieu (1991) explains,

censorship is never quite as perfect or as invisible as when each agent has

nothing to say apart from what he is objectively authorized to say: in this
case he does not even have to be his own censor because he is, in a way,
censored once and for all, through the forms of perception and expression
that he has internalized and which impose their form on all his expressions.
(p. 138).

Censorship may also be seen as frames and constraints that legitimize

participation in particular cultural forms. Post (1998) suggests that censorship is
then omnipresent, ‘censorship is the norm rather than the exception’ (p. 2, emphasis
added).
These conceptualizations of censorship as processual, productive and
omnipresent have also been extended by Judith Butler. Butler (1998) distinguishes
between explicit and implicit forms of censorship as forms of power, raising
important questions regarding the applicability of the term censorship, when
extended to situations where ‘implicit operations of power… rule out in unspoken
ways what will remain unspeakable’ (p. 249). She proposes the term ‘foreclosure’ to
refer to the means by which communication is structured, either through abiding
by the dominant norms that govern speech, or the reworking or resignification of
utterances as a subversive act. Similarly to Foucault, she understands censorship
as not only a restriction upon what can be said, but also a means by which speech
(or action) is generated, as she claims (1997), ‘speech depends upon censorship’ (p.
140). Foreclosure is thus not a repressive act by one subject against another, but it
is rather repression that ‘makes possible the formation of the subject… a reiterated
effect of a structure’ rather than a singular action (Butler, 1998, p. 255). In this
sense, Butler (1998) refocuses analyses of censorship from the issue of speech or
silencing, to the political aims that legitimize and strengthen particular views over
others. She gives the example of nation building to illustrate how censorship
may be employed to ‘build (or rebuild) consensus’, to aid ‘in the codification of
memory… or in the insistence that certain kinds of… events be narrated only one
way’ (p. 252). In this way, Butler looks more closely at what censorship is used for,
and the relations between censorious processes and the exertion, and formation of
47
individual agency.
3.3.2 An interactive new censorship theory for the music classroom
Building on the work of Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu and Butler, New Censorship
Theory has reconsidered censorship as process, as productive, as omnipresent,
and as necessary. Thus, as is in keeping with recent scholarship (e.g., Bunn, 2015;
Butler, 1997, 1998; Freshwater, 2004; Holquist, 1994; Moore, 2013; Post, 1998),
the term censorship, as it is applied in this dissertation, extends beyond instances
relating to the silencing of musicians by governmental forces, the banning of music
on radio airwaves or the teacher pressing the stop button on a music video in the
classroom. Rather, censorship may be seen as a heterogeneous continuum between
repressive silencing, and the productive framing of agency.
It is important to note that as a framework focused on the structural,
societal and power structures that frame and determine the potentials for
individual agency (indeed, Marxist traditions have suggested that agency is an
illusion), New Censorship Theory’s reliance on Marx, Foucault, Bourdieu and
Butler may be seen to exist in conflict with the theoretical understandings of
school context in this dissertation or the methodologies employed in this research,
interpreting the school as interactive and aiming for thick democracy. For
instance, a theoretical approach focused on the institutional frames that construct
or constrain the subject (as opposed to agent), may not trust that individuals
would be, or could be, aware of the censorship of their thoughts, speech, and
actions. Through such a perspective, interviewing teachers regarding their popular
repertoire decisions may reveal little about the censorious frames that they work
within. However, this is not to say that these theoretical perspectives are wholly
incompatible with or inapplicable to the research context of the school if it is seen
as an interactive, democratic context.
Understanding individual agency through Dewey’s notions of habitual and
reflective intelligence (as discussed in section 3.1), the concept of censorship is
here extended. For the purposes of this dissertation, censorship is understood as
processual, productive, omnipresent, necessary, and also as interactive. Locating
censorship as part of dynamic, interactive, powerful relationships, just as silence is
not defined as the absence of speech or music, censorship is not simply the means
by which interaction is framed or constrained. If silence is integral to expression,
censorship may be understood as part of interaction itself. In other words, both the
manifestations and effects of censorship may be seen in and through interactions
between people, or groups of people as part of the processes of meaning or
community making. Considering censorship as interactive also highlights the
political nature of social censure, silencing (the self, or others), and participation in

48
the thick democracy of music education.
In considering the questions: who censors? Why censor? in the context of
this research project, I do not position the music teacher as autocratic censor.
If censorship is not a discrete act and is located in the interactions between
individuals and groups, who censors is not a simple matter of who is in charge of
classroom activities. If interactions involve constantly negotiated and dynamic
power relations, who is in a position to censor is constantly changing. This raises
an important ontological problem. If censorship is located in interaction, and is
an omnipresent, and even necessary part of communication and expression, there
may be little ‘point in saying that some people are silenced, some are not; some
are silenced at some times, not at others; some are silenced here, but not there;
some are silenced in a bad way, some in an innocent way’ (Langton, 1998, p. 261).
As argued by Rae Langton (1998), ‘[i]f censorship is everywhere, it might as
well be nowhere’ (p. 261). Similarly to traditional understandings of censorship
as the repressive silencing of the state, this view does not allow for a productive
exploration of silencing, deviantization, legitimation or social censure. The
conclusion is already apparent.
In retaining the analytic power of censorship as a descriptive term rather
than ascriptive conclusion, this research focuses on processes of the censure and
censorship of music, as part of the daily interactions of the school community. In
doing so, I focus specifically on teachers’ popular repertoire choices, understanding
these choices as both the realization and negation of ‘freedom’ (Brown, 1998).
Beyond the welfare concerns for impressionable youth, the aims of censorious
narratives and forces in the school may be seen as engaging with a project of
community building. Censorship, both repressive and constitutive, is thus about
making situational, although historically and contextually informed, judgments
in order to delimit who the school community is (or should be), and actively
forming the values and knowledge within that community. When considered in
relation to the processes of social censure, the concept of censorship also provides
a useful lens with which to understand the creation of outsiders from school music
education and the implications of popular repertoire selection for the inclusive,
democratic music classroom. With such an understanding, I do not take a position
arguing for, or against censorship. As literature sociologist Michael Holquist
(1994) reminds us, ‘[t]o be for or against censorship is to assume a freedom no one
has. Censorship is’ (p. 17).

3.4 Politicized topographies and a critical sense of direction

In proposing that musical meaning and censorship are the result of pluralistic
social conflict by which dominant groups censure and deviantize certain musics, it
49
is necessary to mention what/who for. As Apple (2004) cautions ‘[b]y examining…
labelling process… we can forget that it is an indicator of something beyond itself
as well’ (p. 131). The narrowing of musics taught and learnt in school classrooms,
and understandings of schooling as separate and distinct from everyday life,
may be seen as symptomatic of a broader ‘quest for certainty’ (Dewey, LW4,
The Quest for Certainty) in a world characterized by change and insecurity. In
labelling certain musics (and in turn individuals) as what and who we are not, a
certain sense (however illusionary) of stable community and social cohesion may
be achieved. Who compromises this ‘we’, and who is excluded, is of interest to
moral entrepreneurs (Becker, 1963, p. 147-63), as they ‘try to generate power and
influence in order to restructure societal moral boundaries and consequently to
redefine morality, values and conduct norms which in turn define the ideological
and behavioral parameters of the social order’ (Ben-Yehuda, 1990, p. 54).
Dewey argued that the control of social order has traditionally been ‘vested
in an oligarchy’ (MW14: 5), an oligarchy which fails an increasing number of
students in times of social change and diversification. This poses clear problems for
public schooling if it is to be inclusive, democratic and develop all students’ skills
for engaging with social change and uncertainty. The dilemma is thus raised: if we
are to think of schools as communities united by shared values, this community
may be constructed more through coercion and exclusion, than diversity and
inclusion. Thus, the very concept of school as a cohesive community in a pluralistic,
post-ethical society is questionable, if in being inclusive there can be no stable
consensus. There can be no ‘we’.
As an approach that has been concerned with matters of ‘justice, values,
ethics, and power’ (Giroux, 2011, p. 3) critical pedagogy offers a valuable
perspective in,

thinking about, negotiating, and transforming the relationships among

classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the institutional
structures of the school, and the social and material relations of the wider
community, society and nation state. (McLaren, 1998, p. 45).

In music education, critical pedagogy may be seen to align closely with the
principles of informal learning that have been used to advocate for a flexible
approach to school repertoires and take into account students’ own preferences
and out-of-school musical experiences, and the pragmatist ideals of hands-on
music making. Underlying these approaches is a commitment to the realization
of democratic practices in schools, and a belief that education may serve as a
transformative medium for social justice and social change. Building on the legacy
50
of Paulo Freire, the attention of critical pedagogues to power relations in schools,
and disrupting the unquestioned assumptions of the status quo, takes the idea of
participatory, thick democracy seriously. Accordingly, critical pedagogy scholars
have argued that a view of democracy ‘as conflation, as consensus, but also as
consciousness of negation, segregation, or inequality – seems to be an essential
part of any sociological, political or educational practice’ (Schmidt, 2008, p. 14). In
other words, conflict is an important, and essential, aspect of democratic practices
(such as those implemented in schools) that warrants considerable (and critical)
attention.
If schools are envisioned as sites not merely mirroring the society in which
they are located, but ‘in which citizenship is developed and nurtured’ (Giroux,
2011, p. 169), and if participatory citizenship is inherently political (e.g., Apple,
2004), it is precisely in schools that notions of propriety, censure, knowledge,
culture and value should be contested. As Giroux (2011) writes,

[c]ritical pedagogy is about more than a struggle over assigned meanings,

official knowledge, and established modes of authority: it is also about
encouraging students’, and I would add to this, teachers, ‘to take risks, act on
their sense of social responsibility, and engage the world as an object of both
critical analysis and hopeful transformation (p. 14).

The daily popular repertoire decisions made by music teachers thus warrant ethical
and critical reflection if they are to support and enact visions of inclusive, thick
democratic policies and practices in schools (see Giroux, 2011, p. 170).

51
4 Implementation of the research project
Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) have suggested that an ‘interviewer may learn
throughout an investigation’ (p.112, emphasis added), and this was definitely true
in this particular project. As a researcher, I assumed the role of student in many
ways, learning not only about the phenomena under investigation, but also about
how to study them in an effective, meaningful way. As a result of these learning
processes, the methodological approach changed during the course of study in
response to particular challenges that arose, and adapting to the particular cases
that were the focus of this investigation. It would not be possible to pinpoint the
exact moment these challenges became apparent, nor describe the construction
of solutions as discrete moments in the research process. However, if in relating
narratives through stories, one makes the often chaotic flow of everyday
life coherent, and draws events together into a ‘temporally organized whole’
(Polkinghorne, 1995, p. 5), then this chapter on the methodological approach of
this project may be understood as synthesized in storied form. What follows is a
more structured, linear account of the many and continuous decisions, evaluations,
and adaptations to theoretical underpinnings, research questions, interview guides,
questions and analyses, with hopes to give the reader a clear understanding of
how the research was conducted, even though such clarity required many murky
revisions.
The methodological story of this research is told in five parts. The first
introduces the methodological framework within which this research project is
situated (4.1), followed by an introduction of the cases under investigation (4.2).
The third and fourth sections outline the methods of data collection and analyses,
the challenges encountered, and the methodological revisions that were made (4.3,
4.4). The final section presents a number of practical and ethical reflections on the
methods employed in this project (4.5).

4.1 Methodological framework

In keeping with the theoretical framework of this research, which views Dewey’s
(LW13, Experience and Education) notion of transactional experience as central to
the socially constructed self, the methodological framework of this project rests
on an epistemological dismissal of an objective reality. As explained by Stake
(1995), ‘[s]ubjectivity is not seen as a failing needing to be eliminated but as an
essential element of understanding’ (p. 45). In dealing with human subjects, and
their reflections on human action, the focus of this research is not to prove that
any particular popular musics are more challenging for teachers than others, or
to establish clear categories of musics that presented a problem for teachers, but
52
rather to learn, understand, and describe the relationships and processes that are
involved in teachers’ popular repertoire decision-making.
Understanding words as a means of interaction and communication,
and story as one way in which experience is characterized, expressed and made
meaningful (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 5; see also Bowman, 2006; Connelly &
Clandinin, 2006; Leavy, 2013), narrative inquiry was selected as an appropriate
methodological approach. As narrative researchers in the field of music education
Margaret Barrett and Sandra Stauffer (2009) have noted, the term narrative
has been used with reference to story, to a mode of knowing and as a method
of inquiry (p. 7). This research project is perhaps best understood as all three
simultaneously. As story, this research investigates and indeed, stories, individuals’
constructions of their own experiences, related in a particular context and time.
Beyond a question-answer interview approach, I sought structured narratives, that
is, teachers’ stories of their everyday classroom experiences (Connelly & Clandinin,
1990). As individuals construct and relate stories to one another, they construct
and represent themselves and others (Bruner, 2004) in a process of ‘world’ and ‘life
making’ (pp. 691-692). This dissertation is doing the very same thing, constructing
and representing myself, the participants of this research project, the process of
investigation and the findings. Thus, the stories constructed during interviews,
and the stories of the interviews themselves, may be seen as a mode of knowing,
providing both the means to experience the world and to make sense of it (Barrett
& Stauffer, 2012, p. 4). As a method of inquiry, this research also constructed
stories based on interview data, sharing them with the teacher participants and
engaging in a process of ‘collaborative storytelling’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990,
p. 12), meaning-making and inquiry.
With narrative employed as story, a mode of knowing, and a method
of inquiry, this research project may be seen to bridge the divide between
Polkinghorne’s (1995) distinction between analysis of narratives and narrative
analysis. The analysis of narratives is a paradigmatic approach whereby themes are
constructed across stories, types of stories, cases or contexts; and narrative analysis
rather produces storied accounts of descriptive data. Through analysis of narratives
this research looks at teachers’ stories, but also engages in storytelling together
with the teachers as a means to understand the processes of popular repertoire
selection and the implications of these decisions for music education.

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4.2 The cases of five Finnish secondary school music teachers
In exploring the narrative world of teachers’ popular repertoire decisions,
the project adopted a multiple case study approach, defined ‘by interest in
individual cases’ (Stake, 1995, p. 236). Case study, in this research, allowed for an
in depth exploration of five secondary school (in Finnish, yläaste) teachers’ daily
work and decision-making as they selected popular repertoire for their
13 – 15 year old students. Stake (1995) outlines two types of case studies: intrinsic
and instrumental, of which this project is the latter. Whereas the case itself is
the focus of an intrinsic case study, in an instrumental case study the cases are
investigated in order to ‘provide insight into an issue or refinement of theory’
(p. 237). Thus, in this project, the stories of five Finnish music teachers offer a
window into understanding teachers’ decision-making processes with regards to
popular repertoire, and their experiences and navigations of popular repertoire
in secondary school classrooms. The analysis of music teachers’ stories of popular
repertoire selection also contributes towards the development of theoretical tools
or concepts that may be utilized to reflect upon the processes (and implications) of
censure and censorship that occur as part of classroom interactions.
4.2.1 Case selection
In selecting cases for this research project, a purposive sample (Creswell, 2009) was
sought based on certain criteria. These criteria were not established with hopes to
maximize the generalizability of findings through the ‘sampling of attributes’, but
to maximize ‘opportunities to learn’ (Stake, 1995, p. 6). Aiming for opportunities
to intensively study teachers’ repertoire decision-making, the criteria for selection
targeted individuals according to a typology of geographical region, school and
years of teaching experience.
Without a national database of music teachers working in Finland from
which to select research participants, the contact details of approximately ten
schools from different regions of Finland (Northern Lapland, Lapland, Central
Finland, Eastern Finland and the Capital region) were compiled. Schools were
located in large to medium sized cities resting on the assumption that teachers
working with larger and more diverse populations would be more likely to be
employed full time and be proficient in the English language, the language of
the researcher. From this list, I selected different kinds of schools (including
comprehensive schools, Swedish speaking schools and music specialized schools)
and sourced the music teachers’ email addresses from school websites. Teachers
were contacted via email with a letter introducing myself, explaining the research
project, and inviting them to participate (see appendix 5). In order to participate
it was made clear that teachers were to have graduated from one of the three
54
Finnish universities that offer school music teaching qualifications, were currently
employed full time, available, and comfortable to be interviewed in English (as
I am not yet fluent in Finnish nor Swedish). Teachers were also requested to
mention how many years they had worked as a music teacher in their response to
the invitation, with hopes to select teachers at varying career stages. It was clearly
stated that participation in the research project was voluntary and that neither
they, nor their schools, would be identified in research reports. Of the initial five
contacts, three agreed to participate in the research and two did not respond.
This may have been because they did not wish to participate, did not meet the
requirements for participation, or because they did not understand the letter,
which was written in English. Two additional teachers were contacted from the
original school lists based on geographical location. These teachers responded and
agreed to take part in the research.
4.2.2 Introducing the teachers
The five participating secondary school music teachers are referred to in this
dissertation by the pseudonyms: Maria, Outi, Julia, Risto, and Iida. All teachers
held master’s degrees in music education. As a requirement of their teacher
training, all teachers reported that they were comfortable teaching and performing
a variety of popular music styles, and popular musics featured as part of their
classroom repertoires. In what follows I briefly introduce each participant,
including some information on their personal musical histories and teaching
careers, as they related to me at the time of data collection.

Maria
Maria was in her late forties. She began her music education playing classical
piano and violin, which extended also to folk styles and performing with a pops
orchestra.3 Enrolled in a general classroom teacher education degree, she was
inspired by one of her professors to become a music teacher. After working as a
classroom music teacher for five years while developing her music performance
skills, she applied to university for both the church music programme as an
organist, and the music education programme, and was accepted into the latter.
Her first experiences with many popular music styles and instruments were as
part of her music teacher training. At the time of data collection, Maria had been
teaching for 22 years, of which 17 were as a specialist music teacher. She was
working in a Swedish-speaking school.

3 A pops orchestra is one that performs popular music (primarily pop), show tunes, and well known classical
works.

55
Outi
Outi was in her early forties. Her musical background was in classical piano, but
she had chosen popular musics as her specialization during her music teacher
training. Consequently, Outi considered herself well versed in popular music
performance styles, and these musics formed the bases for many of the lessons she
taught. She had been teaching classroom music for 14 years, the last 11 of which
had been spent in the music specialized school she was working in at the time of
data collection.

Julia
Julia was in her mid forties. Her musical experiences began in improvisation, and
group piano lessons. Continuing with classical piano, she felt that the ensemble
work at university was a turning point for her musical identity. She embraced
group improvisation, and after the second year of her studies she changed her
primary instrument from piano to voice. She stated that she had known that
she wanted to be a music teacher from the age of nine, and after 16 years in the
classroom, it was still her dream job. She was working in a comprehensive school.

Risto
Risto was in his mid thirties. He began his musical career as a self-taught
guitarist, playing rock and heavy metal as a teenager and experimenting with
various instruments. He applied to the university music education programme
numerous times before he was accepted, as the examiners asked him each time
to improve his keyboard and music theory skills. His goal in becoming a music
teacher was to share his love for music with young people, and offer the kinds
of formal education that he felt he had missed out on growing up. Risto was an
accomplished jazz guitarist and composer, performing and recording professionally
alongside his teaching career. He had been teaching music for seven years in
schools, universities, conservatoires and community colleges, and at the time of
data collection, was working in a comprehensive school.

Iida
Iida was in her early thirties. Her musical background was in folk musics and folk
instruments such as the Finnish kantele, singing, and playing piano. Although
she had dabbled in popular musics and jazz growing up, these became much more
of a focus for her as part of her university training. She had assumed her first
(and only) teaching position six years prior to the data collection for this research
project, at a comprehensive school at the opposite end of the country to her home

56
city. When she began teaching at the school, the region in which she worked had
been without an extracurricular music school and without a permanent music
teacher for 17 years. Although she loved and took great pride in her work, she
stated that it had taken time for her to learn to handle not only the workload, but
the sense of responsibility she felt for her students’ musical learning.

4.3 Stage one: Asking questions and telling stories

As mentioned earlier, the methods evolved during the course of data collection
in response to particular challenges. As such, the methods are discussed here in
two stages. Stage one outlines the first two rounds of interviews and preliminary
analyses. Stage two describes the challenges encountered during data collection,
and the changes in methodological design that were implemented to attend to
these.
Data collection was initially designed to follow a semi-structured interview
format, similar to that outlined by Seidman (2006). This approach involves
a series of three interviews, each serving a different purpose increasing in
specificity. The first interview is designed to locate the ‘participants’ experience in
context’ (p. 17), aiming for what Seidman terms a focused life history. The second
interview attends to the details of experience, seeking concrete, storied examples
of experiences relevant to the topic of study. The third interview is seen as an
opportunity to reflect upon what these experiences mean to interviewees, and
explore these meanings in relation to the information gained in the first two
interviews (Seidman, 2006, pp. 16-19). The final interview was also designed
as an opportunity to clarify any uncertainties or interpretations, and member
check (Creswell, 2009, p. 196). Interviews were scheduled at the convenience of
participating teachers over a period of seven months from 2011–2012.
Teachers were met individually in their classrooms. There were two
exceptions to these meeting locations, as Iida’s first interview was conducted in a
practice room at the Sibelius Academy, as she was visiting nearby, and Julia who
requested that the final interview be held in her home to accommodate childcare
needs. The first two interviews, scheduled between one and three weeks apart,
were largely in keeping with the format outlined above, and lasted between one
and two hours each, following a semi-structured interview guide (see appendix
6), including an outline of topics with ‘suggested questions’ (Kvale & Brinkmann,
2009, p. 124).4

4 Prior to interviewing these five teachers, I conducted a pilot study in order to refine the interview questions.
This pilot study was a single interview conducted with a colleague from the Sibelius Academy, who was
enrolled as a pre-doctoral candidate and working full time as a secondary school music teacher. As part of the

57
 The first interview focused on teachers’ personal musical histories and
education, their experiences of teacher training, and their attitudes towards
popular musics in school. The second interview focused on particular instances
where they felt that they had encountered problems in relation to popular musics,
and how they had responded to these challenges. The interview approach differed
from that suggested by Seidman (2006) in that I freely followed up on points
of interest, taking the lead from the teacher participant rather than adhering
strictly to the format of the interview guide. For example, if one of the teachers
told a story of their experiences of popular musics in the classroom during the
first interview, this often led to more detailed discussion and exploration, rather
than putting the topic aside to deal with in the second interview, as Seidman
recommends (2006, p. 19). This was in order to preserve the flow of conversation,
and enact ‘respect through deep listening… with humility and perseverance’
(Barrett & Stauffer, 2009, p. 21).
It was clear through shared discussions and interview responses that the
participating teachers had positioned me as an ‘outsider’ to the Finnish secondary
school music classroom. Although informed as to Finnish music education policy
and practice, and having worked in a very limited capacity as a music teacher in
Finnish international schools, I assumed the position of being ‘genuinely näive’
(Yin, 1994, p. 85) and teachers took time to explain the Finnish music education
system, their teacher training, and their day-to-day work as music teachers. In
the first two interviews, teachers often elaborated on their responses through
generalized statements in explanation or illustration of what was expected of
Finnish secondary school music teachers, and what their daily work entailed.
Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed as verbatim as possible,
including pauses, ‘ums and ahs’ with researcher translations of any words or
phrases in Finnish or Swedish written alongside the main interview text.
Alongside verbatim transcription I occasionally made notes such as reflections on
tone of voice or moments of laughter in order to retain a sense of the emotional

doctoral student community that meet regularly to discuss and critically comment on each others’ work, the
interviewee was aware of my study, research aims, and questions. Meeting in his classroom after school
hours in 2011, the pilot study interview lasted approximately one hour and was conducted according to an
interview guide devised by myself. After the interview, the interviewee and I discussed at length whether
any questions were unclear, how we felt about the interview questions and style, whether the interviewee
found the focus relevant to his work as a music teacher and how the interview could be improved. This
discussion led to a revision of the interview guide and questions, which were further critiqued and revised
during doctoral seminars with other students and professors. The pilot study data was not analyzed, nor does
it contribute to the findings of this research project, as the main purpose was to develop and evaluate the
interview guide.

58
content and atmosphere of discussions. Transcriptions were made as soon as
possible after each interview, often providing an opportunity to carefully consider
what was said and make notes to improve future interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann,
2009).
After the transcription of the first two rounds of interviews, a preliminary
analysis was conducted following Kelchtermans’ (1994) narrative-biographical
approach, whereby data was thematically analyzed in two stages. The first stage
was a vertical analysis, with each case taken as the unit of analysis. Analyzing each
teacher’s interviews individually allowed for personalized professional profiles
to be composed by the researcher, as an attempt to understand each teacher’s
backgrounds and approach to teaching music in schools. In order to maintain
the anonymity of teacher participants, an excerpt of this vertical analysis is not
provided as part of this dissertation. However, the constructed themes, and sub
themes that contributed towards these personalized professional profiles are
illustrated in table 1.

Table 1: Thematic categories of the vertical analysis

Background Becoming a music teacher Reasons for becoming a music

teacher
Teacher preparation studies
Specialization
Challenges
Music as a subject Importance
Uniqueness
Aims as a music teacher Cultural
Students’ overall growth
Empowerment
‘What makes a great music Adaptability
teacher?’

Reflection
Ethical responsibility

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 The second stage was a cross case analysis where, as a comparison of their
personalized professional profiles, recurring themes and similarities between the
teachers’ responses were constructed. Alongside this analysis, 24 longer narratives
of individual teachers were kept intact (Maria: 3 stories, Iida: 5 stories, Julia: 7
stories, Outi: 4 stories, Risto: 4 stories), allowing for a ‘cyclical repeated pattern
of close reading, developing more general interpretations and controlling these
interpretations by confronting them with the data’ (Kelchtermans, 1994, p. 99).
Each theme that was constructed based on interview data was divided into a
number of sub themes, as illustrated in table 2.

Table 2: Thematic categories of the horizontal analysis

Expectations of a music teacher National curriculum

Cultural
Religious
School & Staff
Parents
Students
Popular music in the classroom Popular repertoire sources
Choosing popular repertoire
Student’s own music
Popular music history
Musical considerations Lyrics
Music videos
Sounds/atmosphere
Problems, solutions and uncertainties

As these preliminary thematic analyses progressed, a number of issues that

concerned me became apparent. Although the interview guide was designed to
increase the depth and specificity of discussions, the first and second interviews
largely remained at surface level description, with teachers often noting that
what they explained to me was based on assumed or generalized knowledge or
understandings. Although there may have been many reasons for this, two are
discussed here: the solitary nature of music teaching, and the perceived importance
of educating me as foreigner to the Finnish education system.

60
 Teachers all expressed curiosity regarding whether the other participating
teachers experienced similar challenges and concerns as they did in selecting
popular repertoire, what their responses to interview questions were, and what
each other thought about the issues being discussed. Only one of the teachers,
Outi, worked alongside another music teacher, and noted that she rarely discussed
her pedagogical approaches with the other teacher, rather collaborating only in
the production of school concerts and events. Highlighting this sense of isolation,
Iida, was the only music teacher for the entire region, assuming a school teaching
post that had been filled by casual or supplementary teachers (not necessarily
trained in music education) for almost two decades. If one of her students wanted
to learn an instrument that she was unable to teach, they had to travel over 300km
away for tuition. Three of the teachers related the work of a music teacher to the
Finnish proverb, ‘Siperia opettaa’, translating to ‘Siberia teaches’. Understanding
this in relation to the political history of Nordic and Eastern Europe, the urgency
and hardships under which a music teacher must learn in isolation, is no mean
feat. Perhaps relating to this sense of solitude, teachers were not always confident
in expressing their personal thoughts or beliefs, and responded to questions
outlining what they had been taught as part of their teacher training, or as broader
ponderings on how Finnish music teachers should make decisions and act in the
classroom.
Adding to this sense of uncertainty, discussions were often limited to
broad descriptions of the Finnish music education system, rather than an in-
depth, personal and active inquiry. Positioned in the role of foreigner, I did not
share common experiences as a musician, student, nor teacher with the research
participants. Consequently, they took considerable time to describe the action of
their individual classrooms, without addressing why, or what for. Thus the ‘genre
in which ¨acceptable¨ description [was] communicated’ (Eraut, 2000, p. 118) was
one of educating me on a general level, which resulted in the preclusion of the
specific, tacit knowledge ‘often acquired through a process of socialization through
observation, induction and increasing participation’ (p. 122).
Understanding stories and storytelling as a relational experience whereby
meaning is constructed collaboratively between teller and listener, what is related
or understood is dependent on the assumptions of who each other are, and what
each other know (Barrett & Stauffer, 2009, p. 7). In an attempt to attend to the
why and what for of teachers’ experiences of popular repertoire selection, it was
necessary to disrupt the relationship that had been established that had positioned
myself as ignorant immigrant, and the teachers as translators of official policy or
cultural norms. As Squire and Tamboukou (2008) note, the etymology of narrative
may be found in ‘knowing’ rather than ‘telling’ (p. 12). Thus, in moving beyond
61
telling description, the methodological approach was reconsidered as a process of
collaborative inquiry.

4.4 Stage two: Constructing factional stories and engaging in collaborative

inquiry
In disrupting the relationship of informer and ignorant that had been established,
I felt that it was necessary to communicate to teachers that their stories had been
heard, and were the focal point of this research. This was not only with regards
to their explanations of official policy or cultural norms as they were manifest in
their classrooms, but also to their descriptions of personal experiences, and the
emotionality and uncertainty that these often entailed. A heuristic solution was
sought, focusing less on what we may know from stories and more on what we can
know through them.
Barrett and Stauffer (2009) have suggested that story is ‘a means by which
we might trouble certainty, and raise questions concerning the ¨taken-for-granted¨’
(p. 1). If story is understood through Dewey’s notion of experience (LW13,
Experience and Education), the collaborative potentials of telling, hearing and
interpreting stories may see them not only as a reflection of human experience,
but as experiences in themselves. With these potentials of story in mind, the focus
shifted from the telling and listening to teachers’ stories to a process of storying.
This was done with hopes that by retelling and sharing teachers’ own stories (and
the researcher’s interpretations), I might promote dialogue and ‘lead participants
and researchers to see their experience from different perspectives and… lead to
a new spiral of retellings’ (Olson, 2000, p. 350). This focus on learning through
story, and the consequent process of story writing, aligns with internationally
renowned arts-based and qualitative researcher, Patricia Leavy’s (2009) assertion
that researchers are no longer limited to an existing set of methodological tools,
but may craft their own.
Reconsidering the interview as a collaborative endeavour in meaning-
making (e.g., Ellis & Berger, 2003) through story, I scrutinized the preliminary
horizontal analyses and narratives that had been collected, highlighting not only
similarities and common themes, but dissenting voices, uncertainty, researcher
and/or teachers’ questions that remained unanswered and issues that were
unresolved. Whereas the horizontal analysis may be seen to fit with Polkinghorne’s
(1995) definition of analysis of narratives, the arts-based processes of constructing
stories based on this aligns with narrative analysis. I began crafting (Coulter &
Smith, 2009, p. 587) a series of storied narratives. The writing of what I have
termed factional stories combined narrative threads, taken from each teacher’s
interview data, merging similar stories into single narratives of experience and
62
bringing others in juxtaposition with each other to highlight contrasting voices or
experiences. Thus, factional stories may be defined as researcher-written vignettes
assuming a reconstructed, (re)storied ‘fiction[al] form... laid over a ¨fact-oriented¨
research process’ (Agar, 1990, p. 74); a bricolage of raw data, analyses and
questions. Written in the anonymous teacher first person, these stories voiced a
polyphony of each of the five teachers and myself as researcher. In order to focus
on the meaning of experiences, the factional stories were written in an ethnopoetic
structural style (Blommaert, 2006), attempting to capture the emotionality of
the written text and shape the knowledge that was to be generated through the
sharing of these stories in a way that extended beyond description.
I shared early drafts of these factional stories with the doctoral student
community at the Sibelius Academy, many of whom were working music teachers,
perhaps with similar experiences as those participating in this research project.
The doctoral students were able to give considerable feedback and critique that
resulted in numerous revisions, the condensing of certain narratives and expansion
of others. This process of writing and revising (see article IV in appendix 4 for
a detailed account of the crafting process of factional stories) resulted in four
factional stories, each approximately a single page long, titled: (I) Trust, (II)
Real rap, (III) Music speaks what words cannot and (IV) We wish you a rockin’
Christmas (appendix 7b).
Whilst the stories produced through Polkinghorne’s (1995) narrative
analysis approach are often the end point of narrative inquiry, as a means to
present data and communicate research findings, factional stories were rather a
methodological tool to communicate with participants, and generate data, aiming
to enrich the process of inquiry. The third round of interviews was scheduled four
to five months after the second interviews, with factional stories shared with each
teacher two to three weeks before the final interview meeting. Accompanying the
stories, teachers were provided with explicit instructions (appendix 7a) regarding
how the four stories had been written, and that they would provide the bases
for our discussions in the final meeting. It was emphasized that as composite
narratives of six voices, teachers were not expected to agree, nor disagree, nor
respond with any degree of certainty about what was written. Rather, the factional
stories were tools for reflection and meaning-making. Three of the teachers, Iida,
Julia, and Outi, had written notes reflecting upon the factional stories, which they
brought to interviews to discuss.
The relationship between myself as researcher and the teacher participants
changed considerably in the third interviews, as the factional stories introduced
many other entities: the other teachers participating in the research project, my
own reflections (which were also theoretically contextualized), and an anonymous
63
teacher narrator. Together, teachers and I engaged in a process of learning and
‘problem finding’ (Bruner, 2002, p. 20). Without any particular person positioned
as teller or listener, the factional stories served as a methodological space within
which the teachers and I were able to engage in inquiry collaboratively, and
negotiate and reflect upon the meanings of the stories and the ensuing discussions.
This third round of interviews lasted considerably longer than the first two,
averaging two and a half hours, with Julia’s interview lasting five hours as she
drove me to the airport to allow for a few extra minutes of discussion. These third
interviews were audio-recorded. It was at this point that the collaborative work of
the research project ended. The transcriptions, analyses, and interpretations that
followed are mine alone.
The third interviews were transcribed in the same manner as the first two
interview rounds. The data from the third round of interviews together with the
data from the first two rounds was then approached through Polkinghorne’s
(1995) analysis of narratives to identify emergent themes. This paradigmatic
approach emphasizes ‘a recursive movement between the data and the emerging
categorical definitions during the process of producing classifications that…
organize[s] the data according to their commonalities’ (p. 10). These thematic
categories are illustrated in table 3. Although many of these thematic categories
appear similar to those of the preliminary analyses, there was considerably more
data relating to each, and the data was more rich, deep and detailed (see article
IV).
Prior to submission for publication, participating teachers were given the
opportunity to read article manuscripts, in order to gain their full consent to what
was written and provide the opportunity for them to withdraw from part, or all of
the study, or clarify particular points if they so wished to do so.

64
Table 3: Thematic categories of the analysis of narratives

Expectations of a Cultural Multiculturalism and Pluralism

music teacher Majority ‘Finnish’ Culture
Minority Cultures
Religious Lutheranism as ‘traditional’
‘Traditional’ school festivities
Diversity and exclusion
Relations between school and
church
Curricular Starting point
Freedoms vs. the unknown
School School as institution
Recontextualization of popular
musics in the classroom
Staff Hierarchy vs. autonomy
Parents Lack of communication
Imagined offense
Teacher self Professionalism
Students Conceptualization of adolescence
Diversity
Challenges
Musical Lyrics
Considerations Imagery
Emotion
Mood
Uncertainty Situation and context
Identifying problems
Teacher’s role
Guidance and support

65
4.5 Reflections on the methodology of the research project
Without an official ethics board regulating research conduct at the University of
the Arts Helsinki, the research design, implementation, analysis and reporting was
conducted in a manner in keeping with the recommendations from the Finnish
Advisory Board on Research Integrity’s (2009) ‘Ethical principles of research
in the humanities and social and behavioural sciences and proposals for ethical
review’. With ethical responsibility resting with the researcher, this section of the
dissertation takes the opportunity to address a number of ethical issues relating to
this particular project. This is not only in order to explicate the ethical principles
that were adhered to, but also to reflect upon potential concerns and limitations
of the research in aiming towards what Barrett and Stauffer (2009) term ‘resonant
work’ (p. 8): engaging in research practice that is responsible, rigorous, respectful
and resilient.
In aiming for transparency from the very beginning of this research project,
all of the music teachers involved in this research project gave their informed
consent prior to participation. On contacting teachers via email (see appendix 5),
I introduced myself and the research project, also making it clear that participants
had the right to withdraw at any time without consequence. It was stated that
neither participants nor the schools they worked in would be identified by name
in any research reports or publications. It should be noted that being a relatively
small country with relatively few trained music teachers, the information on
teachers’ personal backgrounds and their responses to particular questions may
result in their identities being known, in particular by those who already know
them well. However, participating teachers were given the opportunity to read
draft versions of article manuscripts, at which point it was again stated that they
were able to suggest changes, or withdraw in part, or entirely from participating
in the research (and thus all information relating to their interviews from research
reports, if they were uncomfortable with any quotations or descriptions that they
felt may reveal their identities or reflect badly upon them. None of the teachers
withdrew from any part of the research.
By locating this project within broader discussions on popular music
in school classrooms and through a firm and thorough grounding in theory
(see chapters 2 and 3), this dissertation aims at a responsible explanation and
argumentation of the research project to both the music education research, and
music teacher communities. However, whilst it may be possible to position this
research in a wider discourse, it is me alone as the researcher, who tells the story of
this dissertation, and as such, it is necessary to provide some reflection on issues of
power. This is particularly relevant when considering the methods crafted in this

66
project, as I restoried teachers’ experiences, and by sharing these, was in a position
of control to legitimize certain narratives of popular repertoire selection as the
focus of the research, and intentionally or not, silence others. Although care was
taken to ensure that these factional stories were closely based on data analyses,
the possibility remains that teachers felt that important issues were sidelined, or
that they had not been heard. Efforts to minimize or overcome this were twofold:
Firstly, a focus on the literary construction of storied texts to adequately reflect
teachers’ experiences; and secondly, engaging in numerous negotiations and
collaborative work, in both the interviews, and during doctoral seminars at the
Sibelius Academy. This was a way to member check (Creswell, 2009) and gain
alternative interpretations and critique, to ensure that teachers had indeed been
heard, and that the research project was deeply connected with their experiences
and knowledge.
Although the five teachers of this research project were, from the onset of
the study, positioned as participants (as opposed to, for instance, informants) in the
research process, the relationship between the teachers and myself was not always
symmetrical. One example where this is evident was through teachers’ positioning
of me as ‘outsider’ and themselves as ‘insider’ to the Finnish music education
system. In this instance, teachers were seen as more powerful when it came to
knowing about and storying what the experiences of teaching music in Finland
entailed. However, as the researcher I guided our discussions, probed further into
stories that I saw as relevant to the research project, and tried to avoid dwelling
on stories I saw as less relevant. In this way also, the analysis of teachers’ stories,
and the theoretical grounding of this project were entirely in my hands. I do not
claim to speak on behalf of the teachers participating in this research. By writing
this dissertation, I do not mean to relay their stories to others – as interesting as
I think they are. This dissertation is rather an attempt to understand and theorize
the meanings of the participating teachers’ stories and the implications of these for
broader discussions in music education practice and scholarship. These meanings
are based on my own interpretations, and I alone hold the power of definition.
As Barrett and Stauffer (2012) argue, resilient texts are those that
‘are sufficiently rich to compel previous readers to return and re-read, while
simultaneously flexible and open to new interpretations and new audiences’ (p.
12). The process of crafting resilient factional stories was accordingly intricately
related to not only the theoretical grounding of the project, and the data, but also
representational form, and involved numerous reconsiderations and revisions.
Writing factional stories was neither a fast, nor easy task. I aimed for stories to
be intricately connected to teachers’ experiences, and also open to interpretation,
elaboration or disagreement. The careful crafting of these stories (as detailed in
67
article IV in appendix 4) was done in collaboration with the researcher’s doctoral
supervisors and doctoral student community at the Sibelius Academy, as a forum
to discuss, revise and critique.
Understanding the reliability and validity of knowledge as related to
objectivity, Kvale and Brinkmann (2009) suggest that attaining objectivity may be
achieved through dialogical intersubjectivity, as a ‘conversation and a negotiation
of meaning’ (p. 243). Engaging with others in this way aims towards mutual
understanding in ‘rational discourse and reciprocal criticism between those
interpreting a phenomenon’ (p. 243). With this in mind, as with the writing of
the factional stories, each stage of the research process was openly discussed and
critiqued as part of my doctoral supervision meetings, and as part of the weekly
doctoral student seminars at the Sibelius Academy. In addition, I presented the
research project at various stages at numerous academic conferences in music
education and related fields (for instance, conferences on music censorship). These
meetings with other researchers provided numerous opportunities for feedback,
revision, dialogue and negotiation, in working towards ‘a communicative validation’
(Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009, p. 243) with regards to the research design and
interpretation of data.
A dialogical subjectivity was also sought between myself, and the
participating teachers as the central figures of this work. However, as this research
was conducted in English, the issue of language deserves some attention. As
teachers were relaying stories of personal experience in their second, or even third,
language, there were clearly barriers to communication where subtle meanings
or understandings may have been overlooked or misinterpreted. Kapborg and
Bertero (2002) argue that ‘different languages create and express different realities,
and language is a way of organizing the world – one cannot understand another
culture without understanding the language of people in that culture’ (p. 56). I
disagree. Conducting research in a language other than your, or the participants’
own, of course presents challenges, but I do not believe that these are obstacles
worthy of avoiding a project altogether. In searching for meanings and having
to explicate them in a second or third language, teachers noted that it required
them to think carefully about what it was they intended to convey, often leading
to a clearer understanding. As Julia exclaimed, ‘this makes me crystallize some
things beneath my own thinking, realize, and crystallize better than I’m able
to do in my own language, Finnish’ ( Julia, third interview, May 10, 2012). This
suggests that using the language of participants may not be necessary to gaining
a deep understanding of the topic investigated, particularly if the participants are
proficient in the language of the researcher (Liamputtong, 2010, p. 137). However,
although teachers that were comfortable being interviewed in the English
68
language were sought, the possibility that teachers were unable to adequately or
accurately express themselves, or that I missed or misunderstood some of the more
subtle nuances of meaning, remains.
In this research, I was not a complete outsider. I had some knowledge of
the Finnish language, and had lived in the country for two years at the point of
data collection (and six years at the completion of this research). Whilst this did
not afford effortless communication, it did affect the positioning of researcher
and research participants, and my contextualized interpretations of data. Teachers
and I shared a common home, if not a common cultural background. We shared a
background of teaching which established some rapport from the very beginning.
Teachers were aware that I had also been trained and had worked as a music
teacher, and part of our early conversations were initiated by comparisons of
the Australian and Finnish school systems. Although I was positioned as the
researcher, wanting to learn about teaching music in Finland, they also wanted to
learn not only about teaching music in Australia, but about what was unique to
their own culture as well.
Understanding all stories as interpretations in kind, and storytelling
as a transactional experience between storyteller and listener, it was seen as
important to engage in a constant, continual and reflexive process of member
checking (Creswell, 2009, p. 196). Member checking was viewed here as a way to
continually test researcher interpretation, and to ensure preliminary analyses were
in keeping with, and grounded in, participants’ experiences. This was done through
asking qualifying questions, or by rephrasing teachers’ responses to clarify their
intended meanings, as part of individual interviews, or as follow-up in subsequent
interviews. When stumbles in communication did occur, they were seen as
opportunities for negotiated, collaborative meaning-making, together searching
for a nuanced and deep understanding of what either teachers or I were trying
to communicate. In addition, the writing and sharing of factional stories offered
a more distanced, and leisurely opportunity for member checking, and critical
reflection on the meanings of teachers’ experiences. With the factional stories
serving as the bases for discussion in the final interviews, teachers and I engaged
in inquiry together, and interpretation became a common, shared, and negotiated
task.
Given the clarity that can only be afforded by hindsight, there would be
a number of changes I would implement given the opportunity to repeat the
research. Firstly, a number of reviewers of the journal articles comprising this
dissertation raised interesting questions that focused on the relations between
teachers’ personal backgrounds, both musically and educationally, and their
approaches to popular repertoire selection. This would indeed be an interesting
69
inclusion to the current project, and would require a more in-depth questioning
of teachers at the beginning of the project. Indeed, a more detailed life history
of each teacher may reveal additional considerations and influences upon their
repertoire choices. Secondly, without the limitations of time and language, it may
have been a more equitable collaboration had teachers written the factional stories
together with the researcher, or written their own factional stories to share and
discuss during interviews. However, this option would also bring new challenges
of (re)presentation.

70
71
5 A discussion of findings as reported in the four research
articles
As outlined in the introduction of this dissertation, the narrative of Finnish
education has been presented as a success story, one that many other nations are
aiming towards (Allsup, 2011). The incorporation of popular music, teaching
approaches aligning with critical pedagogy, informal learning styles and a student-
centred curriculum have all been understood as important steps towards a more
equitable, democratic school music education. Although the teachers interviewed
as part of this research enjoyed training and professional freedoms many
researchers and practitioners view as the ideal, the experiences and discussions
they shared with me during the course of this research suggest that these features
of the Finnish education system do not necessarily simplify the teacher’s work, nor
ensure more democratic practices in the classroom. The results of this research thus
shed new light on what happens next for Finnish music education, and the nations
embarking upon a similar path of informal, critical, popular music education.
In aiming to better understand the complexities involved in Finnish music
teachers’ popular repertoire selections, I attended to both the narratives that frame
their decision-making and their understandings of the music itself. In avoiding
repetition, this chapter extends beyond the reporting of findings as presented
in the four articles that contribute to this dissertation (appendices 1–4). Here, I
elaborate upon what was reported in the articles, and discuss the research results in
light of the theoretical framework of the project (as outlined in chapter 3) and the
four research questions:

1. In what ways do censorious narratives frame teachers’ popular repertoire

decision-making?
2. Which musical features do teachers identify as contributing towards the
censure of certain popular musics?
3. What are the implications of popular repertoire selections for enacting
inclusivity and democracy in formal music education?
4. What can be learnt about the teaching of music, if story is viewed as both
the source and representation of knowledge and experience?

In the first section of this chapter I discuss the school censorship frame as
a framework grounded in New Censorship Theory (section 3.3) by which the
exclusions of popular repertoire may be better understood (5.1). I then discuss
the features of popular music that were identified by teachers as contributing
towards the censure of certain popular musics, illustrating that music was not
72
reified as a passive object acquiring meaning only through the labelling actions of
the powerful (5.2). In the third section, I explore how the teacher, as ethical agent,
may navigate the school censorship frame when there can no longer (if there ever
was) be a universal code of ethics to rely upon (as discussed in section 3.2.1) (5.3).
Finally, I address the methodological developments of the research, and discuss
the potentials, surprises and continuing uncertainties of using factional stories in
narrative research on teachers’ understandings and experiences (5.4).
Whilst I have attempted to firmly ground this research in individual
music teachers’ experiences or narratives and the stories we constructed together
during interviews, the findings of this instrumental case study extend beyond the
individual. Accordingly, the music teachers I interviewed as part of this research
project are not presented here as models for good teaching. Nor are my criticisms
of school music teaching done lightly, or directed towards any one teacher in
particular. As I hope I managed to illustrate in the prelude of this dissertation, I
am painfully aware that the vast majority of teachers are doing their very best.

5.1 Constructing the school censorship frame

A theoretical contribution of this research and dissertation, as reported in the
first article (appendix 1), is my construction of the school censorship frame, which I
defined as an array of broad and specific narratives drawing associations between
particular musics or songs, and constructions of deviance. Attending to this
theoretical construction in more depth, this section of the dissertation focuses
on the first research question, in what ways do censorious narratives frame teachers’
popular repertoire decision-making?
My construction of the school censorship frame was based on sociologist
Christopher Schneider’s (2011) censorship frame, which he defined as media
narratives that ‘culturally associate music and (collectively shared and culturally
agreed-upon) perceptions of deviance’ (p. 38). Schneider argued that through the
labelling affects of media reports, certain popular music and cultural forms are
‘constructed… as a widespread social problem’ (p. 37), also extending to ‘the status
of those who perform, enjoy and approve’ of such musics (Schneider, 2011, p. 38).
However, whereas Schneider’s (2011) notion of the censorship frame focused on
media reports on popular musics from the standpoint of a new conservatism (see
Grossberg, 1992) in America, the censorship frame in the school context may
be considerably more complex. From sheer quantity of publications or airtime
alone it is perhaps easier to get a sense of who assigns which labels to whom and
investigate the agendas behind the labelling practices of the media. If, as Dewey
claimed (MW8: 320; LW9: 183–184), classrooms are envisioned as microcosms of
society, students, parents, teachers, staff, principles, religious leaders, governments,
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minority communities and policy makers all have a stake. Consequently, which, or
rather whose, norms and voices comprise the ‘majority-group’ (Schneider, 2011, p.
37) and hold the upper hand in the formation of school curricula may change with
every teacher, every lesson, every student and every piece of music.
In investigating the ways in which the fluid narrative constructions of
the school censorship frame influence teacher’s repertoire selections, I turn to
Wright and Froehlich’s (2012) claim that ‘[c]urricular choices and institutional
practices are not personal predilections alone, but also the result of socio-political
mandates and demands’ (p. 214). The socio-political mandates and demands that
Wright and Froehlich refer to are here seen to emerge through ‘stigma contests’
(Schur, 1980) as negotiations of power that ‘involve culture (i.e., norms, values,
and their practice) as a politicized terrain’ (Dotter, 2004). Upon this politicized
terrain, through the school censorship frame, different actors and groups struggle
for the power to label musics as legitimate or deviant, fundamentally determining
‘the meanings of social practices and, moreover, which groups and individuals
have the power to define these meanings’ ( Jordan & Weedon, 1995, p. 5). In
this sense, understandings of popular musics as problematic and their social
censure in the classroom may be understood not, or at least not only, as a means
of social distinction between majority group and deviant Others, but as ‘the result
of a pluralistic social conflict’ (Dotter, 2004, p. 11). As teachers make situational
decisions regarding the inclusion/exclusion of popular repertoire, ‘conceptions of
deviance and conformity emerge as intertwined biographical and sociocultural
narratives linked to the stigma contest as social problem construction’ (Dotter,
2002, p. 419). Thus, the school censorship frame as conceptualized in this research,
extends Schneider’s (2011) work not only through relocating the notion of
a censorship frame to the school context, but by extending his application of
labelling theory to attend to the complex, non-linear, political nature of censure
and censorship in a liquid modernity.
As reported in the first article of this dissertation (appendix 1), I identified
eight censorious narratives that framed the music teachers of this research project’s
popular repertoire decisions. Three of these were ‘big stories’: cultural, religious and
curricular stories, and five were ‘small stories’: stories of school, staff, parents, the
teacher self and stories of students. These narratives were presented in a diagram,
as seen in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Big and small stories of the school censorship frame as identified by
teachers (Article I, Kallio 2015, p. 199).

In describing the school censorship frame as a site of stigma contestation

and as part of the processes of the social censure of popular musics, the above
diagram has clear limitations, constricted by the stasis of the printed page and
the boundedness of the research project. Firstly, the diagram suggests that there
are a limited number of fixed narratives that constitute the school censorship
frame. This is not my intention. The school censorship frame may well include
other stories, and I would expect that interviews with other teachers in different
contexts, or even further interviews with the teachers involved in this project, or
interviews held a different week, after a different lesson, with different students,
would identify additional or alternative narratives that influence and guide
teachers’ popular repertoire decisions. Secondly, the diagram above suggests that
all big stories are of equal weighting, and all small stories are of equal weighting.
This is most definitely not the case. In describing the alternative, I turn to one of
the participating teacher’s description of her repertoire decisions that distinguish
between musics that are acceptable for class use and those that are not, as ‘a line

75
drawn in water’ ( Julia, Third interview, May 10, 2012). In keeping with this watery
metaphor, the circles of the school censorship diagram may be seen as bubbles,
‘rising to the surface at different times, though never inseparable from others’
(Article I, Kallio, 2015, p. 198). In this way, the stories would never be of equal size
or importance; some would recede into the background as others come to the fore,
waxing and waning in constant motion. Thirdly, the narratives are not mutually
exclusive or necessarily combative, and may overlap, reinforce or reconstruct each
other depending on the situation. Stigma contests may thus emerge between
groups of narratives, or overlapping agendas. Additionally, within each story is
not a single, stable dominant narrative, and stigma contests may be seen to occur
within each of these frames themselves. For instance, teacher stories, how teachers
envisioned their own roles in the school and classroom, were not uniform, and
indeed varied not only between teachers but according to situation, task and
circumstance (as seen through the first factional story included in appendix 7b).
Accordingly, within each bubble are competing narratives and tensions, smaller
bubbles jostling to reach the surface.
The stigma contests of these censorious narratives provide teachers with
suggestions or frames for action in at least two ways. The first encourages teachers
to act as, or on behalf of moral entrepreneurs (Becker, 1963, p. 147). The teacher
aligns his or her teaching with the dominant narratives of the school censorship
frame, and creates and/or enforces rules that establish what is, or what is not,
permissible in the classroom after the musical event, in the form of repressive
censorship. This was the case for Outi who regretted encouraging her students to
modernize the nativity story after other teachers expressed their disapproval. She
had made a decision to ‘never touch that kind of subject’ (religion) in school (Outi,
Second interview, December 7, 2011). It was also the case for Maria, who felt an
obligation to address a student’s offensive lyrics in a self-composed rap, performed
at the school open day. Both instances illustrate the teacher (re)enforcing moral
boundaries, valuing and legitimizing certain musical practices and excluding
others as a means to delimit who the school community is, who it should be, and
who it is not.
Related to establishing a sense of school community, the second way
in which the school censorship frame directs teacher experience and action is
through the creation of boundaries, however impermanent, that constrain the
potentials for musical and social agency before a musical event can take place.
These boundaries predefine which kinds of musical events are made possible or
conceivable in the first place. This aligns with Dewey’s concept of habit (MW14),
and Bourdieu’s (1991) suggestion that censorship may be invisible and at times
seem consensual. Through the legitimation of particular cultural forms in certain
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spaces, individuals do not, and cannot, imagine an alternative. Butler (1997)
suggests that in such situations certain utterances are rendered ‘unspeakable’ (p.
249). Similarly, the very powers that make possible the formation of community
may render deviantized musics, those that lie outside the legitimized values,
‘unplayable’ or ‘unhearable’. Thus, there is no space made available for the musics
that lie outside the perceived and codified ‘we’ (Butler, 1997, p. 252). One example
of this may be seen in teachers’ stories of parents’ beliefs and values influencing
and guiding their selections of music for the classroom, despite teachers never
having been contacted by parents regarding their popular repertoire decisions. The
perceived community values govern what is playable or listenable. In this way, the
school censorship frame may be understood as productive (in the generative sense),
through excluding certain musics and values, engaging in processes that produce
shared notions of who the school community is, and what the good of popular
music education is – establishing both the limits and the potentials for popular
musics in the classroom.
Writing on music education in schools, Minette Mans (2009) has suggested
that the values promoted through informal learning in schools may more often
align with the teacher’s ideas of what is good and right. Consequently she argues
that an interactive pedagogy will ‘seldom be informed by all the values present
in the classroom’ (p. 89). At least with regards to the situation in Finland, the
results of this research suggest that this is not quite the case. As an educational
context that has focused on creating a participatory, learner-centered curriculum,
of which content is negotiated between students and teacher, repertoire decisions
cannot be made in isolation from social conventions and norms, or dissenting
discourses or values. The interactive pedagogy between teacher and students is not
constructed in ignorance of the values of the school community. However, simply
being informed by all the values present in the classroom does not necessarily
promote democratic learning or overcome the problem of ‘mindless conformity’
(Mans, 2009, p. 89). Certain meanings and values inevitably dominate others as a
result of unequal power relations, and the teacher is required to make pedagogical
decisions that take into account, and navigate the contests that arise between the
fast-changing narratives of the school censorship frame. In light of this, the school
censorship frame aligns with Sumner’s (1980) censure theory, suggesting that
processes of deviantization are always in ‘practical conflict with opposing groups’
(p. 27), and undergo constant, situational reconstruction.
However, it is important to note that understanding the school censorship
frame through censure theory (Sumner, 1980) and as grounded in New
Censorship Theory, this inequality of power does not automatically result in
relations that victimize (as is so often described by traditional labelling theories for
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instance). For instance, one of the participating teachers, Iida, recounted similar
experiences to those I described in the prelude of this dissertation, stating,

maybe [the students] just wanted to shock me. It can be so, that they
wanted to shock and say ‘it’s possible that we also listen to this kind of
music’. (Iida, Second interview, December 20, 2011).

The deviantization of popular music may thus provide affordances for exercising
opposition and resistance against what is perceived as the musical authority of the
school, and to push against the moral boundaries of the school censorship frame.
As Foucault (1978) noted, ‘[t]here is not, on the one side, a discourse of power,
and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it’ (p. 101). Rather, within
one strategy, such as social censure resulting in the deviantization of music, ‘there
can exist different and even contradictory discourses’ that ‘can… circulate without
changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy’ (p. 102). In
bringing deviantized musics to class as a means to (re)define and negotiate the
boundaries of propriety, the idea that students share musics that reflect their own
preferences, identities, or values, is called into question. As Julia remarked when I
shared with her the story in the prelude of this dissertation,

(Laughs) you know the reason why [the students] brought in that [video]!
... it’s not so much about boobs and laughing at them, but they want to see
how the teacher reacts. It’s more about getting the teacher embarrassed and
flustered. ( Julia, Second interview, November 18, 2011).

The stigma contests of the school censorship frame are then not only negotiations
that resulted in powerful agents weakening the status of certain popular musics
in the classroom. Social censure and deviantization may also be resources of power,
that can be employed by students to assert contrary values or beliefs, differentiate
themselves from the perceived expectations of the school status quo, and define,
disrupt or negotiate the adult-imposed boundaries of propriety. Thus, as the
labelling of a music as problematic or inappropriate creates outsiders, it is also
necessary to note that this is not necessarily, or not only detrimental. Indeed, the
exclusion of students (or others) may produce potentially desirable alternatives. In
keeping with these findings, and the theoretical framework of this research, it is
important not to conflate non-conformity with a failure to conform. The stigma
contests of the school censorship frame may thus be seen to present ‘multiplicity in
every possibility’ (Schmidt, 2008, p. 15).

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5.2 The social presence of deviantized popular musics
Suggesting that the stigma contests over meaning and values in the music
classroom relate to situational power relations is not to assume a position
of excessive relativism. To do so would be to claim that music is inherently
meaningless and the labels applied by the individuals or social groups that make
up the school censorship frame are arbitrary. If music is defined as socio-cultural
practice (e.g., Elliott, 1995; Elliott & Silverman, 2015; Small, 1998), the idea
that music itself is meaningless is absurd. Arguing against music as ‘a passive
receptacle of social spirit’ (DeNora, 2000, p. 3), Tia DeNora (2000) and Simon
Frith (1992, 1996) have regarded music as not only reflective of culture, of people,
but as playing an active role in the construction of culture and individual identity.
DeNora (2000) summarizes, music has a ‘social presence’ (p. 5). However, this is
not to suggest that musical meaning is static, as Green (1988) reminds us, ‘music
can never be played or heard outside a situation, and every situation will affect
the music’s meaning’ (pp. 143-144). With understandings of popular musical
meaning located in the nexus of music and society, as a ‘framework for how people
perceive (consciously or subconsciously) potential avenues of conduct’ (DeNora,
2000, p. 17), certain musical features were seen to play a significant role in the
social censure or deviantization of popular musics, and teachers’ school repertoire
decision-making.
With the social powers of music constraining or creating potentials for
agency (as ‘feeling, perception, cognition and consciousness, identity, energy,
perceived situation and scene, embodied conduct and comportment’ DeNora,
2000, p. 20), the features of popular music that the teachers participating in this
research attended to were seen to present opportunities for, or highlight instances
of, moral conflict. Whereas the stigma contests of the school censorship frame
were often seen to occur in the background, or enforce censorious frames prior
to the performance of a music, producing understandings of the moral and the
deviant incorporated as part of teachers’ tacit knowledge, the musical features of
deviantized musics brought the tensions between different meanings and values to
the fore. The features of popular music that were seen to be of particular interest
to teachers when deciding whether to include or exclude them from classroom
repertoires were: lyrics, imagery, mood and emotional affect. I here expand upon
the discussion of these four features in the second article of this dissertation, in
addressing the second research question, which musical features do teachers identify
as contributing towards the censure of certain popular musics?
As noted in the second article of this dissertation (appendix 2), lyrics
were seen as perhaps the most clearly problematic feature of music for teachers,

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primarily through the inclusion of profane language, or ‘adult themes’ such as
sex or drug use. This is in keeping with Frith’s (2004) observation that many
‘indictments of ¨bad music¨ leading to censorship… concern lyrics’ (p. 25). The
lyrics that aroused concern for the participating teachers were seen to exist in
conflict with the dominant values and norms promoted through the school
censorship frame. In particular, teachers referred to a conflict between deviantized
lyrics and stories of teachers that construct their roles as protectors, role models
and mentors, and stories of the school as an institution concerned with student
wellbeing and ‘the development of character and identity’ (Bowman, 2002, p. 64).
As Risto noted,

It’s quite an interesting situation, because rock and roll is very much telling
about bad habits… but you still have to teach [it]. (Risto, Second interview,
November 29, 2011).

Although lyrics and lyrical content were agreed to be a clear example of tensions
between the school censorship frame and popular music cultures, the ways in
which teachers handled deviantized lyrics and popular musics containing such
lyrics varied, and many remained unsure on how best to react. For instance,
following an incident (described in more detail later in section 5.4 of this
dissertation) where a student composed a rap with offensive lyrics, Maria had
firmly labelled rap music as deviant, and unless it was reconfigured in a way
that left no room for improvisation, or where students ‘beeped out’ offensive
lyrics, she felt that it could not be included in her lessons. Iida suggested that
such understandings of rap music as inappropriate were the result of a perceived
incompatibility between contexts,

school and rap, it doesn’t… fit together… what they talk about in rap lyrics,
it’s… not about school life… I think the context is the biggest reason
for putting limits [on what can and cannot be included]. (Iida, Second
interview, December 20, 2011).

However, Iida also noted that the tensions between rap lyrics and historically and
culturally constructed narratives of the school as institution did not mean that
rap had to be excluded entirely. She felt that her students could recontextualize
rap compositions in a way that maintained a sense of rebellion and ‘underground’,
within the boundaries of the school censorship frame. For instance, her students
had created ‘Christmas raps’ where they rapped about their reluctance to go on the
annual family ski holiday, or the tedium of making gingerbread with their mothers
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or grandmothers every year. In contrast to both Maria and Iida, Outi argued
that offensive lyrics could be included in a way that did not require them to be
recontextualized or explicitly censored (such as ‘beeping’), but in a way that bent
and occasionally crossed the boundaries of the school censorship frame. Indeed,
she saw profane lyrics as a necessary part of teaching certain types of music,

it’s hard to [include] any kind of punk music if you don’t allow [students]
to hear any [offensive] words… this is the style… that wants to [stand in
opposition] to everything… so there has to be the bad words… so you
can understand why… it is called punk music. (Outi, Second interview,
December 7, 2011).

In this way, Outi saw it as impossible to pasteurize the music in such a way that
would make it compatible with the dominant narratives of the school censorship
frame. Doing so would negate the stylistic and semantic meanings of the music
itself, and contradict her intentions of including it as part of students’ education
in the first place. For Outi, music afforded opportunities for students to deviate,
albeit momentarily, from the established norms. This may be understood according
to Dewey’s reflective thinking, challenging habitual modes of thinking and acting
(Dewey, MW14: 115), with the confines of the school context that provides
a ‘safely insularized… [form] of reality’ (Foucault, 1978, p. 4) within which to
experiment.
Many teachers noted that the boundaries of the school censorship frame
were often flexed or crossed unintentionally, as much of the popular music
students brought to class was in the English language (the second, or third
language for many teachers and students),

In some cases when the lyrics are in English, it’s easier to [include], because
maybe they don’t think so much about it. Maybe I will think twice, but it
is easier to [include deviantized musics when they are in English]. (Risto,
Third interview, May 18, 2012).

When [the song is] in English, sometimes I don’t realize… I don’t even
notice… there might be a beautiful melody and nice chords, then ‘Oh!
What was that? Did it say fuck?’ Some of [the students] are listening quite
carefully and they are [giggling in the corner]. (Outi, First interview,
November 24, 2011).

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Such instances may be understood as fissures in the school censorship frame,
where the selection of content goes undirected and deviantized musics and
meanings may enter the classroom, bypassing the filtering censorship processes.
For a moment the narratives of culture, religion, curriculum, or actors of the school
community are silent. In the event that such instances are brought to the attention
of the teacher, such as the students giggling in Outi’s class, this research suggests
that s/he may respond in one of two ways. The first may be seen as a correction,
reinserting and reinforcing the narratives of the school censorship frame and
thereby re-establishing such musics as inappropriate,

then I say ‘oops! Sorry, I didn’t notice this before, the words are not okay so
let’s not take this one’. [The students always respond], ‘no, it’s okay for us’
[and I have to say] ‘no, please, let’s not take this one, sorry I did not notice
this’ (laughs). (Outi, First interview, November 24, 2011).

The second response may be seen as a challenge to the boundaries of the school
censorship frame, pursuing an opportunity – introduced through music and
a language barrier – to engage in inquiry into, and potentially challenge and
reconstruct, the narratives of the school censorship frame. Iida recounted such a
response, when students performed their own compositions or improvisations,
either unaware of, or intentionally contradicting, the normative narratives of the
school censorship frame,

We had a rapping competition, five groups [of students]. The lyrics [were
so offensive]! My ears were burning when I was there at the mixing desk…
there were so many bad words! The headmaster came to speak to me
afterwards, I was thinking ‘now it comes! Maybe the truth comes out now
and he will say ¨now this is too much, this doesn’t fit¨’ but the headmaster
was saying ‘they were really good, and they knew it! They know how to rap!’
he was surprised how talented [the] youngsters [are, that] we have here [at
the school]. Then I was thinking, ‘ok if he doesn’t care, then I don’t care!’
(Iida, Third interview, May 16, 2012).

When deviantized lyrics were in songs sung less familiar languages, or deviantized
themes or words were included in classroom activities through students’ own
compositions, teachers noted that they had two possibilities for moral action. The
first possibility was to fill in the gaps of the school censorship frame, and correct the
fissure by looking to the dominant narratives that proscribe what is, and what is
not, appropriate in the classroom. The second was an opportunity for innovation,
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for situational and contextual moral deliberations. Democratic participation was
then seen as an important element in navigating any music in the classroom,
deviantized or otherwise.
The visual imagery associated with popular musics was only discussed by
two of the participating teachers, Risto and Maria, as the other three either did
not have the resources (such as DVD players or computers) in their classrooms to
facilitate the sharing of music videos or imagery, or did not report the sharing of
music videos or other imagery as part of their lessons. Risto noted that a lack of
resources and equipment had presented challenges for sharing music videos in the
past, though had just received a new projector for the classroom that presented
new opportunities relating to popular music,

In the future I could change the way of my teaching and show some more
videos… I think that’s today’s music culture. (Risto, Second interview,
November 29, 2011).

As such, teachers saw the imagery as part of the music culture, not something
‘extramusical’ (e.g., Green, 2003, p. 266). This calls into question conceptualizations
or analyses of musical meaning that distinguish the meanings located within
‘music itself ’ from those that are added on as part of the ‘social context’ (Green,
2003). Such distinction and analyses are perhaps unfruitful given the ideological
importance of the visual imagery of many popular musics as they combine with
lyrics, melodies and beats in communicating musical meaning. In this way, music
imagery is part of a broader ‘scheme of interpretation’ (Frith, 1996, p. 249), a
scheme which cannot be divided into its component parts.
Maria’s decisions to exclude certain musics as a result of videos or imagery
she felt were inappropriate even though the imagery was not shown in class, reflects
this understanding of popular music as a broad scheme of meaning-making. As
such, even if the sonic properties of the music were presented independently from
the visual, the meanings constructed through both sonic and visual features of
the music were inseparable. The way in which Maria foreclosed (Butler, 1997)
musical meanings and possibilities in her classroom reflect how she envisioned
her role as teacher, and how this role related to the broader school censorship
frame. Whereas the four other teachers reported allocating the vast proportion
of lessons to popular musics, Maria grounded many lessons in what she felt she
was most skilled in: Dalcroze Eurhythmics, and the traditional musics relating
to the Swedish speaking minority identity which she saw as aligning with the
overall ideology of the school. With this sense of purpose to reinforce the minority
identity, Maria also was the only teacher who recognized a clear, unified code of
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ethics in her school, although there were no explicit rules or principles that she
was expected to adhere to. She stated that her role as the teacher was to establish
the ‘safe border lines’ that adhere to the ‘values that… the majority accepts’ (Third
interview, May 11, 2012). As such, Maria’s classroom and the way she envisioned
her role as teacher stood in contrast with Dewey’s notion of the democratic school
that promote the participation of all students. Her idea of protecting students
from the ‘tacky’ lyrics and imagery (Maria, First interview, October 31, 2011)
associated with the musics they introduced to classes themselves also contradict
Dewey’s notion that school does not prepare students for social life, but is part of
social life itself (MW4: 272). In envisioning the classroom as a safe haven from the
perceived perils of popular culture and society outside of schools, the boundaries
established by the dominant narratives of the school censorship frame may remain
steadfast and unchallenged.
Perhaps less straightforward for all teachers were their considerations of
the mood and emotional affect of popular musics. Both the mood and emotional
affect of musics was seen as situationally defined and constructed, and although a
music could be considered appropriate with certain students in a particular lesson,
this did not mean it could be assumed to be appropriate for others, or in another
lesson at another time,

Of course I have to think about that if I would know that there is a student
[who suffers from depression or has just been through a traumatic event,
I would not] be playing [sad or aggressive] songs with them. (Risto, First
interview, November 29, 2011).

The situational nature of these decisions also related to the broader context of the
school and everyday life, such as disruptions to the daily schedule, the weather, or
time of year (Iida in particular mentioned kaamos time, dark polar nights, as an
important factor in her repertoire decision-making, First interview, December 11,
2011), or using more positive, uplifting musics as a way to balance the negativity
of major news reports ( Julia referred to recent instances of hate speech in a nearby
town that had influenced her repertoire decisions, Second interview, November 18,
2011).
It is clear that popular musics were not reified by the teachers participating
in this research project as passive, inert artefacts that assumed meaning only
through the labelling mechanisms of the school censorship frame. Understandings
of musics as deviant were not confined to (though were certainty related to) the
teachers’ labelling of musical genres (as suggested through North and Hargreaves’
2008 notion of problem music focusing on particular genres such as hard rock, hip
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hop/rap and punk, or the censorship frames of the mass media as discussed by
Schneider, 2011), but were constructed through negotiations between individual
and social interactions with musical material itself, as embedded in the school
censorship frame. In this way, popular music was seen as neither object nor agent.
Rather, music may be understood as ‘constitutive of agency’ (DeNora, 2000, p. 152)
and the power of music is located in the ways a socially contextualized individual
engages with music. Music may thus serve as a vehicle for students (or indeed
teachers) to oppose the norms and values established by the school censorship
frame, or to reinforce the boundaries of propriety, and further ideas of who the
school community is, and is not.

5.3 The teacher as critical, post-ethical agent

Envisioning music education in terms of supporting students’ ‘overall growth’
(Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p. 230) and wellbeing, it has been
argued that there is a different ‘ethic of care’ (Elliott, 2012, p. 22) on the shoulders
of the music teacher, than if we were to understand the purpose of music in
schools as merely the transmission of musical knowledge or skill. Accordingly,
whether the teacher works within the confines of the school censorship frame
or seizes opportunities to challenge or question it, holds significant implications
for what content is included or excluded from school lessons, and in turn, the
inclusion or exclusion of students. Without fixed notions of what is appropriate
and what is not, and without any stable voice of authority to which to turn, the
teachers participating in this research project noted that reflection and deliberation
was crucial, asking ‘what is right?’ ( Julia, Third interview, May 16, 2012) for each
student, and each situation. Although this appears to align with the approaches
put forward by critical pedagogues, teachers suggested that the instability of the
school censorship frame, and the unique meanings that emerge through individual
students’ engagements with musical material, presented particular challenges for
them to teach in a way that may promote a ‘common good’ for all (Giroux, 2011,
p. 13). The third article of this dissertation (appendix 3) explored the role of the
teacher as ethical agent (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 127), a theoretical concept
that I wish to extend and expand upon in addressing the third research question,
what are the implications of popular repertoire selections for enacting inclusivity and
democracy in formal music education?
In navigating the school censorship frame and selecting popular repertoire
in a way that may facilitate inclusion and democratic practices in schools, I
suggest that the teacher’s decisions may be understood on a continuum between
curatorship and censorship. The notion of curatorial teaching was introduced in
the second and third articles (see appendices 2 and 3), in opposition to visions
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of the teacher as transmitter of knowledge and purveyor of the high art canon
to the young and naïve. The curatorial teacher may be seen to act similarly to a
contemporary art gallery curator, tasked with deciding which (or whose) musics
(or knowledge) to put on display (the term display is not to suggest that musical
material is not engaged with in a creative, collaborative, embodied way, in the
same way that many art galleries include interactive, temporal, or collaborative
works). In this sense, the teacher is not a content expert (e.g., as proposed by
Hirsch, 1988), though s/he may certainly be knowledgeable and skillful in popular
musics. Rather, envisioning the teacher as curator resonates with the praxial
music education tradition that has emphasized the value of a ground level up
approach to curriculum development, and the multidimensionality of curriculum
as ‘teacher’s decisions about the why, what, and how of teaching and learning
cannot be realistically separated from questions of who, when, and where’ (Elliott,
1995, p. 251). Curatorial teaching also relates to informal learning approaches
that have cast the teacher as ‘facilitator’, ‘helping students make things happen
for themselves’ (Rodriguez, 2009, p. 39; see also Green 2008). Thus, the curatorial
teacher, faced with ostensibly limitless options of musics to teach, is directed to
select musics that are relevant to their students’ own lives and experiences outside
of school, that represent works of high musical standards (Elliott, 1995, p. 263,
however what exactly is meant by high standards by Elliott here is unclear). With
the teacher seen as curating content, all musics, as long as they relate to their
students’ lives and knowledge, are valid. On the other end of this continuum is
the overt, repressive censorship of musics, as a teacher outright forbids certain
songs, genres, styles and practices in favour of a predetermined, safe selection of
acceptable, worthwhile musics. In light of the findings of this research project,
both of these extremes may be seen as impossible ideals.
On the one hand, curatorship is impossible, as the formation of the
curriculum through content selection is always a contentious process, someone’s
selection of someone’s knowledge as legitimate and valid for educational use. Thus,
music and musical selections for school use are never neutral. At the other extreme,
repressive censorship is an unattainable absolute. In the Finnish school system that
takes students’ own experiences as central to teaching and learning, and curricular
directives for students to compose and create their own music, the music teacher’s
control does not, and cannot, extend this far. Although the teacher can certainly
strive for such certainty, as censorship may be applied after students’ musical
initiations or creations take place, the outright exclusion of deviantized musics is
impossible.
Writing with respects to geographic and ethnic diversity in Canadian
school bands, Mantie and Tucker (2012) claim that ‘schooling, as a state
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institution, cannot avoid dealing with the issues of the right and the good…
necessary not just for social cohesion, but for social functioning’ (p. 266). However,
it is precisely these ideals of social cohesion and social functioning that are
potentially problematic in diverse school environments. This was also recognized
by some of the teachers participating in this research project. Acknowledging that
their students were from diverse backgrounds, and also reflecting on their own
backgrounds and those of other staff members, teachers’ sense of ‘responsibility as
an educator’ ( Julia, Second interview, November 18, 2011) was seen as increasingly
important but also increasingly unclear. As Julia noted, this required significant
critical reflection,

I think it’s very important that I’m aware of my own ethical and moral
principles because they always affect on how I see things and how I
respond to questions. I always, time after time, question myself and my own
principles. ( Julia, Second interview, November 18, 2011).

Complicating these moral deliberations were teachers’ understandings

of the nature of music as a subject, and it’s role in the wider school community
through performances at school festivities, celebrations, and events. In this way,
concerns over whose values count had to extend beyond themselves and their own
students. As Iida reflected upon a performance by a group of her ninth graders,

My [version or level of ] accepting [popular repertoire] is not everyone’s

accepting. Many teachers came to me to ask me [after the performance],
‘do you think this was a good idea?’ I was thinking maybe we should have
kept this song just for our class and not for a performance… When it’s an
open situation we need to think that there are the grandmothers sitting
over there, we should make the school party [a particular kind of festive
atmosphere]. (Iida, Third interview, May 16, 2012).

However, she also noted that there were limits to the extent to which she
considered the potentials of causing offense,

Of course if you thought about everybody there would be almost no music

you could choose. (Iida, Third interview, May 16, 2012).

Iida’s statement confirms the idea that popular repertoire selection is not a
neutral or arbitrary process. Her statement also suggests that although it is
important to critically reflect on how repertoire selection may include or exclude
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certain members of the school community, there was a point where it became
unproductive. For her, reflecting on the school censorship frame in a way that
aimed to please everyone was paralyzing, raising important questions regarding
ideas of what constitutes best practice. If it is thought to be enough to include
most students, do the censorious narratives of the dominant powers of the school
censorship frame perpetuate one-sided and perhaps detrimental agendas of
education, serving a limited population and limited educational aims?
Whether music was listened to, discussed, or performed, was seen by the
participating teachers as an important consideration in their navigations of the
school censorship frame, and engaging with deviantized musics in the classroom.
All of the teachers noted that deviantized musics could often be included in a
way that did not ‘celebrate’ (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012) the cultural values they
appeared to promote, but rather engaged such musics critically,

Quite deep Satanic metal I might not rise up to singing and playing
material, but I have discussed about it, and some metal music lovers have
told the whole group there what black metal means and what kind of bands
there are, and there have been some presentations, we have listened to that
kind of music... but not playing. ( Julia, Third interview, May 10, 2012).

[Students] are not expecting that I’m teaching all the music in the life. Of
course we can talk about [deviantized musics that don’t seem to fit in the
school context], I don’t think there is any such subject which we cannot take
to the discussion. (Iida, Second interview, December 14, 2011).

Certain musics could then be included, but in a way that potentially reinforces
their deviance in classroom contexts, relegated to critical discussion as a means
to ‘learn… and understand what is appropriate’ ( Julia, Third interview, May 10,
2012). This approach runs the risk of emphasizing

‘appreciation rather than power, an emotional readiness to assimilate

the experiences of others, rather than enlightened and trained capacity to
carry forward those values which in other conditions and past times made
those experiences worth having’ (Dewey, MW4: 278).

This draws a clear distinction between the enjoyment and engagement with these
popular musics outside of school, and their distanced critique within classroom
walls. This inclusion may not result in the welcoming of musics and students, and
is potentially a more potent form of exclusion, emphasizing a ‘failure to conform’
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(Dewey, MW 4: 278) by taking the time to explicate the norms and values of
the school censorship frame and demarcate such musics (and by association the
students who enjoy and identify with such music) as outsiders.
In addition, the critical discussion of deviantized musics may (re)enforce
traditional power relations in the classroom, positioning the teacher in a powerful
role, casting students as passive and naïve. Moral learning is then understood to
pertain only to students, not teachers. Julia questioned the propensity of critical
pedagogues to afford the teacher the status of saviour through the notion of
empowering students in lessons,

I think we should talk about empowerment as a word first. In my opinion

if you think about the basic ideology of critical pedagogy, they understand
it wrongly I believe. Because there is not about that ‘I empower you’
because then, I’m kind of above you and I give you something and then
you get empowered. I only try to create the kind of situation or learning
environment where it’s possible for you to become empowered, but I’m
not the one who is giving the power to you. That’s a very important
philosophical detail. I’m very critical to this empowerment word because
people use it like a verb, they ‘empower them’ or something like this... Shit.
And empowered for what? ( Julia, Second interview, November 18, 2011).

Envisioning the teacher as empowering saviour aims to produce a certain kind

of society through designing a certain kind of child (Popkewitz, 2008), with
the teacher guiding the child towards full participation in society. Allsup and
Westerlund (2012) have criticized these goals, and proposed that the teacher
may better be thought of as ethical agent. In this way, the teacher navigates the
situational conflicts and uncertainties of students’ engagements with popular
musics as contextualized within the school censorship frame. S/he may do this
through inquiry and moral deliberation as a way ‘to reconstruct the means and
ends of teaching into a constant re-organization of values for the good or the
growth of oneself and others’ (p. 126). Teachers may then be seen to engage in, and
acquire, as much moral learning as students. However, in recognizing the political
dimension of popular repertoire selection, and the diversity and inherent conflicts
of schooling in a thick democracy, it may be questioned whether the teacher is able
to rely on stable ethical understandings of what the ‘good’ is, if they are to apply to
life as ‘a moving affair in which old moral truth ceases to apply’ (Dewey, MW14:
164).
In living in, if not a post-ethical world, at least one in which a universal,
normative ethical view does not apply, ‘morality does not vanish, but, on
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the contrary, comes into its own’ (Bauman, 1995, p. 11). Simply recognizing
the situatedness of moral decisions is thus only the very beginning of moral
reflection and decision-making. As Dewey argued, doing away with a universal
ethical framework ‘does not destroy responsibility; it only locates it’ (MW12:
173). Moreover, the attempts of critical pedagogues to ‘influence how and
what knowledge, values, desires, and identities are produced within particular
sets of class and social relations’ (Giroux, 2011, p. 159) may simply replace one
unquestioned ethical framework with another, being selectively critical and
stultifying the moral work that is necessary for democratic practices in the
classroom. If morality is all that there is, the teacher, together with students,
is required to recognize and critically reflect upon the historical and cultural
ethical baggage that accompanies each music and each situation. These situations
and contexts that require ethical and moral deliberation are by no means given,
and require definition and interpretation (Ben-Yehuda, 1990). By this, we may
understand that in a thick democracy – without governing ethical guidelines of
truth, right and good, the moral deliberation the teacher engages in is not only
restricted to the ‘whats, hows, and whys’ (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 140) and
whose, of music education, but also the what for, and the who for and to what ends.
In locating the school in a world without ethics, without prescribed rules
of moral conduct, the teacher may draw upon disagreement and diversity as moral
resources in a thick democracy, rather than viewing them as hindrances to ethical
consensus. With each situation being culturally and historically informed, and in
critically reflecting upon these accumulated meanings, the teacher may engage in
repertoire decision-making with a complex degree of moral concern, rather than
imposing an unquestioned moral indignation through a fixed ethical framework.
As Apple (2013) argues, assuming a monopoly of ‘the correct answer, the correct
ethical and political stance’ (p. 21) endangers the ideals of justice and equality. If
education is to change society for the (undetermined) better, it must be of, and for,
that very same society.
Thus, without a common ethical framework to which teachers may rely
upon in teaching critically, it may be seen as crucial to critique what constitutes
a good in the first place. What is socially responsible? What are student rights?
When we speak of inclusion, what is it that students are to be included in? Why?
For what/who? In enacting a democratic music education that promotes students’
overall growth, it may be questioned what growth is, how we recognize its and
what or who it is for.

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5.4 The uncertainties of factional stories
One of the unexpected outcomes of this research project was the development
of a narrative method that addressed challenges that arose during the course of
study and aimed towards a more collaborative, meaningful exchange between
participating teachers and myself. Reported in the fourth article of this
dissertation (appendix 4), the crafting of factional stories may be understood
as introducing an element of uncertainty, of troubling taken-for-granted
assumptions, and questioning teachers’ and my own tacit knowledge. In this
section, I discuss the methodological developments of the research project,
addressing the final research question, what can be learnt about the teaching of music,
if story is viewed as both the source and representation of knowledge and experience?
I began the process of data collection with an element of certainty with
regards to what I was going to ask, and what it was that I wanted to investigate.
With an interview guide at the ready I asked teachers to describe themselves, their
daily work, and to recount particular moments that they had found challenging,
and essentially I got the information I asked for. It was only after the first two
rounds of interviews that I realized that the focus had been on what, whereas what
I was really interested in was why.
As described in the fourth article and chapter 4 of this dissertation, the
crafting of factional stories to address the challenges I felt, and to dig deeper
into teacher’s understandings and beliefs of their teaching practice, was an
experiment. The changes in methodological approach and the uncertainty with
which I implemented these changes were perhaps a luxury afforded by a system
of doctoral education that does not require prior approval of methods, allowing
for considerable flexibility during the course of study. Indeed, I did not know if
sharing these stories would be productive, well received or understood, and I did
so with considerable trepidation.
The consequences of sharing these four, short, factional stories were
surprising to me in a number of ways. The first was the extent to which teachers
engaged with the texts. Shared approximately two weeks before our final
interviews, most of the teachers claimed that they had spent significant time
thinking about the issues these stories raised, and three had written notes that
they wanted to discuss. The only teacher who did not have an opportunity to
spend a significant amount of time engaging with the texts was Risto, as he
was in the middle of coordinating performances for an upcoming school event.
Perhaps as a result, his final interview was the shortest of the five, though still
allowed for a longer, and deeper, discussion than in earlier interviews. Outi noted
that the language of the factional stories was at times challenging for her as a

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Finnish speaker, but having the texts for some time before our meeting allowed
her to translate sections, and think about what they meant, both semantically
and relating the ideas to her own work. The sharing of factional stories afforded
teachers access to other teachers’ thoughts and experiences, and the time to
consider not only words but also meanings that was not afforded in the immediate,
face-to-face interview situations. In addition, I was surprised that in following the
teachers’ leads, the discussions that took place in the third interviews extended far
beyond the four factional stories.
Another surprise for me were the truly polyphonic narratives that the
factional stories not only embodied but produced. Sharing the stories I had some
concerns that certain factional stories were too heavily based on particular teachers’
accounts, or that I had not attended to each teacher’s experiences or thoughts
evenly. However, as a result of including teachers and my own doubts, questions
and uncertainties, the factional stories opened the doors for considerable reflection
and deliberation with regards to the meanings and values of teachers’ everyday
classroom experiences. Each teacher approached the factional stories from their
own unique context and personal history. Accordingly, the final transcripts read
as a complex fugue, or variation upon a theme, with each teacher in conversation
with the same voices in different ways.
Up to the final interviews, teachers had mostly shared descriptive narratives
of what ‘Finnish teachers’ do, and what ‘Finnish teachers’ think. In going beyond
this, to the level of personal reflection and deliberation, I was also surprised by
the dissenting voices, and how each teacher focused on different aspects of each
story as they related it to their own work and experiences. These moments of
disagreement or uncertainty presented opportunities for deep discussion and
collaborative inquiry between teachers and myself.
One voice in particular stood out in the transcripts. I noticed an
inconsistency in Maria’s interview transcripts, where she seemed to contradict
or at least take a very different stance towards popular repertoire (rap music in
particular) in the third interview, to what she had told me in the earlier interviews.
The second factional story (real rap, see appendix 7b) was largely constructed on a
story she shared with me during the first and second interviews,

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 Maria: There’s one very talented boy who can make his own rap music, and
also the background, and he had some difficulties writing down the words
because he also wanted to improvise for some of the time. So I could never
really see the words beforehand. That was my mistake… I learnt that you
never do this like that!
Alexis: What happened?
Maria: There were some words that should not have been said in front of
an audience of pupils. But then it is many times in rap that you have this
‘uh, motherfucker, yeah yeah’ and all of that. They imitate it… we had a
teachers meeting after [the performances] where we have to grade these
performances… I think this boy would have gotten ‘excellent’ if there
hadn’t been the swear words, because he did a fine job with the musical
background, these loops he did on the computer. And the lyrics he came up
with them himself. (First interview, October 31, 2011).

Alexis: What did the other teachers say?

Maria: They said that because of these swear words it was not ‘excellent’. We
have only three levels: ‘excellent’, ‘ok’ and ‘fail’. So his was just ‘ok’… it was
a little bit difficult for me to say, because I know it’s part of the culture, the
rap culture that you use such words. (Second interview, November 7, 2011).

However, after I shared the factional stories with Maria, in the third interview,
when asked to discuss the second factional story, she was quick to judge the
anonymous teacher,

Maria: Hmmm (shaking her head), the teacher should have said something
beforehand. This is the teacher’s fault.
Alexis: What would you have said beforehand?
Maria: That you cannot have swear words.
Alexis: So you would have anticipated this?
Maria: Yes! She should have said. Every teacher knows that swear words
are part of the rap culture. We have had similar cases here. (Third interview,
May 11, 2012).

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This inconsistency in Maria’s transcripts may be the result of a number of factors.
The first may be a methodological limitation, either as a result of design or a
misunderstanding with regards to how the factional stories were to be interpreted.
For instance, Maria may have read the factional stories as models of teaching to
praise or critique. This suggests a failure on my own behalf, to adequately explain
that the factional stories were grounded in the five teachers’ own experiences, and
a failure on Maria’s behalf to recognize them as such. Secondly, this contradiction
may point to the difficulty that has often been noted in educational research, of
distinguishing experiences from values; distinguishing what teachers do, from what
they say. However, through the narrative inquiry approach adopted in this research
project, this is not problematic in itself. Rather, Maria’s reaction to her own
experiences may be seen as one instance where the normative judgements of the
school censorship frame are reinforced, with the social censure of certain popular
musics rooted in particular understandings of schooling, students, and teachers.
This may be seen as a tension or conflict between Maria’s individual narrative
and the social narratives of the school censorship frame, taking on the form of a
‘cover story’ (Olson & Craig, 2005). Narrative education researchers Olson and
Craig (2005) applied Crites’ (1979) notion of cover stories to educational research,
as a lens to understand the ‘intersections where teachers’ personal knowledge –
constructed and reconstructed from experience – meets knowledge constructed
by others’ (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 163). Cover stories are understood as ‘socially
authorized’ stories (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 163). The later discussions with Maria
may illustrate such a cover story, more reliant on the dominant narratives of the
school censorship frame than her own experiences. The school censorship frame
is here seen at work, telling a ‘canonical version of ¨how things should be¨’ (Olson
& Craig, 2005, p. 164), constructing and constraining not only what is considered
legitimate classroom content, but legitimate teacher roles and stories as well.

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95
6 Beyond and between dichotomies of democratic music
education
Recent scholarship has questioned a number of established dichotomies in music
education, such as the casting of popular musics in opposition to classical musics
(e.g., Bennett et al. 2009; Frith, 1992, 1996), and formal learning in opposition
to informal learning (e.g., Folkestad, 2006). Similarly, in navigating the school
censorship frame, attending to the features of popular musics and selecting
repertoire that actively engages with processes of inclusion and democracy in
the school, there is a need to look beyond a number of dichotomies that may be
seen to have been particularly influential in guiding popular repertoire selection
thus far. In looking beyond and between these boundaries, it is possible to
further question the frames that guide popular repertoire selection not only in
terms of how they function, but what, or who they benefit, why, and what for.
As illustration, in this chapter I address three dichotomies that relate to the
research findings regarding music teachers’ popular repertoire decision-making.
The first dichotomy addressed in this section of the dissertation was established
through the work of Lucy Green (1999, 2006, 2008) and has been an important
consideration for informal learning approaches and the teaching and learning
of popular musics in schools: the positioning of student alienation in opposition
to student affiliation and understanding of music (6.1). Related to this, is the
dichotomy of oppression – emancipation, which has long been associated
with critical pedagogy (6.2). The third dichotomy discussed in this section of
the dissertation extends these ideas to broader understandings of inclusion as
diametrically opposed to exclusion, often seen as the barometer of democratic
practices in the classroom (6.3).

6.1 Alienation – Affiliation and understanding

As described earlier in section 2.4 of this dissertation, in Lucy Green’s (1999)
work on the sociology of music education, and later (2006, 2008) work on popular
music in schools, she poses that students experience alienation from a music
when they do not understand the inherent/inter-sonic meanings of a music,
and when they feel that the music represents ‘social or political values of which
[they] disapprove, or social groups from which [they] are excluded’ (Green, 1999,
p. 164). Conversely, she suggests that students have a celebratory experience of
music when they both understand the inherent/inter-sonic meanings of music,
and feel an affiliation with its delineated meanings. This approach affords music
a certain autonomy, if through manipulating and better understanding the inter-
sonic meanings of music, the delineated meanings may change, or new delineated
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meanings may be produced. This same idea may be read in the pluralistic policies
of the Finnish Core Curriculum for Basic Education (Finnish National Board of
Education, 2004), with the task of instruction to communicate to students that
music ‘is different at different times and in different cultures and societies, and has
a different sort of meaning for different people’ (p. 230). With such a perspective,
in her (2008) book Music, informal leaning, and the school: A new classroom pedagogy,
Green argues that the delineated meanings of music are arbitrary (p. 91). Such an
approach aligns with more simplistic, one-directional, deterministic interpretations
of traditional labelling theory (see section 3.2.2 of this dissertation) which sees
delineated musical meanings as subject to the whim of the labelling forces of
the ‘context of reception’ (Green, 2008, p. 90), reliant on who is listening, when.
Green (1999) argues that students’ alienation from a music, as a result (in part)
of negativity towards the delineated meanings, may be overcome if the teacher is
able to ‘teach [students] something about the music’s inherent meanings’ (p. 166)
through a hands-on, informal engagement with the music in question. In turn,
the delineated meanings of the music will change, ‘and slowly they will begin to
understand it – perhaps even to like it’ (p. 166). This research suggests that the
matter is considerably more complex.
Alienation is not the result of misunderstanding on behalf of the student or
the inability of the teacher to present material in a comprehensible manner. Nor is
it necessarily a result of being unable to relate positively to the music at hand. If, as
Green (1999, 2008) suggests, alienation is caused by an incapability to understand
or relate to music, the problem is located within the students themselves (and
perhaps by extension to the teacher who is ostensibly unable to explain or present
the music in an accessible way). This erases the political dimensions of the
processes of exclusion from music education, and limits reflection on, and inquiry
into how alienation may best be addressed. If the alienation of the student is
the result of the students’ own deficiencies or difference, the processes by which
certain musics are deviantized and cast as outsiders to the music classroom are
depoliticized and the narratives of the school censorship frame rendered invisible.
As this research illustrates, at least with regard to school repertoires,
alienation may be the result of students understanding very well that the music
that they enjoy, and the musical cultures they identify with, are not considered
worthy of classroom attention. The delineated meanings that students or teachers
(or others) label musics with are anything but arbitrary. Rather, the labels assigned
to musics, or the delineated meanings, reflect the (re)enforcement of moral
boundaries that determine which musics are legitimized as worthy of classroom
attention, and which are relegated as deviantized outsiders. The classroom is an
inherently political space, and the processes of content selection for this space
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determines who music education serves, who is left out, and the justifications for
these choices. As Sumner (1990) emphasizes, ‘deviance is an outcome of a relation
between people in conflict’ (p. 18).
Green (2008) also neglects the political dimensions of alienation in advising
that students may achieve a critical musicality through

being able to listen to music more attentively and knowledgeably; hearing

more synchronic parts and/or diachronic relationships within it; being
more aware of how it came to be made; and having a more informed,
percipient, and a less alienated, biased response to both its inter-sonic and
its delineated meanings. (2008, p. 91).

Constructing a view of alienation in binary opposition to affiliation and

understanding is coercive at best, and at worst may reinforce the censure of the
students’ musical preferences as illegitimate, and certain students as outsiders to
the music classroom.
The dichotomy is thus not between affiliation and understanding, and
alienation. Indeed, it is not a dichotomy at all. As the stigma contests of the school
censorship frame result in continuous processes of legitimizing certain musics,
and marginalizing others according to power relations embedded in situation and
circumstance, the teacher and student are together navigating competing, complex
and multifaceted constructions and censures of musical meanings and values. The
task is thus not one of explanation, but of critical, ethical inquiry, and an inquiry
with an uncertain end.

6.2 Oppression – Emancipation

Critical pedagogy has achieved considerable ground in socially and politically
contextualizing teaching and learning as a means to ‘empower the powerless and
transform existing social inequalities and injustices’ (McLaren, 2003, p. 186).
In recognizing that schooling is not a neutral endeavour, critical pedagogues
have struggled to disrupt oppressive relations of ‘exploitation, domination and
subordination’ (Apple, 2013, p. 23) creating new, emancipatory potentials for
individuals and groups. In this light, the dichotomy that much of this critical
work has hinged on is that between oppression and emancipation. Not wanting to
diminish the important contributions by critical pedagogues, but if censorship is
understood as one process by which oppression occurs, and if, as discussed earlier
in this dissertation, censorship is inevitable and even necessary, there are a number
of problems in viewing the project of educating students in terms of this binary
that warrant attention.
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 If censorship is omnipresent, polyvalent and multifaceted, the critical
project is by definition, ongoing. This is in line with the arguments put forward
by Freire (e.g., 1990, 1994) that regard agency, and the potentials for agency, as
central to the education project. In this way, the work of teachers is to promote
‘a concern with keeping the forever unexhausted and unfulfilled human potential
open, fighting back all attempts to foreclose and pre-empt the further unravelling
of human possibilities, prodding human society to go on questioning itself
and preventing that questioning from every stalling or being declared finished’
(Bauman & Tester, 2001, p. 4). However, in light of the results of this research,
the unfinishedness of the critical and democratizing project may be seen to be
curtailed by the way in which empowerment has been conceived and applied in
formal music education contexts. The results of this research align with critiques of
critical pedagogy by Apple (2013) that have pointed to an arrogance in assuming
that ‘¨we¨ know the best and only paths to emancipation and we will bring it to
¨you¨’ (p. 29).
In attending to the techniques of power (Foucault, 1980, p. 39) employed as
part of the ‘constantly shifting discourses, practices and apparatuses’ (Kuhn, 1988,
p. 127) of the school censorship frame that assign and control musical meaning,
there cannot be an a priori good or truth to uncover or promote. A liberatory
approach that substitutes one truth for another runs the risk of being duplicitous,
engaging in circular processes of manumission, unreflectively partaking in the
very censorious processes of domination and oppression it aims to eradicate. In
committing to a singlular idea of social justice, in solidarity with marginalized
or subordinated groups (notably identified by critical pedagogues themselves),
new power relations are established, new assumptions taken for granted and new
outsiders created. Thus, it may be seen that the fight has been for impossible
freedoms.
As the results of this research suggest, and recalling Holquist’s (1994) claim
that ‘censorship is’ (p. 17), the foreclosure (Butler, 1997) of possibility is inevitable
and indeed necessary. The legitimizing of certain individuals’ knowledge is always
at the expense, or as Marxist traditions have reminded us, at the behest (Bunn,
2015), of others. Thus, it may be argued that in creating a school community
among diverse student and teacher populations with cohesive ‘ceremonies, rituals,
beliefs, morals and values’ (Dillon, 2007, p. 94), music education ‘is always both
inclusive and exclusive’ (Bowman, 2007, p. 110, emphasis added). Accordingly
the task cannot be to empower certain narrative morals, goods or truths,
strengthening them to be equal to, or to succeed others. The school censorship
frame is constantly changing according to the situation, teacher, students and
musical materials. This is not to suggest a cynical view that change for the ‘better’
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(I hesitate to use such a word here without being precise with regards to or for
whom it would be so, but there it is) in schools is impossible, nor is it a futile
utopian dream. It does however, argue that it is not enough to shift the boundaries
of who is included and who is an outsider, neglecting the censorious processes by
which outsiders, and also importantly insiders, are produced.

6.3 Exclusion – Inclusion

Extending this reconsideration of the aforementioned dichotomy between
oppression and emancipation to a discussion of the processes that produce the
insiders and outsiders of the school community, poses challenges for the ideals of
democratic music education. The dichotomy of exclusion and inclusion presents an
apparent contradiction between the ideals of full participation, and the valuing of
social consensus. Just as censorship is not defined in opposition to free speech, the
binary between exclusion and inclusion warrants attention if we are to envision a
music education that serves all students in the classroom.
Looking at popular music cultures beyond the school context, the
popularity of Elvis, the Beatles, N.W.A, Ice-T and numerous contemporary artists
are testament to the notion that inclusion in the mainstream, and acceptance by
dominant social groups is not the only means by which music, and individuals,
may become powerful. All of these artists have experienced extreme forms of
exclusion such as repressive censorship and silencing, yet they continue to be
immensely popular – indeed part of their popularity and success may be attributed
to this very outsider status. Processes of social censure, and exclusion may thus
be of ‘political value, a means of preserving certain practices and dimensions of
existence from regulatory power, from normative violence, and from the scorching
rays of public exposure’ (Brown, 1998, p. 314), or part of the political strategies of
public exposure in itself. Thus it may be seen that inclusion does not necessarily
equate with freedom, and freedom does not equate with ‘voice and visibility’
through a ‘compulsory discursivity’ (Brown, 1998, p. 315). Students whose musics
are deviantized or censored in the classroom, the outsiders of school music
education, may not want to be included as this may not be the most effective
arena or way for them to exercise agency. Just as there is a power in being included,
there can also be a power in existing outside of the mainstream, as Foucault (1978)
suggested, ‘silence and secrecy are a shelter for power’ (p. 101). Becker’s (1963)
labelling theory suggested that the creation of outsiders might go both ways,

100
 the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the
matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may
not regard those who judge him as either competent or legitimately entitled
to do so… the rule breaker may feel his judges are outsiders. (p. 2)

In this way, the exclusion of deviantized musics may even be preferable to

submitting such musics to the labelling processes of the school censorship frame,
if such processes are assimilation strategies, including outsiders through critical
discussion (Georgii-Hemming & Kvarnhall, forthcoming) or coercive explication
(e.g., Green, 1999, 2008). Although writing on racial and cultural diversity in
schools, American music education researcher Randall Allsup (2010) has critiqued
the assimilatory Nordic approach to difference. Such coercive practices are often
paved with the best intentions, as he notes ‘the impetus behind assimilation is
one of welcoming’ (p. 21). He suggests that difference may be seen as a resource,
rather than a challenge to overcome, posing the question ‘[d]o we speak of a
common community or an expanding one?’ (p. 20). With such a notion of an
expanding community, the conflicts and tensions of the stigma contests of the
school censorship frame may not only be repressive, excluding processes. They
may also be seen as the same processes that develop new courses of action,
new possibilities and new resistances to patterns and habits of interaction that
reproduce inequalities and exclusions. In this sense, the stigma contests within,
and in conflict with, the school censorship frame may be seen to pose invitations;
invitations to the new, and potentially, to the better (see also Schmidt, 2008).

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7 Final words: Expanding the discussion of inclusion and
democracy in music education
The freedoms afforded to Finnish school music teachers regarding what and how
to teach have often been the envy of the international music education community,
seen as something to be enjoyed. However, the situations these teachers face as a
result of these freedoms may, at times, be acutely uncomfortable. Attending to
some of these potentially challenging moments, the task of this research was to
develop theoretical and practical understandings of music teachers’ experiences of
the censure and censorship of popular music in school contexts, considering the
research findings within the broader discourses of inclusion and democracy in
schools.
With popular repertoire selection being neither laissez-faire, anything-
goes relativism, nor a straightforward selection between good and problematic,
decided upon through the application of a stable ethical framework, teachers are
caught amidst a maelstrom of ambivalence and uncertainty. What is seen as good
for who is constantly changing. Accordingly, the musics, practices and values seen
as good in school music programmes are inextricably intertwined with dynamic
power relations and the inclusion of certain individuals at the exclusion of others.
As such, the matter is not so much what is good, but whose good counts when,
and what for. The legitimation of certain morals, knowledge and goods through
repertoire selection is always at the exclusion of others, and is both the site and
product of immense contestation. In moving beyond the idea that an agreed set
of ethical guidelines exists for everyone at all times, the everyday act of selecting
popular musics to teach and learn in the classroom has powerful implications
for inclusion and democratic action in schools. Accordingly, it is necessary to
discuss what is good, beyond and between the dichotomies that so often guide the
teaching and learning of music, such as the binaries of alienation and affiliation
and understanding, oppression and emancipation, and inclusion and exclusion.
In envisioning a music classroom as the locus of democratic actions, it has
been argued that music education ought ‘to extend the reference of ¨us¨ as far as
we can’ (Woodford, 2005, p. 89). Such an idea suggests that democracy is a state of
consensus, or at least a harmonious ideal with few conflicts or disruptions. In light
of this research, this practice of extending the us denotes a process of assimilation,
of imposition and of moving identifiable boundaries for the once outsiders to
yield to, in order to become insiders. Democracy is not an adjective that signifies
smooth sailing, an achievement or to describe a well-oiled machine. Rather
than extending the us of music education, the processes and enactments of thick
democracy may be found in the political interactions and transactions between the
102
‘us’ and the constructed ‘them’. In a liquid modern world these notions of us and
them, ideas of who comprises the school community, and who are cast as outsiders,
are continually changing and (re)negotiated. Indeed, in defining the school as a
cohesive community in the first place, we engage in processes of legitimation and
also exclusion. In moving beyond such an idea, the social aims of music education
cannot be a fixed goal that we may all strive towards as a united team.
In focusing our attention on the constructions of, and the relations between,
us and them, it may be seen that dissensus is an essential component of thick
democracy. Thus, contestation, exclusion and uncertainty are not something to
overcome, or override, but vital components of a democratic music education. If
a student is to ‘not only adapt himself to the changes that are going on, but have
power to shape and direct them’ (Dewey, MW4: 27) difference and contestation
may be seen as resources for educators rather than hindrances. This requires not an
expansion of the us, as critical reflection on practice, but an expanded discussion of
inclusive and democratic practices in music education, entailing a critical reflection
on purpose. This is in line with the notions of democracy in education as put
forward by Dewey, who wrote that ‘[t]here is more than a verbal tie between the
words common, community, and communication’ (MW9: 7). Such understandings
of the school as an expanding community founded on disagreement and dissent
are also in line with the writings of Freire (1990, 1994) and Bauman (Bauman
& Tester, 2001) who both view the ‘limits of justice’ (Giroux, 2012, p. 120) as
forever unreached, and the questioning of possibilities unending. With this
in mind, the school censorship frame, problem music and processes of social
censure, deviantization and exclusion may present the teacher and student with
opportunities. These are opportunities to learn beyond bias and assumption, to
inquire what lies in-between and beyond the dichotomies that so often guide
the selection of musics in the classroom, and to understand who music education
serves, when, why, how and to what ends.
As an interdisciplinary work combining the fields of music education and
cultural criminology, this dissertation has covered considerable theoretical ground
and offers new perspectives on inclusion and democracy in the school music
classroom, as well as new insights on social censure and censorship as a means to
understand the processes of deviantization. Popular musics were introduced to
classrooms as part of a broader diversification of school repertoires, valuing and
promoting a multicultural and multimusical ethos and approach (see chapter 2 of
this dissertation). Regarded as more accessible, more readily intelligible for young
learners, more authentic and inclusive, popular musics have often been seen as
democratizing practices in themselves. This research has suggested that this is not
necessarily true, and the assumption warrants closer attention. Through focusing
103
on processes of censure and censorship in the music classroom, this dissertation
contributes towards an increasingly complex understanding of the role popular
music may play in schools. As such, this research offers a critical counterpoint, and
suggests that the process of selecting popular repertoire is as fraught with as many
complexities and potentials for exclusion as any other music.
With the concept of censorship of relevance to the field of cultural
criminology, this dissertation introduces the considerable theoretical work done
by scholars associated with New Censorship Theory, affording a more complex
perspective than traditional understandings of censorship have thus far provided.
In addition, by augmenting the work associated with the developments of New
Censorship Theory by understanding the phenomena of censorship as interactive,
this dissertation proposes an expanded view of censorship as an analytical concept,
whereby scholars may attend to the frames for, and constraints upon, individual
agency beyond the structural perspectives of the theoretical frameworks that
have been employed thus far. The development of this theoretical lens, locating
censorship in, and through, interaction, may hold implications for research in
other contexts, where the socio-political and cultural circumstances may shed new
light on censorship processes as means of both silencing and generating human
expression.
Through adopting a cultural criminological perspective in analyzing
the censure and censorship of music, this dissertation contributes towards the
developing engagement of the field with different cultural forms and practices,
extending the discussion beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of rap and heavy metal music
( Johnson and Cloonan, 2009). In addition, in investigating these social processes
in the school environment, cultural criminological perspectives are applied to new
contexts of cultural production. As described in chapter 1 of this dissertation,
one of the purposes of education is to nurture autonomous individuals capable
of living in, and contributing towards democratic society (Heimonen, 2014). In
recognizing the processes of social censure and censorship that stigmatize and
devalue certain musics and individuals in the classroom, we may be one step
closer to realizing the ideals of thick, participatory democracy. As argued by Apple
(2013), if school is considered not as preparation for, but as part of society, as ‘work
places, as sites of identity formation, as places that make particular knowledge
and culture legitimate, as arenas of mobilization and learning of tactics, and so
much more’ (p. 158), attending to issues of power, social justice, deviance and
exclusion within schools may have significant implications for transforming and
understanding social life outside them.

104
 Turning the focus back to music education in schools, although it is
impossible and perhaps undesirable to be able to prepare teachers in a way that
would allow them to anticipate all future challenges in their work, this research
project offers a window of understanding that may be of use as part of teacher
preparation studies. Through the practical and theoretical findings of this research,
teachers and future teachers may be better able to recognize deviantized musics,
and through critically reflecting on the processes of deviantization, censure and
censorship frames that guide their understandings, be better equipped to foster
inclusive and democratic practices in their classrooms. Indeed, this dissertation
serves as a critical guide and reassurance for my younger teacher self as described
in the prelude of this dissertation.
Considering teacher preparation studies as a potential extension of this
research project, I have already collected quantitative data from a broad sample
of recent music education graduates working in Finnish secondary schools.
This data will provide insights regarding the extent to which secondary school
music teachers reflect upon the constraints of the school censorship frame, and
the musical features that highlight or contribute towards the social censure or
deviantization of popular music in school context. Moreover, teachers were asked
whether or not these issues were addressed as part of their teacher preparation
studies. This extension of the project also allows for investigation of the relations
between teachers’ personal (both musical and educational) backgrounds and their
approaches to popular repertoire selection – as was suggested by reviewers of
the journal articles that comprise this dissertation. In addition, the quantitative
approach offers a broader overview, and provides an opportunity to attend to
differences in teacher responses according to their gender, location, type of school,
years of teaching experience, cultural or religious identity and other demographic
information. In this way, it may be seen that the results of this research project
have already informed future research that may contribute more concretely to
how tertiary studies may address and promote a more complex understanding of
inclusion and democracy in school music education.
To summarize the main contribution I offer here in this dissertation, I
suggest that popular music is not an easy answer to inclusion or democratic
practice in the music classroom. Indeed, the introduction of popular musics to
school classrooms have made the processes of selecting repertoire in a way that
reflects and fosters the diversity of the school music classroom, considerably more
complex. This may be a good thing. A recognition of the social censures and
censorious narratives that politicize repertoire selection, and the school classroom
as a heterotopy of musical preferences, identities and cultures, may enable teachers
and students to engage in critical reflections and negotiations that extend beyond
105
fixed notions of what constitutes a good music, or a good student. The invitations
and surprises embedded in such necessary conflicts may create new opportunities
and spaces for inclusive, democratizing practices in schools. This involves taking a
risk; to open the doors to the outsiders of school music lessons, the uncomfortable
tensions and disagreements of curriculum making and enacting, and to recognize a
sense of possibility and promise in the uncertainty that these entail and engender.

106
107
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot 1931, ix

108
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Appendix 1: Article 1

Drawing a line in water: Constructing the school censorship frame in

popular music education.

Alexis Anja Kallio

Abstract

The apparent ideological tensions between popular musics and formal school
contexts raise significant issues regarding teachers’ popular repertoire selection
processes. Such decision-making may be seen to take place within a school
censorship frame, through which certain musics and their accompanying values
are promoted, whilst others are suppressed. Through semi-structured interviews
with five Finnish music teachers, the narrative instrumental case study reported
in this article aims to explore secondary school music teachers’ understandings of
the school censorship frame and its influence on their popular repertoire decisions.
The findings suggest that the school censorship frame is composed of dynamic
and interrelated big stories: teachers’ cultural, religious and curricular narrative
environments; and small stories: stories of school, staff, parents, themselves as a
teacher, and stories of their students. This study illustrates the complex, situational
and multifaceted negotiations involved in including or excluding popular
repertoire from school activities, suggesting that teachers’ decisions require ethical
deliberation in aiming towards an inclusive, democratic music education.

Keywords

censorship, classroom music, narrative, popular music, repertoire selection

With one of the most established histories of popular music education, in both
school and music teacher education (Westerlund, 2006), many nations are now
looking to Finland to determine to what extent and how to introduce a popular
repertoire into school curricula (Allsup, 2011). During popular music’s 40 year
history in Finnish schools, teachers have been and are afforded considerable
freedoms in selecting popular repertoire, popular pedagogies and methods. The
Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2004) imposes few
directives, indeed the music curriculum for secondary school students is but a
single page, without prerequisite repertoire or specified content. There are also
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numerous textbooks from which teachers are able to choose from, and students
often bring their own music selections to learn in class.
This apparent liberty of choice and whole-hearted acceptance of popular
musics has thus far remained relatively unexamined, with little information
available regarding how teachers decide which popular musics to include and
which to exclude from classroom activities. This is of particular interest taking
into account arguments that ‘the very reason for the existence of “students’ own”
music is to rebel against the established conventions that school music represents’
(Väkevä, 2006, p. 128), functioning for young people in part ‘as a source of
identity and différance from the adult and school worlds’ (Regelski, 2004, p. 30;
Stålhammar, 2000). This study explores Finnish secondary school music teachers’
understandings of their popular repertoire selections, given the freedoms afforded
by the curriculum, and taking into account the apparent ideological conflicts
and tensions that exist between some popular musics and formal school music
education.

A democratic Finnish music education

Popular repertoire is often regarded as a feasible realm in which to achieve ‘real
music-making’ in the classroom in an enjoyable way, and in Finland, as in other
Nordic countries, it is largely ‘considered self-evident that music education in the
schools should build on young people’s everyday musical experiences’ (Lindgren &
Ericsson, 2010). In part, popular music has been invited into the classroom with
hopes to encourage democratic education through ‘cooperative learning, thematic
teaching, child-centered curricula’ (Allsup, 2003, p. 27). In Finland, democracy
in education refers to a ‘socially fair and inclusive education system… based on
equality of educational opportunities’ (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 45).
One way in which this has been manifested in music education has
been through the classroom garage band model (Westerlund, 2006) in which
students learn electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, drums or other percussive
instruments, and are encouraged to sing, working in small peer groups and often
rotating instruments and roles. Through this model, each student is offered the
opportunity to both participate and perform in music-making as the basis for
learning. The repertoire for many classes is in-keeping with this instrumentation
and format, with textbooks providing simplified notation for classic, or recent,
chart-toppers, many teachers sourcing music online, and students regularly
requesting songs to be played in class.
As part of the discussion surrounding the role of popular musics in
classrooms, and justifications for a pluralistic approach to repertoire, general music
teachers have been called upon not only to ‘justify the value of music education
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in general education, but also defend the specific musical repertoires that they
use’ (Väkevä & Westerlund, 2007, p. 98). If we understand all music as activity
rather than artifact (e.g. Small, 1998) and thus each and every music belonging to
someone or some group of people, this is of particular interest. While encouraging
democratic participation in music education, teachers must also justify decisions
regarding whose music is excluded.

Constructing a school censorship frame

In determining which popular musics are excluded from school practices,
Väkevä (2006) has suggested it is ‘obvious that certain explicit themes just do
not fit within school curricula’ (p. 128). The ‘explicit’ music Väkevä refers to may
be defined in a way that is ‘reflexive of the dominant group’s membership and
social reality’ (Schneider, 2011, p. 2), suggesting that pejorative constructions
of popular musics are, in part, a process of ‘other’ing, as dominant social groups
attempt to ‘control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct,
which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would
theoretically be possible’ (Berger & Luckmann, 2002, p. 42). Thus, the attention
given by the ‘majority-group’ contributes towards a dominant discourse regarding
musical meaning and affect. This, in part, may be attributed to what sociologist
Schneider (2011) terms the censorship frame, with reference to media activities,
informed by both formal and informal censorship campaigns, that ‘culturally
associate music and (collectively shared and culturally agreed-upon) perceptions
of deviance’ (p. 38). According to Schneider (2011) the media becomes a site for
the competition and negotiation of ideological structures, prioritizing certain
constructions whilst suppressing ‘particular messages and styles associated with
this music’ (p. 37).
Given the continuous ideological negotiations that occur in schools,
this situation may be less stable, less linear and altogether more complex than
mediated portrayals of popular musics simply being funneled into the classroom.
Björck (2011) has noted the linkage between popular music forms and ideologies
of freedom and autonomy in the Swedish context, with ‘popular music-
making… portrayed as a way to escape the demands of mainstream society’ (p.
19) suggesting an ideological conflict when in a formal education context, with
schools representing mainstream demands, serving ‘as vigorous mechanisms for
the reproduction of dominant… values of the dominant socio-political order’
(McLaren, 1995, p. 229). In navigating the various discourses and ideologies in
the school, teachers may be seen to work within a school censorship frame, through
which certain musics and their accompanying values are promoted, whilst others
are suppressed.
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 In exploring the construction of the school censorship frame through
which teachers may be compelled or directed to exclude popular musics, this study
addresses the two following research questions:

1. How do Finnish music teachers construct the school censorship frame?

2. How does the school censorship frame influence teachers’ decisions to
include or exclude popular musics?

These questions were not intended to procure definitive answers, as prescriptions

for future practice, nor to ‘seek certainty about correct perspectives on educational
phenomena but to raise significant questions about prevailing policy and practice
that enrich an ongoing conversation’ (Barone, 2007, p. 466), or at least aid in the
beginnings of one.

Beginning conversations

Participating in this instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) was a purposive sample
(Creswell, 2009) of five lower-secondary school music teachers (involved with
students at grades 7–91, between the ages of 13 to 16) from different regions of
Finland. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with each teacher
over a period of seven months between 2011 and 2012, following a similar
three-interview format as suggested by Seidman (1991). The teachers invited
to participate in this study lived and worked in medium to large sized cities or
towns (capital region, Eastern Finland, central Finland, Lapland and Northern
Lapland), resting on the assumption that teachers working in such environments
were more likely to be employed full time, and have some proficiency in the
English language. As I am an immigrant to Finland, and not yet fluent in neither
Finnish nor Swedish2, interviews were conducted mostly in English with some
communication taking place in teachers’ native languages when participants found
it necessary for clarification. Given the teachers’ facility with the English language,
clarification that was achieved in teachers’ native languages, ensuing discussion,
and understanding that all narratives are translations and interpretations in kind,
the researcher and participants speaking different native languages was not seen as
a major impediment to the study. Teachers worked at a variety of comprehensive
schools, including Swedish speaking, music specialized and local secondary
schools, and had between six and 17 years of teaching experience.
The first two interviews, each approximately two hours long, sought to gain
a broad understanding of the individual teacher’s experiences of teaching, their
personal musical and educational histories, their understandings of the dominant
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ideologies of their school, curriculum and music programme, and sought stories to
illustrate their understandings or opinions on their processes of popular repertoire
inclusion/exclusion. Interpretative analysis followed Kelchtermans’ (1994)
narrative-biographical approach, thematically analyzing the data in two stages:
a vertical analysis, and a cross-case analysis. This analysis identified two types of
stories: big stories and small stories (Chase, 2011). Big stories were reflections
on broader cultural issues, the teachers’ communities and their understandings of
Finnish music education in general: in other words, their narrative environments.
Conversely, small stories were teachers’ recollections of specific daily events, talk
about practices and classroom activities. In this sense, the interviews revealed a
‘reflexive interplay between narrative environments and narrative practices’ (Chase,
2011, p. 425): an ongoing dialogue between big and small stories. st suppressing
‘particular messages and styles associated with this music’ (p. 37).
Resting on a belief that the retelling of stories ‘can lead to seeing
experience from different perspectives and can lead to a new spiral of retellings’
(Olson, 2000, p. 350), analysis of these first two interviews was used to produce
four factional stories3. These were based on themes that emerged from the
cross-case analysis: a reconstructed, (re)storied ‘fiction[al] form… laid over a
‘fact-oriented’ research process’ (Agar, 1990, p. 74) and were shared with teachers
two weeks before the third interview, as ‘a tool for reflection, until the teller
and listener, writer and reader, delve beneath the surface of the anecdote to
examine motives, implications, and connections’ ( Jalongo & Isenberg, 1995, p. 9).
Factions4 addressed the big stories of religious influences and cultural traditions
on repertoire selection, and small stories of teacher-student relationships in music
classes, the unique attributes of music as a subject, school as a formal education
institution, and the emotionality of music. These factions provided the bases, but
not boundaries, for discussion, serving ‘a heuristic purpose… to evoke… a vicarious
experience that reduces certainty about the matters in which the dimensions of
the “outside” world are regarded’ (Barone, 2001, p. 738). Interestingly, perhaps
having afforded some distance between the self and the topics of discussion,
these interviews were significantly longer, lasting between two and five hours. The
inquiry shifted from recollections of past events, the ‘told stories of participants’
(Clandinin et. al., 2006) to an ‘invitation to problem finding’ (Bruner, 2002, p. 20),
a collaborative inquiry between teachers and the researcher. Together with earlier
data, transcriptions of the third interviews were approached through the process of
‘analysis of narratives’ (Polkinghorne, 1995) to identify emergent themes.

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Veteen piirretty viiva: A line drawn in water
It is important to emphasize that the analysis found that the school censorship
frame cannot be defined by clearly demarcated boundaries of propriety, but rather
was constructed by teachers as a ‘big grey area’ within which various ideologies and
values are contested and negotiated. Repertoire decisions were seen as situational,
and fluid, described by almost all of the teachers as veteen piirretty viiva: a line
drawn in water. Rather than a stable, solid frame, the school censorship frame
may be seen as this watery metaphor, with different actors, issues and concerns
like bubbles, rising to the surface at different times, though never inseparable
from others. The line may be seen as the decisions teachers make in including or
excluding popular repertoire – firm decisions that almost immediately dissolve and
disappear, requiring teachers to ‘begin again’ (Greene, 1995) with each situation.
Big and small stories are always lived, present and if not equal, interrelated, and
in ‘reflexive interplay’ (Chase, 2011, p. 422), as illustrated in Figure 1. This makes
theoretical and practical knowledge and understandings difficult, if relevant, to
distinguish, suggesting that stories of repertoire selection are multifaceted and
complex, as one teacher, Julia noted, ‘we are swimming in deep waters’.5
Stories extended beyond specific recollections of repertoire decisions, to
considerations of broader issues that teachers felt influenced popular repertoire
inclusion or exclusion. The big stories described by teachers during interviews
addressed: cultural stories, religious stories and curricular stories. Teachers told five
kinds of small stories: stories of the school community, including the overarching
values and ideologies of the school, stories of school staff, parents, themselves as a
teacher, and stories of their students. Each of these is discussed in turn below.

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Figure 1. Big and small stories of the school censorship frame as identified by
teachers. 6

Big stories

Cultural stories
Educating students within broad cultural narratives, and processes of
enculturation, were seen as priorities for many teachers, particularly in schools
catering for those who identified as outside the majority culture of Finland. For
example, the teacher working in a Swedish speaking school articulated,

[I would like my students to] know a few songs that I think is a part of
being upplyst [enlightened]… that they may be allmänbildad [broadly
culturally educated] (Maria)

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This focus on the reinforcement and/or cultivation of cultural identity may be
a result of minority cultures’ marginalization in broader schooling (Georgii-
Hemming & Westvall, 2010). An example of this may be seen as a number
of teachers expressed that musics ‘belonging’ to immigrant students was seen
as complementary, but not necessarily essential repertoire. While teachers
acknowledged the importance of teaching musics of different cultures, these were
often distant ‘world musics’, found in textbooks, rather than among their diverse
student populations. Bresler (1998) has suggested that such approaches to diversity
in music education reflect those of the wider society, ‘often a superficial rather than
interpretive or experiential exposure to musics of other cultures…. [which] reflects
a dutiful “lip service” stance, rather than a curious attitude recognizing complexity
and drawing on students’ personal experiences’ (pp. 32−33). Similar observations
have been made regarding recent Finnish cultural policy and multiculturalist
projects where ‘cultures were represented through exotic artifacts without creating
enduring social bonds between individuals and groups’ (Saukkonen & Pyykkönen,
2008, p. 15) and the cultivation of immigrant cultural practices and identities
are not intrinsically valued, but ‘rather as an instrument for achieving/facilitating
societal integration’ (p. 19).
These tensions surrounding multicultural musics, which were often
popular musics ‘belonging’ to different cultures, were also clear when the teacher
themselves identified as ‘other’. Iida was a teacher to many Sámi students (the
indigenous population of Northern Finland), and felt it inappropriate to teach
‘their’ music, given that she was not from that cultural background herself,
explaining,

the Sámi people don’t want somebody foreign coming to teach them how to
practice their own culture… I understood from the beginning that I cannot
be teaching Sámi music.

The curriculum states that ‘the school must provide [Sámi] pupils with
conditions… to preserve a Sámi identity without being absorbed into the main
population’ (p. 32), suggesting that cultural identity and belonging is regarded
as an ‘either/or’ option, perhaps heightening teachers’ awareness of difference.
As the curriculum intends to communicate to students that music ‘is different
at different times, and in different cultures and societies, and has a different sort
of meaning for different people’ (Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p.
230), in practice, it may emphasize these differences, drawing clearly demarcated
boundaries between ‘Finnish’ culture and others. Indeed, as sociologist Bauman
(1999) has noted that if ‘cultural plurality is theorized as plurality of cultures,
133
students of culture cannot but see cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural
comparison as one of their central problems’ (p. xlv, italics in original). However,
teachers also recognized that a simplified notion of ‘majority Finnish culture’ was
increasingly problematic. As Julia noted, increasing diversity has brought with
it additional challenges for teachers wanting to select repertoire in a culturally
sensitive way,

…as schools have become more and more multicultural, where lie these
boundaries of sensitive traditions and topics? It comes even more difficult
all the time for us teachers to even recognize what topics are sensitive.

It is interesting to consider whether sensitive traditions and topics are culturally

defined, or defined by power relations (Hydén, 2008, p. 125−127) – or
perhaps both. Defined culturally, these findings express a tension between the
communication of normative ‘ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions’
(Dewey, 1916, p. 2) and the implementation of national curriculum directives for
‘acceptance and appreciation of a diversity of cultures and skills’ (Finnish National
Board of Education 2004, p. 230) – embracing a plurality of cultural narratives.
Julia continued,

[It is difficult to determine where boundaries of sensitive traditions and

topics are] even within our own teacher group, who usually are originally
from our own culture and are in a certain way representing the same
cultural backgrounds as we ourselves do!

Her choice of words and surprise suggest that while Finnish classrooms may be
increasingly diverse, and thus repertoire decisions increasingly complex, notions of
our culture, and a common cultural background clearly exist. However, if we are to
understand this sensitivity as defined by power relations, it suggests that cultural
hierarchies between ‘high’ and ‘low’ have not at all dissolved (Georgii-Hemming &
Westvall, 2010) but have been relocated from the discussion of Western art music
vs popular or multicultural discussions, to within the popular realm. Relocating the
dichotomy arguably runs as many risks of ‘othering’ and exoticism as other cultural
valuations.
Religious stories
Assumptions of a shared culture extended also to discussions of religion. While
not as explicitly prohibited as in other educational curricula (Bresler, 1998, p. 27),
school instruction in Finland is ‘nondenominational’ (Finnish National Board of

134
Education 2004, p. 12), ‘school is school. Church is church’ (Outi). However, with
a majority7 of Finnish society formally belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran
Church, and societal attitudes towards Christian religious practices being generally
positive (Taira, 2012, p. 23), the church is seen as not only one of the primary
institutions to uphold Finnish traditions (p. 24), but a Finnish tradition itself.
This view is reflected in school repertoires, particularly for festive occasions, which
often feature popular musics that refer to religious events or popular adaptations
of hymns, etc. A number of teachers recalled instances when certain students were
excluded from ‘traditional’ events or celebrations, as Risto explained,

you have to maybe think more often nowadays about selecting repertoire
that won’t offend people – those who are religious people, but also the
people who are not so religious. It’s a balance. Sometimes there is the
situation when a Muslim student doesn’t come to school celebrations
because there are some religious elements.

However, teachers noted that there has been an increase of alternative

programming and events for non-Lutheran/Christian students, with alternative
music repertoires – that are distinctly areligious – or the exclusion of all music
altogether. Teachers noted that despite this alternative programming for students,
staff were often, if not always, expected to attend Christian school services and
events regardless of their individual convictions, again perhaps fostering a focus on
difference and ideas of the traditional ‘us’ and ‘other’.
In adhering to perceptions of shared traditions, teachers felt obliged
to include religious repertoire in a small number of festive occasions such as
Christmas events. All teachers performed religious repertoire in the ‘traditional’
way. This was seen as the case even if the repertoire for most classes was
predominantly popular, although Outi and her students had once tried to unite
the musics her students enjoyed with the expectations that accompanied a festive
occasion, as they updated a familiar school performance,

We had one project for the Christmas celebrations where we modernized

the nativity story, it wasn’t good! We didn’t touch the story, but adapted it
for modern times – with the music too, there was some pop and metal and
all kinds of things. Some teachers were very unhappy, so maybe we went a
little bit too far. I learnt that we should never touch that kind of tradition, I
think it is too sensitive!

Outi continued to reflect on the public nature of music as a subject, noting that
135
there may be more restrictions and considerations for whole-school performances
that might make a traditional approach more ‘appropriate’. In addition to being
aware of the sensitivity of public audiences, teachers were also wary of including
religious repertoire, or allowing students to bring religious music to normal classes,
which they saw as being related to the increasing polarization between religious
and atheist discourses in Finland (Taira, 2012). One teacher noted that while
expressions of atheism were increasingly visible and accommodated, she felt that
her own expressions of faith were suppressed,

I cannot be openly Christian. One has to be very alert… some parents are
very, very strict that they don’t want to have anything to do with religion in
the classroom. (Maria)

Even with alternative programming, and with school and church separate in
policy, questions may be raised regarding the potential for religious repertoire to
ever be inclusive and democratic in a school context. This is particularly relevant as
an ‘easy’ answer to the increasing diversity of school populations appears to be the
increasing exclusion of religious repertoire altogether.
Curricular stories
Interestingly, despite its breadth and brevity (the music curriculum for secondary
students is but a page long), teachers all identified the national curriculum as the
most important resource when selecting repertoire,

The starting point is in a certain way the curriculum, and it has the power
on me. I have to follow. I would not be professional, I would not do my duty
if I didn’t follow the curriculum ( Julia)

However, while acknowledged as the ‘starting point’, it may be seen that Finnish
teachers challenge the ‘conduit’ understanding of the curriculum as described
by Clandinin and Connelly (1995) where external ‘others’ provide information
to teachers and their classrooms. Teachers acknowledged the variety of personal
and situational interpretations afforded by the curriculum, allowing for ‘so many
roads to Rome’ ( Julia) and that ‘nobody follows it like the bible’ ( Julia). Initially,
this gives an impression of almost total freedom in repertoire selection. Bresler
(1998) has suggested that ‘autonomy means that teachers are not required to push
themselves beyond their “comfort zone”’ (p. 33). Indeed one teacher noted the lack
of career steps in teaching (unless you want to be a principal), explaining that there
are not many external challenges to extend oneself.

136
 Many teachers also mentioned preferring to teach music that they felt
comfortable with, or enjoyed, rather than contemporary popular musics. Just as
an exclusive focus on any or anyone’s music, remaining within teachers’ comfort
zones may have the ‘unintended consequence of narrowing of musical possibilities
rather than expanding them’ (Allsup, 2008, p. 3), with school repertoires composed
of white, predominantly male, Finnish or Anglo-American, guitar-based rock
circa 19-the teacher’s hey-day. This is in-keeping with research conducted in
Sweden that found that popular repertoires in schools are not ‘truly representative
of pupils’ everyday culture. It might more accurately be characterized as teachers’
everyday culture’ (Lindgren & Ericsson, 2010), though further problematized
by considering other influences of the school censorship frame as well. In this
sense, these comfort zones may not only be musical, but sociological and ethical,
maintaining and strengthening dominant sociopolitical values, whilst suppressing
voices and stories that challenge or contrast.
All five teachers emphasized that they appreciated the freedoms afforded
by the national curriculum, and indeed found it difficult to openly critique. This
may be seen as a cover story, canonical stories ‘that teachers publically claim to
know (or show)’ (Olson & Craig, 2005, p. 161).Teachers often compared the
open and permissive national curriculum to others that they viewed as overly
restrictive and directive, suggesting that these two extremes may be viewed as
the only alternatives, compelling teachers to publicly defend the curriculum they
have, lest it be replaced with another. Difficulties in publicly and openly critiquing
the curriculum may silence moral and ethical issues through taking on ‘externally
prescribed roles and responsibilities, predetermined scripts set within a seemingly
necessary hierarchical order, with some members of the community holding power
over others’ (Huber & Keats Whelan, 2001, pp. 221−222). The imperative to
accept and appreciate such freedoms may make it difficult for teachers to identify
the foundational values that are intended to inform their teaching, thus making
it difficult to determine whose values should guide repertoire inclusion and
exclusion.

Small stories
Despite many teachers noting the solitary nature of music teaching, usually being
the only music specialist in the school with few other staff members to turn to for
advice, ‘I didn’t have anyone to talk to’ (Risto), they recognized that others in the
school community influenced their repertoire decisions. Different actors in the
school community were seen to be,

137
 not equal, but like puzzle pieces. To get to the whole picture you need all
of the pieces. Some of them are bigger, and some are more meaningful. For
instance one piece might be the head of a character whilst another might
just be a green area, but all of them are needed. ( Julia)

Teachers’ understandings of these different actors were described and reflected

upon in five small stories told by teachers: the school as an institution, school
staff, parents, themselves as a teacher and their students, and described a process
of constant negotiation regarding the values and ideologies of their teaching, and
repertoire selections. Each of these small stories is discussed in turn below.
School stories
Understandings of the school as a historical institution were seen to greatly affect
what repertoire can, and cannot be taught. Indeed ‘one can never escape the fact
that a school is an institution with some, more or less, defined frameworks and
conditions’ (Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010), as Iida explained,

I select repertoire partly based on ideas of what students are supposed to do

in school, what people are expecting and why.

While frameworks are perhaps less defined in Finland than in other national
education systems, ‘there are no school rules… they are trusting that I can do the
job, and that’s the important thing’ (Risto), expectations and aims associated with
school were often seen as incongruent with experiences and understandings of
popular musics. Teachers explained that,

even if the students listen to the music at home, it’s different when it’s in
the classroom (Risto)

This often resulted in the exclusion of particular popular musics. Many researchers
have suggested that ‘school music is likely to be associated to some degree at least
with Western classical music, and associated with parents and teachers, whereas
pop music is associated with out-of-school activities, peer activities and the media’
(Boal-Palheiros & Hargreaves 2001, p. 105; also see Green, 2006). Whilst these
discussions have focused on the broader Western classical music/popular music
dichotomy, Risto’s comment that music’s meaning and purpose are re-appropriated
when in the classroom suggests that even when popular repertoire is the focus of
school music, there is a persistent understanding that school music is not, or is
no longer, students’ music, but belongs to an older, more conservative authority.

138
This appears to maintain the ‘cultural dissonance’ previously established between
Western and Classical, now visible between popular musics in school, and popular
musics outside of school.
Staff stories
Within the framework of ‘school music’, teachers considered the values or
expectations of school principals and other teachers when selecting popular
repertoire, despite many teachers initially claiming considerable freedoms and
autonomy. This autonomy was often seen as a result of professionalism and trust,
as Maria proudly stated,

When I started here the principal said to me, ‘you are now the music
teacher of the house, and you will do as you please’.

However, teachers were not simply left in isolation, nor were expectations simply
set and fulfilled. Defining their roles as teachers in relation to those of the
principal was seen as an ongoing negotiation, a dialogue necessary for ethical
reflection (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012). These negotiations were, however,
not necessarily on equal ground. Principals were often seen to align more with
traditional notions of schooling and what should be included as part of it, which
was seen as difficult and slow to change, particularly in relation to popular
pedagogies and ‘what sounds normally come out of a music classroom’ (Iida). As
Iida articulated,

Sometimes headmasters want school events and classes to go the same way
as they always have, because it’s the known way, the easiest way, we know
this is working, it’s safe.

This raises questions whether these negotiations are processes of inquiry, or

whether they are confined by predetermined ends, each of which has very different
ethical implications. As Allsup and Westerlund (2012) have noted, ‘if dialogue is
taken to mean compromise across the particularities of difference and perception,
this… may inadvertently inhibit growth. If dialogue affirms or intends to affirm
the preexisting values that a community holds dear, dialectics as a teaching stance
hold no guarantee for ethical reconstruction on the one hand, or re-imaginative
practice on the other’ (p. 141).

139
Parent stories
Unlike relationships with school staff, ‘[parents were seen as] outside. They are
not so close’ (Maria). On the periphery of school life, the influence parents had
on teachers’ views and practices varied from very little, to being ‘quite demanding’
(Outi). Professional interactions with parents were, for all teachers, primarily done
through online school-home communication systems, and for most teachers were
infrequent and primarily related to assessment. While teachers noted that parents
had never contacted them regarding their selection of repertoire, they were acutely
aware of being contacted, should an ‘inappropriate’ decision be made,

I don’t want to play in the classroom (sings): ‘lick it up, lick it up, woah,
it’s only right now’ (laughs). Yes, it’s a very good guitar riff and that could
be very nice to play with these kids, but I would not choose that song. If
I choose that song, maybe I will get some phone calls from their parents.
(Risto)

The imagined values of parents were in the minds of many teachers, perhaps
not so much as processes of reflection (Dewey, 1933) but rationalization
(Loughran, 2002) that reinforce and rationalize preconceived ideas. With
limited communication between parents and teachers, there appears to be very
little information on parents’ values to reflect upon. Thus, reflection becomes
something of a hall of mirrors, where ‘reflexive discourse runs the risk of leading
the experience of the outside back to the dimension of interiority; reflection
tends irresistibly to repatriate it to the side of consciousness and to develop it into
a description of living that depicts the “outside” as the experience of the body,
space, the limits of the will, and the ineffaceable presence of the other’ (Foucault,
1966/1998, pp. 151−152).
Teacher stories
The teachers’ own values and how they envisioned their role in the school and
classroom was also seen to influence their popular repertoire decisions. This was
seen as primarily related to professionalism, as Julia explained,

I may be a sadomasochist at home, but at work I am not. I represent the

official teacher profession. I represent my profession here and not my
person.

Ideas of teacher professionalism have been seen as inseparable from the ‘moral
demands of education’ (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 125). The moral imperatives
140
for teachers to teach ‘authentically’ (e.g. Elliott, 1995) may be problematic with
particular popular musics that are seen to epitomize anti-authoritarian rebellion.
Teacher professionalism may thus be drawn into question when conflicts arise
between mainstream values or expectations regarding what the teacher should teach
and how, and broader social constructions (particularly pejorative constructions) of
popular musics.
Related to understandings of professionalism, how teachers perceived
their role in relation to their students was also seen to influence the repertoire they
chose for them. Teaching students between 12 and 15 years of age, teaching music
and teaching the ‘whole’ student was seen as inseparable, which was often seen
as a justification for excluding particular popular musics. Maria noted this was
particularly relevant for teenage students,

I’m responsible for everything else as well as students’ musical development.

I must look out for their well-being. I am responsible for my group, but
maybe I try to teach values a bit more to the secondary school students
[than younger or older students]. One tries to teach every little thing you
can, squeeze in values, democracy and all the good things in life.
Student stories
Working with this particular age group, teachers saw students very differently:
‘as a child. Absolutely. Until they are 18’ (Maria); ‘they are not children. They are
young people’ (Outi); and ‘it’s not about the age, but their individual maturity
levels’ (Risto). Lower secondary school was seen as a transitory period between
childhood and high school, when students ‘are still learning how to be, and how
to be themselves’ (Iida), and it was generally accepted that students would test
boundaries during this period. In this sense, it may be seen that ‘discipline and
classroom management, central to the school context, shape all music instruction’
(Bresler, 1998, p. 26), including repertoire selection. Some teachers saw the need
to protect students, seen as naïve or innocent, whereas others recognized that
students were often more ‘worldly’ than themselves. Many teachers were mindful
of the diverse backgrounds their students came from, as Outi pointed out,

there are pupils who are so motivated and behave exactly as you would like
them to, and then there are pupils who are thinking only what to drink,
when to drink and when to have sex with somebody – with anybody! We
have to handle all of these young people.

Consequently, when teachers had students that exhibited behaviors they found

141
challenging to deal with, or were particularly energetic, certain musics may be
excluded from their classes, for fear of ‘losing control’. In response to asking why
she chose not to include particular genres of heavy metal, Maria answered,

I have just visualized how one of my pupils would react if I played really
heavy metal, he would start banging his head up and down with his hair
flowing and jumping and really start moving around with the music.

In other circumstances, ‘calming’ music was intentionally selected to fulfil a

prescriptive function to ‘soothe the beast in the child’ (Bresler, 1998, p. 9). Both
views appear to rely on normative understandings of how teachers and school
students should behave and how they should relate to music in school settings.

The school censorship frame: An invitation

Whilst on face value Finnish teachers may be seen to have almost complete
freedom in repertoire selection, this study illustrates the complex, situational and
multifaceted negotiations involved in deciding whether to include or exclude
popular repertoire. These negotiations may be seen to take place through a school
censorship frame, composed of intertwined big and small stories, with different
situations raising different concerns and considerations.
Thus far, the censorship frame has been understood as constructed
and perpetuated by the mass media. Indeed the ‘censorship frame’ as coined
by Schneider (2011) refers to mass media reports that collectively construct
particular popular musics as a social problem. However, in understanding
negative constructions of popular musics, and by implication those who identify
with them, surely it is not only relevant, but imperative to also look to their
role in mass education. As this study suggests, the situation appears altogether
more complicated than pointing the finger at the ‘big bad media’, at least in the
school context. Rather, a variety of narrators, from broad cultural traditions to
individual students, construct particular popular musics as educationally, and
thus, ethically problematic. This may result in their exclusion from or at very least,
marginalization in formal music education. As a process, this censorship frame
in the school context is not one that is developed and maintained over prolonged
periods of time as is the case with media activities, but may be seen to change
more rapidly, with the rules changing with the next song, the next lesson and the
next student. This suggests that the school censorship frame presents teachers with
greater pedagogical and ethical challenges than critical media skills or the simple
exclusion of inappropriate musical material.
Decisions by teachers on repertoire inclusion or exclusion are distinctly
142
ethical in nature, with ethical implications. As school music is intended to reflect
the musical world outside classroom walls, there are significant ethical questions
regarding the exclusion of popular musics from educational activities. Has
introducing popular repertoire to the classroom achieved the intended goals of
democratic music education? Or has it in fact reverted to a peculiar form of school
music (Regelski, 2006, p. 11), which does not reflect the musical world outside
classrooms, where a large portion of repertoire is disregarded as inappropriate for
young students? In excluding, or marginalizing particular popular musics, in turn,
so are those young people who enjoy and identify with such musics excluded from
and marginalized in school music education.
As other nations look to Finland as exemplar, with its permissive
and open national curriculum and welcoming of popular musics to the school
classroom, it is worth noting that such a music education system does not
necessarily present the teacher with an easier path, indeed it may be more
challenging. As Woodford (2005) has argued, the ‘avoidance of politics in
education serves no one well, except perhaps those who would dominate and
control’ (p. xii), thus in recognizing music as process and belonging to people,
discussions of democracy regarding equal access and participation of students,
should extend too to repertoire decisions. Such decisions are distinctly ethical in
nature, as ‘a pedagogical practice [the teacher] contends is undemocratic – is one
she considers unethical’ (Allsup, 2003, p. 28). If teachers are not encouraged to
engage with complex issues presented by the school censorship frame, and to solve
the ‘problem’ of popular music education by excluding musics that ideologically
conflict with the perceived values of the school, the curriculum or the community,
significant questions are raised regarding the ethical implications of a pasteurized
popular music education. However, if we see decisions regarding the inclusion or
exclusion of popular repertoire as drawing a line in water, the school censorship
frame may be seen not as a solution, boundary, solid framework or limitation, but
as an invitation. In identifying the components of the watery school censorship
frame, and examining their influence on ‘lines drawn’ as decisions are made, there
is an invitation to reflection, to ideological mediation, to questioning, raising and
exploring new problems.

Notes
1. Music classes are compulsory in Grade 7, and are offered as an optional
elective for students in Grades 8 and 9.
2. Finnish and Swedish are the two official languages of Finland.
3. Also referred to as semi-fictional narrative or creative non-fiction
(Whiteman & Phillips, 2008) or representative constructions (Bold, 2012).
143
 4. Factions were titled (I) Trust; (II) Real Rap?; (III) Music Speaks What
Words Cannot; and (IV) We Wish You A Rockin’ Christmas.
5. All participating teachers are referred to by pseudonyms.
6. It should be noted that these particular stories are not necessarily the only
components of the school censorship frame, but were expressed during the
interviews as the most significant for these particular teachers, working in
their specific contexts.
7. Of the Finnish population 77.2% formally belonged to the Evangeli-
cal Lutheran Church at the end of 2011. http://evl.fi/EVLUutiset.nsf/
Documents/F9015267D433F41EC225799500443630?OpenDocu-
ment&lang=FI (Accessed 17 August 2012).

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Appendix 2: Article II

Popular ‘problems’: Deviantisation and teachers’ curation of popular music.

Alexis Anja Kallio

Abstract

Despite many music classrooms welcoming popular musics in striving towards a

inclusive and democratic education, there has been relatively little research into
teachers’ decisions regarding which popular musics are included, and which are
excluded from classroom activities. This is of particular interest taking into account
arguments that the norms and values associated with some popular musics or
songs exist in conflict with the ideals and ideologies of formal schooling. Through
interviews with five Finnish music teachers, this article explores the identification,
and navigation of ‘problematic’ popular musics in school contexts. Teachers noted
that four musical features: lyrics, imagery, musical mood and emotional affect,
influenced their constructions of popular musics and their repertoire selections
for students. This study suggests that popular repertoire decisions are ethically,
ideologically and politically loaded, and that welcoming students’ own musics does
not necessarily result in a more inclusive, democratic classroom culture.

Keywords
classroom music, deviance, labeling theory, popular music, repertoire selection

With schools increasingly aiming towards democratic and inclusive practices and
policies, the music teacher is no longer restricted to teaching a narrow selection of
repertoire. Many music classrooms are seen as meeting places for musics of varying
origins, practitioners, styles and purposes, and students may also be encouraged
to draw upon their own musical worlds and experiences as a source of knowledge
construction (Bowman, 2007; Elliott, 1995; Green, 2006, 2008). With broad
curricula, strong emphases on students’ own musical backgrounds, experiential,
practical approaches to popular music and established histories of popular music
education (Lindgren & Erikson, 2010), the Nordic countries are now seen as

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exemplars for many nations looking to promote democratic and inclusive practices
in music education (Allsup, 2011; Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010; Väkevä
& Westerlund, 2007). This embracing of pluralism and welcoming of students’
own musical experiences and preferences, means that an increasing variety and
quantity of popular musics are considered to be of educational value. However,
if we understand the meanings ascribed to different musics as determined by
their use (Regelski, 2004), and that young people often use popular musics as a
means of differentiating themselves from adults and school life (Ståhlhammar,
2000), it is perhaps unsurprising that certain popular musics may be problematic
for classroom use, existing at odds with the norms and values relating to formal
schooling (Väkevä, 2006). Indeed, it has been argued that ‘sex, drugs, and rock
and roll’ simply do not belong in formal education institutions designed not only
to further the knowledge and skills of young people, but to also guide their social,
emotional, and moral development (see for example, Bloom, 1987; Hirsch Jr.,
1988; Scruton, 2007). Attending to teachers’ repertoire decision-making beyond
the familiar issues of time management, resources, skill acquisition or technical
difficulty, this article aims to better understand Finnish teachers’ understandings of
the musical features of popular repertoire that contribute towards the perception
that certain popular musics or songs are inappropriate for school use, and how
such musics are navigated in the democratic, inclusive music classroom.

Context: The teacher as curator

With one of the most established histories of teaching popular musics in schools,
the typical Finnish secondary school music classroom is equipped with guitars,
keyboards, drum kits and microphones, school text books contain both ‘classic’
and recent popular music hits, and many lessons resemble garageband rehearsals
(Westerlund, 2006). Individuals are accepted into music education degrees at one
of the three universities that offer music teacher training (the Sibelius Academy
of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Oulu University and the University
of Jyväskylä) on the basis of their versatility as musicians, requiring them to
demonstrate practical music skills in more than one genre. This means that
although some applicants are classically trained, they are also well versed in folk,
jazz, popular or world musics. Music teacher training requires five and a half years
of study at university, including a masters degree, and popular music features as a
key component of these studies (Väkevä, 2006). Consequently, music education
graduates enter the teaching profession competent ‘in the use of the instruments
commonly associated with rock bands, as well as knowledge of studio techniques,
making arrangements in different popular music styles, and on-stage performance’
(Westerlund, 2006, p. 119). These highly qualified, versatile, and popular-music-
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savvy music teachers are afforded considerable freedoms, by and large working
independently, without supervision or inspection by governing authorities or
school officials. In addition, there are few curricular directives, with the page-long
National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2004) predicated on valuing
pluralism, with a focus on student-centered, constructivist learning and music-
making, embracing difference and diversity as the ideal, rather than outlining
particular musical content for classroom teaching and learning.
With students bringing their own musics to schools, and the abundance
of textbooks, online platforms and other popular repertoire resources available, it
may seem as though any or all music could, and indeed should, be welcomed to
the classroom. The Finnish teacher’s role with regards to repertoire may thus be
seen as that of curator. This is not the curator solely concerned with preservation,
found alone in dusty museum archives. Rather, the curatorial teacher is flexible
in their adoption of pedagogical methods (Kocaturk et al., 2012) and creates a
learning environment in which students are able to generate, explore and process
knowledge. An expert in the subject being explored, the curatorial teacher is also
an ‘expert learner’ (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009, p. 31) working in collaboration
with students. Thus, instead of explicitly outlining content that students must
learn, the curatorial teacher provides the map to extend students’ own, outside-
school musical knowledge. Although students may make suggestions, it is
ultimately the teacher who decides which popular musics or songs will feature in
school lessons or activities, and he/she explains and contextualizes it for students,
‘helping them to see it in ways they may not have discovered if left on their
own’ (Eeds & Peterson, 1991, p. 118). This aligns with Green’s (2008) student-
centered approach to incorporating popular musics in school lessons or activities,
‘metaphorically taking the learner by the hand, getting inside their head and
asking ‘What do they want to achieve now, this minute, and what is the main
thing they need to achieve it?’’ (p. 34).
While popular musics are not solely the domain of teenagers, they have
been understood to play an important role in the identity construction and cultural
affiliations of young people (Hargreaves & North, 1997; McPherson, Davidson
& Faulkner, 2012), making them of particular interest when envisioning music
education as a ‘social force and a constituting element of community’ (Allsup,
Westerlund & Sheih, 2012, p. 462). With students’ welfare and positive overall
growth being one of the primary mandates of Finnish schooling, the influence
of certain popular musics (positive or negative) upon the malleable identities of
growing adolescents, is an important consideration for the curatorial teacher when
selecting music for school use.

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What’s the problem?
Ascribing music with the tendency or potential to influence the character of the
listener or performer is nothing new, and research in recent decades illustrates
a wariness of particular popular musics and their influence on young listeners
(Christenson & Roberts, 1998; Johnson & Cloonan, 2009; Lacourse et al., 2001;
Miranda & Claes, 2004; ter Bogt et al., 2012). North and Hargreaves (2008) have
referred to the popular musics at the receiving end of such criticisms as ‘problem
music’. This suggests that certain musics are potentially detrimental for teenagers,
making them particularly inappropriate for school use, as contexts that aim to
nurture and educate young people both academically and socially. However, it
may be seen as impossible for the teacher to simply exclude this category of music
altogether, as which musics are considered problematic ostensibly varies according
to context and situation. Rather, it may be more fruitful to attend to the processes
by which certain musics or songs come to be seen as problematic: processes of
deviantisation.
For the purposes of this article, deviance is defined as non-conformity ‘to
the norms or values held by most of the members of a group or society’ (Giddens,
2006, p.1013) and ‘behaviour which somehow departs from what a group expects
to be done or what it considers the desirable way of doing things’ (Cohen, 2009,
p. 35). In his groundbreaking book, Outsiders (1963), Becker stated that ‘social
groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance,
and by applying those rules to particular people and labelling them as outsiders’ (p.
9). It may thus be seen that musics or songs are not intrinsically deviant, but are
rather understood as such as a result of the interaction between the music itself,
and those with the power to label music as problematic. Hargreaves, Hester and
Mellor (2012) built upon these interactionist theories through the introduction of
the term routine deviance, referring to minor instances of deviance by students that
the teacher is required to rapidly identify, process, and react to, as part of his/her
everyday class teaching (p. 23). In extending this even further it may be seen that
ideas of routine deviance apply not only to students and disruptive behaviours,
but also to the ‘labelling of those people, events, or objects that stand contrarily’
(Kotarba, Merrill, Williams & Vannini, 2013, p. 84), such as some popular musics
in formal education contexts.
Understanding music as a ‘social, political, religious, economic, and
psychological force’ ( Jorgensen, 2003, p.90), the labels we apply to particular
musics both reflect and influence our labelling of the individuals associated with
them. As Elliott (1989) has written, ‘because music is something that people
make or do, a people’s music is something that they are, both during and after the

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making of music and the experiencing of music’ (p. 12). Thus, the deviantisation
of certain musics or songs in the classroom also makes outsiders of the individuals
who identify with, or enjoy those musics. Indeed, Mantie and Tucker (2012)
suggested that students may be ‘punished (through grades or exclusion) or simply
cast as deficient in some way; they are said to have not yet developed proper
musical appreciation or taste’ (p. 267). This raises significant challenges for the
music teacher to navigate deviantised musics in a way that does not exclude
students, but upholds the educational values determined by Finnish policy makers,
including political neutrality, diversity and equal opportunities for participation
(Finnish National Board of Education, 2004, p. 12).
Earlier research (see Kallio, 2015a) found that Finnish music teachers
mediate between both broad and specific social narratives of popular music, each
with different norms and constructions of deviance, influencing what repertoire is
considered (in)appropriate for classroom use. The broad narratives were identified
as cultural, religious and curricular, addressing issues of enculturation, cultural
diversity, the role of religious repertoire in secular schooling, tradition versus
transformation, teacher autonomy and confidence, and curricular critique. The
specific narratives included those of the school as institution, school staff, parents,
personal narratives of the self as teacher, and narratives of students. Contextualised
within these social narratives that label particular popular musics as problematic,
this article focuses upon teachers’ understandings of the music itself, the labelled,
through addressing the following research questions:

1. Which features of music do Finnish secondary school music teachers

identify as contributing towards the deviantisation of popular musics or
songs?
2. What are the implications of this for teachers’ popular repertoire
decisions?

Research design and methods

This research was designed as a multiple case study with an instrumental interest,
where a particular case offers insight into an issue or aids in refining theory
(Stake, 1995, p. 237), in this study, aiming to gain insight into the musical features
influencing teachers’ popular repertoire decision-making. Without a national
database of music teachers working in Finland from which to randomly select
teachers, the selection of research participants was based on a purposive sample
(Creswell, 2009) of five lower-secondary school music teachers (teaching students
between the ages of 13 to 15 years old in compulsory grade 7 and 8 music classes
and elective classes in grade 9). These teachers were selected according to criteria
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based on typologies of geographical region, type of school, and years of teaching
experience. This was not in order to maximize the generalizability of findings
through the “sampling of attributes”, but to maximize “opportunities to learn”
(Stake, 1995, p. 6) from teachers in different contexts and career stages.
Initially, the contact details of approximately ten schools were compiled
from different regions of Finland (Northern Lapland, Lapland, Central Finland,
Eastern Finland and the Capital region). These schools were based in medium
to large cities, resting on the assumption that teachers working in environments
with larger and more diverse populations would be more likely to be employed
full time and be proficient in the English language, the language of the researcher.
From this list, the researcher chose different types of schools (comprehensive
schools, music specialized, and Swedish speaking schools) and sourced teacher’s
contact details from the school websites. Five teachers were contacted via
email, introducing the researcher, informing them about the purpose of the
study and inviting them to participate. It was made clear that requirements of
participation were that they had completed their teacher training at one of the
three Finnish universities, were currently employed full time, available to meet
with the researcher and comfortable to be interviewed in English. If they agreed
to participate, teachers were asked to mention how long they had been working
as music teachers, with the hope to select teachers at different career stages.
Two of the initial five contacts did not respond, perhaps as they did not wish to
participate, did not meet the requirements for participation, or because they did
not understand the email written in English. Two more teachers’ contact details
were found from the initial lists based on geographical location, were contacted
and agreed to participate in the study. The participating teachers are henceforth
referred to by the pseudonyms: Outi, Maria, Julia, Iida and Risto. These five
teachers represented varying levels of experience, ranging between Iida’s six years
as a music teacher, and Maria and Julia’s sixteen and seventeen years of music
teaching respectively.
As all teachers had graduated from music education degrees requiring
engagement with, and knowledge of, popular musics and pedagogies, teachers were
not selected according to their personal musical histories. Maria, Outi and Julia
had all begun their music education in the western classical music tradition, only
later engaging with popular styles and idioms. Iida had begun her music education
in folk musics, though from her time at university onwards had immersed herself
in popular musics and performances. Risto however, had never been classically
trained, was a jazz guitarist and had dabbled in various ‘rock’ instruments in his
youth (such as keyboards, drums etc).
Although English was not the first language of any of the participants,
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and there were occasional stumbles in linguistic comprehension between the
researcher and teacher participants, these often provided opportunities for
elaboration or to spend time on particular issues to clarify or clearly delineate
what was intended. In addition, in instances where a word or phrase could not
be translated, communication occasionally took place in Finnish or Swedish, the
two official languages of Finland and the native languages of teacher participants.
For example, teachers often used popular Finnish proverbs or sayings to describe
their work or beliefs, which were often familiar to the researcher. If they were
not familiar, teachers took time to explain the meanings of such phrases in detail
to the researcher, as not only an outsider to their work in Finnish schools, but as
an immigrant to Finnish culture more generally. As such, language differences
between the researcher and participants were not seen as a significant impediment
to understanding or communication.
Three interviews were conducted with each teacher, following a semi-
structured format similar to that suggested by Seidman (2006). The first two
interviews, each approximately one to two hours long, sought to gain a broad
understanding of the individual teacher’s experiences of teaching, their personal
musical and educational histories, and their understandings of the narratives
that influence their popular repertoire decisions. The first stage of analysis was
conducted following these first two interviews according to Kelchtermans’ (1994)
narrative-biographical approach, thematically analysing the data in two stages:
the first phase being a vertical analysis, where each participant was taken as the
unit of analysis, and the second phase, a cross-case analysis, where recurring themes
and similarities between cases were identified. This analysis was used to craft four
factional stories (see Kallio 2015b; Kallio 2015a; Coulter & Smith 2009) based
on themes that emerged from the cross-case analysis: a reconstructed, (re)storied
‘fiction[al] form... laid over a ‘fact-oriented’ research process’ (Agar, 1990, p. 74).
These factional stories were shared with teachers two weeks before the third
interview, as a heuristic tool for reflection, to generate deeper, more reflective, and
critical data through inspiring a new spiral of retellings (Olson, 2000). Perhaps a
result of distancing the discussions from teachers’ personal experience, the third
interviews were considerably longer, averaging around two and a half hours, with
one interview lasting five hours. These discussions shifted the focus to an inquiry
involving the teachers and the researcher, a process of collaborative reflection,
negotiation and meaning construction (for more information regarding the
narrative technique used see Kallio, 2015b). The data from all three interviews was
then approached through the process of analysis of narratives (Polkinghorne, 1995),
applying paradigmatic thinking to identify and describe themes emerging across
types of stories and storytellers. In this study, the themes that were constructed
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were the broad and specific social narratives that frame teachers’ repertoire
decisions (see Kallio, 2015a), and the features of music that teachers identified as
contributing towards their understandings of popular musics as deviantised. In
addition, there were a number of themes that related to how teachers navigated
these musics in their classrooms, such as professional ethics, a sense of uncertainty,
the uniqueness of music as a school subject, and student welfare.

Curating music, constructing deviance

Although the participating teachers recognized tensions between many of the
musics or songs their students enjoyed or identified with, and the school as ‘an
institution with some, more or less, defined frameworks and conditions’ (Georgii-
Hemming & Westvall, 2010), they emphasized that the exclusion of all deviant
popular musics or songs from school activities was impossible, and indeed
undesirable. This was not only a result of the music that entered the classroom
unexpectedly (through student initiatives or compositions), but also challenges in
identifying which songs were problematic in the first place. As one of the teachers
Outi noted,

Of course there are some songs I definitely know I cannot include, and
others that I know will not be a problem at all for students. But then there
is a big grey area, and I have to be the boss in that area.

With the responsibility of curating classroom repertoires, deciding which popular

musics are included, and which are excluded, the teachers in this study described
the decisions within this grey area as complex, situational, and personal, and noted
that they required significant reflection, as Julia explained,

These decisions are tied into my own morals and ethics all the time, which
is why I have to ask myself questions where I’m right, and where I’m not
right, and ‘what is right?’

Thus, while popular musics may be seen to create a more inclusive environment
for democratic participation, the music that is ultimately taught and learnt
during lesson time ‘is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection,
some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge’ (Apple, 1996, p. 22). Participating
teachers recognized that their repertoire selections were not made in isolation, but
were framed and guided by broad and specific social narratives that label certain
musics or songs as deviant. As mentioned earlier, it has been found (Kallio, 2015a)
that competing social narratives in, and of the school community may result in
159
the labelling of certain popular musics or songs as problematic, and influence a
teachers’ repertoire selections. Within these dynamic and situational narratives,
there is a second level of concern that teachers consider when selecting music for
the classroom: the music itself. With this as the focus of the current study, teachers
identified four musical features that contributed towards the deviantisation of
popular repertoire:

• The lyrics of popular songs;

• The visual imagery of the music, presented via media such as music videos;
• The mood of the music, determined by aesthetic, dynamic and expressive
qualities of music;
• The emotional affect of the music, the perceived relations between popular
musics and students’ behaviours, emotional understanding and expression,
individually and socially.

These four features will be discussed in turn below, not as an attempt to categorize
popular musics, but to explore how they have been constructed by the teachers in
this study as factors that contribute towards understandings of deviance in popular
music, and the implications of these constructions for the democratic, inclusive
classroom.

Lyrics
The prevalence and widespread acceptance of popular musics in Finnish school
music classrooms was seen to complicate teachers’ judgments regarding the
appropriateness of song lyrics or the use of particular words. Accordingly, teachers
noted that certain musics or songs could not be automatically excluded, as Risto
explained, ‘rock and roll is very much telling about bad habits... But you still have
to teach [these kinds of musics]’.1 Particular profane words or themes were often
seen as characteristic of particular popular genres that teachers wished to include
in classroom activities, perhaps mitigating the potential offence theses musics may
cause, as Outi described,

It’s hard to listen to any kind of punk music [in the classroom] if you don’t
allow students to hear any swear words. It is part of the genre… There has2
to be bad words in the music so you can understand that [non-conformist
ethos or attitude].

Particular genres were identified by many teachers as more often lyrically

problematic than others, however, this did not entail their automatic exclusion.
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Maria noted that reprimanding students for singing or composing inappropriate
lyrics was more complex, when it was recognized as ‘part of the [musical]
culture... that you use such words’. Teachers also suggested that profane or
taboo language in songs could present opportunities for ‘teachable moments’
(Greher, 2009) to reflect upon ethical or sociological issues, as Iida explained,
‘for instance, black metal. I think it’s good to talk about the ethical aspect of
lyrics’. This may contradict research that suggests that educational institutions are
particularly conservative with regard to swear words, or profane language (Ravitch,
2003). However, it is worth considering how such musics are recontextualized
(Bernstein, 2000) when considered in a formal education setting. A popular song
with potentially offensive lyrics means something very different when used for
educative purposes by a teacher, than for entertainment by a student. The educative
purposes of the school context also raised concerns among teachers, as Iida noted,

I think that there must be some safety limits to what you can say in class.
It’s not only the bad words, but also the meaning and the intention of using
them... what they do to people.

Although the role of the school was not necessarily seen in direct opposition to
the norms and values of popular musics with offensive lyrics, it was also assumed
that the school ‘cannot avoid dealing with the issues of the right and the good’
(Mantie & Tucker, 2012, p. 266, italics original). It was thus understood that when
recontextualized in the classroom setting, the use of such musics was guided by
‘educational rules or principles, by which we can learn, and understand what is
appropriate’ ( Julia).

Imagery
While not all teachers had access to video or online material in their classrooms,
Risto and Maria discussed the inclusion of such material in their teaching lessons.
Risto had shared the music videos of Michael Jackson songs the students had
been learning, and Maria had allowed students to bring their own videos to
class as learning tools, adopting an approach similar to that described by Green
(2008). Whereas Risto had not experienced any problems with his limited use of
video material, Maria noted that she had encountered significant challenges with
popular music imagery, and had made conscious decisions to exclude certain songs
based on imagery she felt was inappropriate. She offered a particular example of
a student who had shared an online video of a recently released duet by a popular
rapper and R&B singer. The video included images of one of the artists singing
with a background of a burning house, and artistically styled scenes of the song
161
narrators (actors in the music video) in flames. Maria explained her reaction to the
video,

I don’t like to encourage anyone to play with fire, and it was just too suicidal.
I felt uncomfortable with it. From then onwards I said [to the students] that
I need to know the particular songs and videos before [we can watch them
together in class]. Otherwise there come such things that I don’t like the
students to watch.

Maria thus saw her role as a gatekeeper with respect to the use of music videos in
class. Her concerns extended to songs played without accompanying imagery in
classroom activities, assuming that students could watch the video outside of class
time and may be familiar with the video imagery of certain songs,

We don’t even have to watch the video [during the class], if there’s pole
dancing or something [I am uncomfortable with in the video] I would not
let students play the song in class.

Since the particular incident Maria shared during the interviews, she explained
that although she felt it unfortunate, she had stopped including music videos
altogether due to the additional practical demands that vetting material demanded
of her time.

Musical mood
The mood of a music refers to affective states that, unlike emotions, do not involve
‘a synchronized response in components like expression and physiology (e.g.
gloomy)’ ( Juslin & Sloboda, 2010, p. 10). Musical moods such as ‘aggressivity’ or
‘melancholy’ were noted to affect teachers’ decisions whether to include or exclude
particular popular songs or musics. Iida explained her awareness of musical mood
was heightened when she moved from the capital region in the south of Finland,
to the school in which she currently worked, in northern Lapland,

It’s also the atmosphere, the strong spirit that the music makes. When
it’s very hardcore, aggressive or so deep somehow. I have noticed [that I
consider these moods] when we have been playing grunge music or metal...
I have noticed this year especially, with kaamos time [polar nights], it has
been so black. The music really makes a difference. I had one class who were
in such a bad mood. I changed the song I had planned to something more
energetic and [cheerful], they needed a nicer atmosphere.
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As Iida’s comment illustrates, teachers’ concerns regarding the musical mood were
situational, and often related to student welfare. In addition, with the Finnish
curriculum prioritizing learning through music-making, playing popular musics
was seen by teachers as a more intense, and potentially influential experience for
students than listening to or critical discussions of musics, and popular repertoire
was often selected accordingly. As Julia explained,

At least for some very aggressive musics I might not rise them up to singing
and playing material, but I have discussed them with students... so we don’t
play it... but I haven’t totally excluded it. Even though [I imagine] somebody
might ask ‘what are you doing there?’ [in surprise or disapproval].

Teachers were more aware, or wary, of potentially problematic popular musics, and
their effects (as discussed below) when students experienced making it themselves,
rather than a more distanced, appreciative, or analytical engagement with musical
material.
As also illustrated by Julia’s comment, in addition to their own concerns
regarding musical moods, teachers were particularly aware of the potential
concerns of other social actors (such as parents, other staff members, principals,
students etc). Risto agreed that external actors influenced his repertoire choices
when it came to musical moods,

I think it is important for me to try to balance the aggressive kind of

sounding songs and the ballads… because I imagine the situation that a
student may tell their parents at home that we were playing angry or bad
songs, or the parents would call me or the principal.

Considerations of other teachers’, principals’ and parents’ reactions to their lesson

contents did not necessarily lead teachers to exclude certain musics, but rather
increased their awareness of what the overall music repertoire of their classrooms
‘looked like’ to others (see Kallio, 2015a).

Emotional affect
Music was emphasized by all teachers as a unique subject in schools, affording
opportunities ‘to discover, share, express, and know about aspects of the human
experience that we cannot know through any other means’ (Hodges, 2000,
p.54). These musical insights are referred to as emotional affect, involving a
synchronized, ‘subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency
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and regulation… e.g. happiness, sadness’ ( Juslin & Sloboda, 2010, p. 10). The
importance and value of popular music for teenage students, as well as the
connections they make between particular songs or pieces and events in their own
lives, were seen as especially relevant to how songs or musics may affect students
emotionally. Risto recalled one incident,

We were playing quite a sad song, nothing really depressing, but one
student’s emotions came very strongly. I was surprised… someone had
recently died in her family, and she explained to me that the song was the
reason for this emotion, why she was crying… music brings [these thoughts
and emotions] to mind.

With this understanding of music as ‘lived experience... like emotionally learnt

stuff, not skills or knowledge only. It’s about identifying with emotions’ ( Julia),
teachers’ justifications for including popular musics with emotional variety in
school repertoire were tied to utilitarian goals of developing social/emotional
skills and to the curricular directives to give students a ‘means of expressing
themselves musically, and to support their overall growth’ (Finnish National
Board of Education, 2004, p. 230). This was also related to student welfare as Iida
said, ‘I think it’s like therapy for the students’. However, while acknowledging
the therapeutic potentials of music, Julia warned against repertoire selection with
such goals in mind as ‘it is a long road to become a well-trained music therapist.
I would be a dilettante!’, and Maria believed this was an avenue students could
follow in their own time, not at school, as she explained,

I try to find happy music. Not a variety. Music is good... for your own
therapy, then you can have these sad songs... but I think you can sing them
somewhere else. School music, it has to be uplifting, and pepped up, and
joyous.

While Maria’s choice was for the benefit of the student group as a whole, other
teachers emphasized that individual students’ emotional reactions to music were
situational, and therefore, unforeseeable. The national curriculum states that
teachers should ‘help the pupil understand that music is tied to the time and
situation. It is different at different times, and in different cultures and societies,
and has a different sort of meaning for different people’ (Finnish National Board
of Education, 2004, p. 230). In line with these directives, students’ identifications
and reactions to music were seen to be uncertain, as Julia explained, ‘we all have
our individual breaking points... it’s the same thing with... the emotions which
164
music raises up... basically we can never know what will happen’.
As illustrated by Julia’s comment earlier regarding the difference between
talking about and playing deviantised musics, critical discussion was often used as
a way of mitigating the potential emotional affect of popular musics introduced
to the classroom by students themselves. Iida recalled one particular incident that
had caused her concern. A young female student shared a song with the class that
included particularly aggressive sounds, and also particularly misogynistic lyrics,
illustrating also how these features often combine and/or overlap,

The song was really talking about women like they would be dogs, and the
sound was really very rough… I was thinking this is psychological violence
against the whole group if we listen to the whole song. I didn’t know how
to react, and I was so shocked as it continued, as we listened and listened
and listened... I had to just turn down the volume at one point. We were
discussing it a very long time… how music affects you.

As a relatively early-career teacher, Iida noted that instances like these provided
teachable moments for herself, as well as her students. Outi emphasized that
responding to these situations was learnt ‘kantapäänkautta’, from the ground level
up – something that was learnt the hard way.
Balancing curricular directives and popular calls for school music to reflect
the wider society (Elliott, 1995; Green, 2006) with student welfare and protection
was seen as complex and requiring significant deliberation. The responses to these
challenges varied between teachers, according to the different situations they faced
in their everyday work. For instance, whereas Maria kept a collection of ‘tried and
tested’ textbooks from which she drew upon ‘safe songs’, Outi noted that,

We can’t make a path for students that is entirely safe. They will face these
things in their own lives, so if we are all the time ensuring that they are
protected from these issues, perhaps they will not know how to react when
they face these things on their own.

Teachers’ contrasting ideas of how repertoire selection may best promote student
welfare illustrate the complexity and contextual nature of such decisions; an
interplay between the teacher, the student(s), and the music itself, within the social
narratives of the broader school community (see Kallio, 2015a).

165
Deviant popular music education: An invitation?
The findings of this study suggest that constructions of deviance in music,
potentially affecting a musics inclusion or exclusion in school activities, do not
allow teachers to easily categorize music as problematic or otherwise. Rather,
teachers may be seen to make careful and considered repertoire decisions, taking
into account constructions of deviance informed by at least four features of
popular music: lyrics, imagery, musical moods and emotional affect. However,
teachers understood interpretations of these features, and the deviantisation of
popular musics as personal, complex and uncertain, dependent on context and
situation.
If what is understood as deviant is dependent on contextualised cultural
values and norms (Giddens, 2006) and music classrooms increasingly welcome
diversity, it is perhaps unsurprising that teachers found it difficult to outline
straightforward categories of musics that were problematic, and those that were
not. As many school systems adopt a pluralistic approach to music education
and, in principle, consider all or any music worthy of classroom attention,
considerations of not only ‘the good’, but also the ‘deviant’ are relevant for music
educators when selecting repertoire for their students. This is particularly so if we
consider the ethical encounter between teacher and student, that is, the encounter
concerned with best teaching practice, as ‘grounded in commitment, caring and
responsibility’ (Bowman, 2002, p. 69). Indeed, the direct affect (if it were possible
to establish such an etiologically robust relation in the first place) of certain
popular musics or songs on the individual must be taken into consideration when
selecting music that addresses not only who students are but also, who they are
becoming. As Bowman (2002) writes, ‘education is distinctly ethical in character,
concerned ultimately with the development of character and identity’ (p. 64).
However, guiding students towards a single vision of what constitutes good
character or positive identity, rests on an assumption that there is a consensus of
values, morals and behaviours (Taylor, Walton & Young, 1973). In aiming towards
a single ‘good’, or by unquestioningly censoring the ‘deviant’, there is a risk that
the teacher’s work is more a matter of coercion (Mantie & Tucker, 2012) than
curation, legitimating certain popular musics and delegitimating others through
an unequal ‘distribution of social power and control’ (Wright, 2012, p. 26). In this
way, a coercive approach towards popular repertoire selection may naturalize ideas
of certain musics or songs as ‘deviant’ according to majority-group ideas of what
is ‘good’ and ‘appropriate’, degrading and excluding the cultural meanings of these
musics, and the teenage students who enjoy and identify with these musics. This
appears incongruent with the ideals of democratic schooling, which promote the

166
equal participation and inclusion of all students in musical learning.
In order to challenge this notion of repertoire selection as a matter of
coercion, the teachers in this study suggested that it is not only necessary to
recognize the complex interplay between musical features and the competing
situational narratives and contexts that lead to the labelling of certain musics as
deviant, but also necessary to continually reflect and reevaluate one’s own values
and beliefs in considering what is right, for whom, when. In other words, teachers
believed that it would be impossible to draw up a list of specific musical features
that allowed teachers to identify musics as ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, and nor are there
prescriptive models of repertoire selection that would fit every teacher’s personal
approach or context. However, this is not to suggest that teachers work in a
position of total relativism in which the deviantisation of popular musics is simply
a matter of ideological censure (Taylor, Walton & Young, 1973, p. 310), based
on who is judging when. Rather, this study suggests that teachers’ mediations
and selections of popular repertoire take into account specific musical features,
however, the identification of such features as problematic or otherwise is done
situationally, in relation to one’s own professional values and personal ethics,
and contextualized within the wider school community (Kallio, 2015a) – ‘amid
the contradictions, complications, and ambiguities of teaching music’ (Allsup &
Westerlund, 2012, p. 125).
Whilst popular music is often thought of as more conducive to a
democratic, inclusive music education, this study suggests that popular repertoire
selection, and the justifications for popular music in the classroom, warrant
further attention. If popular musics in schools receive little critical attention,
are regarded as an ‘easy solution’ to student motivation or participation, or as
a culture-lite panacea for educating the masses in an accessible way, there is a
risk of undermining the great strides that have been made towards a democratic
and inclusive music education. As Mantie and Tucker (2012) have argued, these
issues of essentialism and coercion ‘should be a vibrant conversation within the
music education community’, yet this topic is met with a ‘glaring silence’ (p. 267).
If schooling is to offer democratic opportunities for participation and learning,
the story does not end with the censorship of popular music in the classroom,
adhering to an unquestioned ‘good’ and perpetuating ‘particular visions of who
people should be, both individually and collectively’ (ibid). Both teachers, and
students, may learn more through a greater focus on questioning the processes
by which certain popular musics are deviantised, than identifying categories of
‘problem music’ to avoid. Although North and Hargreaves (2008) do note that
‘labelling music as problematic clearly causes it to be perceived as such’ (p. 210),
in educative contexts it is important to remember that the processes that label
167
musics, also implicitly label our students, and we need to engage in decisions about
repertoire accordingly. This is not to suggest that all popular musics should be
welcomed unquestioningly, but rather that the teacher must engage in a practice
of inquiry, questioning the uncertain whats, hows, and whys of popular repertoire
selection (Allsup & Westerlund, 2012, p. 140). A democratic, inclusive approach to
selecting music for the classroom also necessitates an ethical questioning of whose
music is legitimised, and whose is excluded from school music education, within
the broader concerns of student welfare. Moreover, if and when these musics do
enter the classroom, these ethical concerns need to be critically explored together
with students, if one of the tasks of schooling is indeed to guide students towards
full participation in a world characterized by diversity, and moral uncertainty.
If ‘what we play, or to what we listen either asserts or questions the power
relationships in which we find ourselves’ (Froelich, 2002, p.10), deviantised popular
musics may offer an invitation to learn beyond social bias, to question the labelling
that occurs within and beyond our classrooms, to reconsider assumed values and
understandings, and to ethically reflect upon the musics and practices that are in
students’ musical worlds, and the school - an altogether different kind of problem.

Notes
1. Square brackets are used to indicate instances where the author has
paraphrased what was said during interviews, either abbreviating lengthy
responses or the respondents using their native languages (Finnish or
Swedish) to express themselves.
2. Italics within quotations are used to indicate teacher respondents’ own
emphasis, not that of the researcher.

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173
 III

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Appendix 3: Article III

Popular outsiders: Censorship frames and the deviantisation of popular musics

in school music education.

Alexis Anja Kallio

Abstract

In recent years, popular musics have been promoted as particularly democratic and
inclusive means to encourage music-making and learning in schools. However,
many popular musics or songs are argued to be inappropriate or problematic for
young students in formal education settings .Through exploring the censorship
processes by which certain popular musics are labeled as deviant, and the teacher’s
role in navigating such repertoire, this article argues that teaching popular musics
is a complex and ethical endeavour, requiring moral deliberation and reflection by
the teacher, on the political dimensions of popular music education.

Keywords
censorship, deviance, music education, school, teaching

Whilst the ideological discourses surrounding musics have been addressed from a
critical perspective in philosophy, musicology and other disciplines, music edu-
cation has largely resisted addressing issues of censorship or exclusion, at least in
part on the basis of arguments that art is intrinsically valuable and good in itself.
In formal education contexts, popular musics have been thought of as those that
are principally enjoyed by young, school-aged students (e.g. Allsup, Westerlund &
Shieh 460), defined in binary opposition with the traditional, hierarchical peda-
gogical models often associated with the teaching and learning of western clas-
sical musics. In line with these ideas of what popular music is, and the meanings
it holds for students, much music education policy and research has promoted
popular musics as a means to achieve democracy and inclusivity in the classroom
through valuing students’ preexisting musical knowledge, and ensuring a continu-

176
ity between the classroom and their musical worlds outside of school (e.g.Folkes-
tad). Consequently, ideas that certain popular musics are inappropriate for young
students in a formal education context have not received significant attention,
and it is seen as ¨obvious that certain explicit themes just do not fit within school
curricula¨ (Väkevä, ¨Teaching Popular Music¨ 128). This article questions the obvi-
ousness of excluding these certain popular musics, understanding them as deviat-
ing from the ideological norm and labeling them as problematic, rather locating
teachers’ popular repertoire decisions among diverse and competing narratives that
demand complex and moral deliberation. Before illustrating the teacher’s role as
curator of popular repertoire, including or excluding certain musics or songs based
on instructional and pedagogical rationales, this article outlines recent develop-
ments in educational philosophy and practice that have led to the welcoming of
popular musics in music classrooms. The subsequent section of the article explores
popular repertoire selection through the perspective of labeling theory, as certain
musics are deemed undesirable and deviant, and labeled as outsiders. Through this
perspective, and contextualized within the Finnish school music education system,
the teaching of popular music may be seen as a complex task with ethical impli-
cations, as the questions are posed: By what processes are certain popular musics
excluded from the inclusive, democratic music classroom? and what are the roles
and responsibilities of the music teacher in navigating these popular musics that
¨just do not seem to fit¨?

The place of popular music in schools

In recent years, the Nordic countries have been promoted as exemplars for many
nations introducing or expanding upon popular music classroom practices (Allsup,
“Music teacher preparation”). Similarly to other Nordic school systems, Finland
introduced popular music to comprehensive schooling through the National Core
Curriculum for Basic Education in 1970, and it has since held an established posi-
tion in school and tertiary music education. University music education graduates
are required to demonstrate proficiency in popular music practices and pedagogies
as part of their teacher training, school classrooms are typically equipped with
acoustic and electric guitars, drum kits, microphones and keyboards, and school
lessons have been described as garage band rehearsals (Westerlund). However,
the popular music training and resources made available has not meant that the
inclusion of popular music content and pedagogies in Finnish schools have gone
unquestioned or remained isolated from broader international debates regarding
what should be taught in school music classrooms. Indeed teachers are increasing-
ly required to not only “justify the value of music education in general education,
but also defend the specific musical repertoires that they use” (Väkevä and West-
177
erlund 98). In understanding contemporary justifications for popular music in
school curricula, it is worthwhile to reflect on the developments in international
music education scholarship that have seen a shift from the devaluation of popular
musics, to its increasing inclusion in school lessons.
The exclusion of popular music
In the 1970s and 80s, British and American scholars associated with the liberal
education paradigm saw the purpose of schooling as the “pursuit of knowledge…
seeking the development of the mind according to what is quite external to it,
the structure and pattern of reality” (Hirst 90). The purpose of music education
was thus to enculturate students into the ‘great tradition’, introducing them to a
‘high art’ canon - notably, a narrow selection of western art musics. Popular musics
were seen as a harmful distraction, interfering with students’ potentials to realize
the good in music. Educational leaders Allan Bloom and E.D. Hirsch Jr were
particularly influential in shaping international educational responses to popular
culture. Bloom’s seminal work, The Closing of the American Mind drew connec-
tions between popular music and “a barbaric appeal to sexual desire”, rebellion,
homosexuality, drug use, nihilism, “sexism, racism and violence” (75-78). However,
he emphasized that his focus was not upon the etiological links between popular
music and deviant behavior as such, but rather its unwarranted place in formal
education. Arts education was to involve “the taming or domestication of the
soul’s raw passions - not suppressing or excising them, which would deprive the
soul of its energy - but forming and informing them as art” (Bloom 71). Popular
music was seen as an obfuscation, a wrong turn away from and the silencing of (or
deafening to) the truth and the good,

The issue here is [popular music’s] effect on education, and I believe it ruins
the imagination of young people and makes it very difficult for them to
have a passionate relationship to the art and thought that are the substance
of liberal education (Bloom 79).

The teacher in Bloom and Hirsch’s music classroom was to be particularly con-
scientious with regards to lesson content, as Hirsch emphasized, “we must be
traditionalists about content... The greatest human individuality is developed in
response to a tradition, not in response to disorderly, uncertain, and fragmented
education” (126). The teacher’s role may also be seen to have been particularly
censorious, protecting students from the deleterious effects of popular musics and
prescribing the right and the good as cultural antidote.
Building upon this liberal education legacy, philosopher Roger Scruton

178
has called (and continues to call) for a revival of the intellectual and the preserva-
tion of high art’s status in schools, with masterworks upholding a universal, ideal
‘truth’. Scruton’s doubts regarding the potentials of popular musics as educational
material are based on the relationships people form with them. Derived from Ar-
nold’s Culture and Anarchy, Culture (with a capital C) for Scruton, is character-
ized by a canon of masterworks that capture the intrinsic values of western society
as passed on through the generations. In his 2010 book, Culture Counts, Scruton
derided the popular, inclusive cultures of contemporary music and education, and
heralded a call to arms for the academically privileged to recall and preserve the
high culture we have forsaken. This was not so much an attack on the music itself,
but of the ways in which he saw popular musics distracting the mind, and edu-
cators disregarding value judgments in favor of mass consumerism. He suggested
that the process of cultural communication of knowledge from generation to
generation should preserve and enhance the experiences in which human existence
is raised to the level of ethical reflection - as referred to in the Aristotelian ideal
of leisure. Scruton argued that leisure, in this sense, is absent from much popular
entertainment, which rather allows us to

… switch off from work without switching on to any higher purpose. We

can pass from activity to passivity, in which our mind does not engage the
world but is rather engaged by it, distracted by external things rather than
interested in them... leisure, in the sense intended by Aristotle, has vanished
from the world of popular entertainment (“Art, Beauty and Judgement”
19-21).

By this, Scruton implied that music can, and should, provide us with “images of
the ideal and the transcendent” (Scruton, “Culture Counts” 2), as aspirations. In
Scruton’s view, much (though with a few notable exceptions) popular entertain-
ment has ceased to aspire to such ‘goods’, and consequently the aesthetic is “stunt-
ed and grotesque” (ibid). The dangers of including popular music in schooling
then include the lowering, or elimination, of high art, western classical ideals and
a dumbing down of music and cultural education. The result of such arguments in
music education, was a widespread ignorance that popular musics have “anything
very much to live up to” (Scruton in Hegenbart & Simoniti 13).
The inclusion of popular music
In recent years attitudes towards the inclusion of popular musics in school music
education have changed dramatically (although this shift is by no means univer-
sal). Many nations’ curricula include popular music as prerequisite content, and

179
some, such the curricula of Finland and other Nordic countries, have established
popular musics as the bases of most, if not all, music instruction. These changes
have been brought about by numerous responses to scholars such as Bloom and
Scruton by music education philosophers, researchers and practitioners. These
responses have argued for the inclusion of popular music in schools as a way to
acknowledge the diversity of classroom populations, as a turn to student-centered
pedagogies and informal learning styles, placing an emphasis on democratic prac-
tices and exploring the critical potentials of music education in a media-driven
society.
As school classrooms have been recognized as increasingly diverse, ideas
of the teacher’s role as transmitter of knowledge and the high art canon, or guide
to musical taste as argued by scholars such as Bloom, Hirsch and Scruton, have
been called into question. Praxialist music education philosopher, David Elliott
(“Music as culture”) has suggested that the acknowledgement of the pluralism of
classrooms has recognized the world as multicultural, in the sense that it is cultur-
ally diverse, but has also employed the term ‘multicultural’ in an evaluative sense:
connoting a “social ideal; a policy of support for exchange among different groups
of people to enrich all while respecting and preserving the integrity of each” (151).
Through this, schools have turned away from reductionist policies purporting that
a single musical idiom could encompass the ideal, right and good, casting other
musics as inferior (e.g. Elliott, “Music Matters”), rather seeing this multicultural
world as multimusical (Reimer). Consequently, the focus has shifted from quali-
tative judgments of what music is of educational value, to how to teach music in a
meaningful way for students of different backgrounds and experiences, as Elliott
and Silverman argue, “the what of education cannot be realistically decided apart
from the why and the who” (393). This emphasis on students’ engagement with
musical materials in the classroom has perhaps sidelined questions of what musical
materials are to be included, or envisioned content as a natural and simple byprod-
uct of situational teaching methods.
Focusing on how music is taught and learnt in schools, it has been argued
that a music education that places the student, rather than the teacher, at the
center, is more democratic in the sense that it is inclusive and offers students equal
opportunities for participation in music-making and activities (e.g. Georgii-Hem-
ming & Westvall; Kallio & Väkevä; Karlsen; Lindgren & Ericsson; Väkevä &
Westerlund; Westerlund). In Finland, this has been referred to as student-centered
teaching and learning, reflected in the current Finnish National Core Curriculum
for Basic Education, which emphasizes that learning is both an “individual and
communal process of building knowledge and skills” (16), encouraging “student
access to decision-making regarding their own lives and studying in school” (Sahl-
180
berg 167). Internationally, this aligns with so-called informal approaches to music
learning, seen as a means to bridge the divide between music in the real world
(Green, “Music, Informal Learning”) and music in schools. Folkestad has argued
for the acknowledgement of the “multidimensional character” of music teaching
and learning in schools, noting that despite the necessary formality of teaching in
school situations, there may be both formal and informal learning styles present
in the classroom. Suggestions by Lucy Green (“How Popular Musicians Learn”;
“Popular music education”; “Music, Informal Learning”) among others, to look
at “how popular musicians learn”, have been seen as a way forward in facilitating
informal learning styles in the classroom. Seen as a link between in-school music
and students’ musical worlds outside of schools, informal learning and popular
musics have been seen as a way to motivate and engage students in a meaningful,
authentic music education (Väkevä, “The World Well Lost”). In this way, informal
learning has been seen to follow a Deweyan idea of experiential learning, in realiz-
ing a curricula that welcomes student-driven, collaborative work (Allsup, “Mutual
Learning” 27), affording individuals agency in their own learning (Mans 81). Thus,
students are involved in deciding what, and how, music will be taught and learnt,
and develop skills and musical knowledge through hands-on engagement with the
music they enjoy and/or are familiar with.
Towards a critical, democratic, popular music education
Given the challenges that arise from aims to teach music within a “socially fair
and inclusive education system... based on equality of educational opportunities”
(Sahlberg 45) and following mandates to develop student-centered classrooms
(e.g. Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education), popular musics
have been seen as a particularly democratic and inclusive medium for school music
education for a number of reasons. Widely perceived as more accessible, and more
readily intelligible for novice learners, it has been implied that popular musics
provide for more equal opportunities for music making and learning, allowing
students to engage in real or authentic musical experiences faster than they would
with instruments and styles associated with western art musics, that traditionally
take many years to master (Westerlund; see also, Campbell; Green “How Popular
Musicians Learn”; “Popular Music Education”; “Music, Informal Learning”). Pop-
ular musics have also been seen as particularly relevant for young people as they
shape their own self images and individual identities, related to students’ sense of
ownership and autonomy of their own music-making (Hargreaves & Marshall
269). Whether teachers select recent hits, or classics (often presented as such in
school textbooks, with bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Beatles),
it has been implied that students will be familiar with songs or genres taught (at

181
least more so if compared with western art or other musics) due to popular music’s
sheer ubiquity (Tagg; Björnberg). As a student-centered, democratic music edu-
cation, students have also been reconceptualized from “uninformed adults or mini
grownups whose developmental deficiencies need filling by the more mature” (All-
sup, Westerlund & Shieh 469) to knowledgeable, agential individuals. Accordingly,
students’ own musics have been seen as a legitimate source of musical knowledge,
and students are also given opportunities to bring their own repertoire selections
to classes.
While it has been noted by musicologists and others that popular music
is by no means the domain of young people alone (if at all), nor is it representa-
tive of a universal youth culture (e.g. Bennett; Frith), these have been persistent
assumptions in school contexts and popular music has been seen as a way to
include students’ own musical knowledge and expertise (e.g. Lindgren & Ericsson;
Muukkonen). Popular music has also been seen as a means to guide students to-
wards critical media literacy, as Björnberg suggests, “since the socially determined
meanings mediated by various types of popular music are often used with a more
or less explicitly manipulatory purpose... music education should try to provide the
student with the means to interpret these meanings in order to be able to form a
conscious judgment of the messages being communicated” (70). These approaches
have also been seen to align with the principles of critical pedagogy (e.g. Giroux;
McLaren, “Life in schools”), in viewing the task education not only as preparation
for the workforce, but as “creating the formative culture of beliefs, practices, and
social relations that enable individuals to wield power, learn how to govern, and
nurture a democratic society that takes equality, justice, shared values, and freedom
seriously” (Giroux 4).
In-keeping with these critical, democratic aims of music education, the
teacher’s role in the music classroom is significantly different from the models pro-
vided by the liberal education paradigm. Indeed, the commitment to participatory
inclusion in music education that has accompanied the introduction of popular
repertoire to many classrooms, demands a reconceptualization of the teacher’s role
and actions. No longer the sole source of musical knowledge, the teacher is direct-
ed to stand back, relinquish control, learn and discover in a flexible and dynamic
relationship with hir students (Rodriguez 38). With diverse repertoire sources, and
as students are encouraged to bring their own repertoire selections to class, the
teacher’s role may be seen as a curator. As curator, the teacher is involved in de-
ciding which songs will feature in school lessons or activities, guiding students in
their own learning, “metaphorically taking the learner by the hand, getting inside
their head and asking ‘What do they want to achieve now, this minute, and what
is the main thing they need to achieve it?’” (Green, “Music, Informal Learning”
182
34). The teacher-curator is not an expert in the sense that they are able to transmit
knowledge and skills to students, but an expert “in helping students make things
happen for themselves” (Rodriguez 39).

Outsiders to the music education curriculum

In replacing the hierarchical models of music education that value a narrow
selection of musics as educationally valid, with those that prioritize discourses of
musical pluralism and polyvalency, discussions of exclusion, essentialism, values
and choice have been silenced, or at least sidelined (Mantie & Tucker 267). In
advocating for the place of popular musics in schools, and engaging in cultural ar-
guments between high and low art, there has not been much discussion regarding
how teachers select repertoire from within the popular realm, beyond the practical
concerns of time, resources and technical difficulty (Kallio & Väkevä). The wel-
coming of popular music and valuations of pluralism pose particularly interesting
questions considering recent arguments that young people enjoy popular musics
particularly because they are not about conforming to the conventions of adult
worlds or school (e.g. Väkevä, “Teaching popular music” 128; Regelski, “Social
Theory” 30; Stålhammar). Allsup, Westerlund and Shieh have suggested that the
relationship between popular music cultures and education “is fraught with issues
of immense responsibility, risk and confusion” (462), raising questions about the
ideological complexities involved in selecting popular repertoire for adolescent
students in a formal education context. Viewing “schooling as a resolutely political
and cultural enterprise… as cultural arenas where a heterogeneity of ideological
and social forms often collide in an unremitting struggle for dominance,” (Mc-
Laren, “Life in Schools” 186) repertoire selections within popular music idioms
ostensibly run as much risk of exoticism, alienation and creating outsiders to the
music classroom, as in the traditional “transmission model of teaching… limited to
the propagation of a culture of conformity and the passive absorption of knowl-
edge” (Giroux 5).
In line with Lawton’s definition of the school curriculum as “a selec-
tion from the culture of a society” (vii), and taking into account increasing social
diversity, education theorist Michael Apple has argued that curriculum cannot be
seen as “a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and
classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection,
some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge” (Apple 22). The pluralist discourses
of contemporary music education have not accounted for the selection process that
teachers must engage in, when deciding which musics will be included (and which
will be excluded) in the (often increasingly) small amount of class time allocat-
ed to teaching and learning music in schools. If all popular musics were of equal
183
value, there would be no need for teachers to spend any time on repertoire deci-
sions, as any selection would be as good as another. However, the idea that some
popular musics are constructed in opposition or contrast to school culture suggests
otherwise, raising questions about how teachers decide which popular musics to
teach. If we accept Jorgensen and Bowman’s (“Universals”) suggestions that music
education is always inclusive and exclusive, repertoire selection may be seen as a
matter of “culture (i.e., norms, values, and their practice) as a politicized terrain”
(Dotter 280). In better understanding how the teacher makes repertoire decisions,
and identifies particular musics as prudent or problematic, interactionist approach-
es to deviance as derived from sociologist Howard Becker’s labeling theory, offer a
useful starting point. Whilst contemporary music education has been dominated
by discourses of pluralism and inclusion, the perspective of labeling theory focuses
on instances of exclusion, offering a critical alternative.
The deviantisation of popular musics
In focusing on the exclusion of popular musics from school curricula, it is first nec-
essary to outline how labeling and interactionist theorists understand the processes
by which certain musics (and thereby individuals) are cast as deviant. Under-
standing deviance as non-conformity “to the norms or values held by most of the
members of a group or society” (Giddens 1013) and “behaviour which somehow
departs from what a group expects to be done or what it considers the desirable
way of doing things” (Cohen 35), the interactionist approach understands deviance
as socially constructed. As Becker states, “social groups create deviance by making
the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying those rules to par-
ticular people and labeling them as outsiders” (Becker 9, emphasis orig). In other
words, through the creation of normative values and practices, formal education
labels individuals, events, or objects that exist outside of, or in opposition to these
norms (Kotarba, Merrill, Williams & Vannini 84), suggesting that deviance is not
an inherent quality, but rather a result of “interaction between the ‘deviant’ and
those in a position to apply the label” (Tierney 15). This notion of the outsider also
has a second application, as

the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the
matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may
not regard those who judge him as either competent or legitimately entitled
to do so… the rule breaker may feel his judges are outsiders. (Becker 2)

Through these perspectives, as certain musics are labeled as deviant and excluded,
it may be seen that the students who identify with and enjoy these musics are also

184
labeled as outsiders and excluded from formal music education (Kallio; Mantie &
Tucker). In turn, the student may not accept this judgment upon his or her music
(and thus, his or herself ), and label the school as outsider to his/her experiences
and musical world.
In this way, the labeling of musics, and by association students, is not
a simple, one-directional instance of the teacher deciding a particular song is
inappropriate and excluding it from classroom lessons. Rather, the interactions
between students, teachers, principals, staff members, parents and others may be
seen to determine which musics are appropriate, and which are not, processes of
becoming deviant (Matza): of deviantisation.
The school censorship frame
The negotiations and interactions involved in the deviantisation of popular musics,
and determining their inclusion in, or exclusion from, music classes have been
referred to by Kallio as a school censorship frame: an array of broad and specific
narratives drawing associations between particular musics or songs, and “collec-
tively shared and culturally agreed-upon” constructions of deviance (Schneider
38). In Finnish schools, the broad narratives of the school censorship frame have
been identified by Kallio as cultural, religious and curricular, addressing issues of
enculturation, cultural diversity, the role of religious repertoire in secular schooling,
tradition versus transformation, teacher autonomy and confidence, and curricu-
lar critique. The specific narratives include narratives of the school as institution,
school staff, parents, personal narratives of the self as teacher, and narratives of
students. In this sense, the teacher is not seen as a censorious authority per se, as
censorship is understood as a “process, realized through the relationships be-
tween censorious agents, rather than a series of actions carried out by a discrete
or isolated authority” (Freshwater 225). Rather, the teacher is required to navigate
these “complex, situational and multifaceted” (Kallio 12) relationships, negotiating
between competing censorious narratives, with the labeling and deviantisation of
popular musics reflecting the relative power of these narratives (Clinard & Meier
9).
As repertoire selection is negotiated upon this politicized terrain, the
normative values and ideologies of schools expressed through both policy and
practice are contested as definitions of particular popular musics emerge as “a form
of production through which different groups both define and realize their aspi-
rations through unequal power relations” (Ryoo & McLaren 105). In this sense,
the school censorship frame is not developed and maintained over long periods
of time, but is rather an unstable, fluid changing of the rules, requiring situational,
rapid responses by the teacher. The firm decisions made regarding popular musics

185
may be seen to instantly dissolve and disappear, requiring the teacher to “begin
again” (Greene) with “the next song, the next lesson and the next student” (Kallio
12).
As the school censorship frame constructs certain musics as good or ap-
propriate and deviantises others, it may be questioned how achievable the pluralist
and participatory ideals of popular music education really are. Indeed, how are the
interactive ideals of informal learning to be realized if certain musics, and thereby
certain students’ preferences, values and identities, are excluded? If deviantised
popular musics are excluded from school activities, and students are provided with
a pasteurized popular music education, what Ericsson, Lindberg & Nilsson term a
“safe simulation” (113), the ideal of continuity between music in and out of school
is unattainable. School music thus runs the risk of being reduced to a peculiar
institutionalized idiom, little changed from the liberal education models proposed
by Bloom or Scruton, and with little relevance to students, or anyone else for that
matter. Similarly, the inclusive ideals of music education are hindered, with partic-
ular students (albeit perhaps inadvertently) told that the musics they identify with
and enjoy are not legitimate or worthy of attention, consequently alienating those
students from school music.
If we understand this school censorship frame as “driven by the desire
to control mass behavior” (Korpe, Reitov & Cloonan 239), repertoire decisions
may then be seen not so much as matters of curation, but of coercion (Mantie &
Tucker). This is not inherently detrimental, as teachers are required to make ethical
decisions regarding popular repertoire that balance students’ needs of nurture and
protection with ideals of critical engagement and inclusion. As noted by Mantie &
Tucker, schools, as public institutions must engage with constructions of the right
and the good (266) as they endeavor to educate students not only academically
but socially. However, without critically reflecting on the labeling influences of the
school censorship frame in assessing or navigating such constructions, schools as
institutions cannot be seen to serve the needs of students, but rather as mecha-
nisms that serve to reinforce and reproduce dominant social relations and norms
(McLaren, “Critical Pedagogy” 229). Thus, it may also be seen that schools must
also engage with constructions of the wrong and the bad if they are to educate
democratically, rather than unquestioningly perpetuating “particular visions of who
people should be, both individually and collectively” (Mantie & Tucker 267).

The teacher as ethical agent

As certain popular musics are labeled as deviant through the school censorship
frame it is important to note that the music itself does not necessarily challenge
the ideological norms of formal schooling, but rather that it is perceived by the
186
teacher (as the individual largely in control of repertoire selection) as doing so.
This is also not to suggest that the teacher feels affronted by deviantised popular
musics, indeed they may enjoy such musics themselves. However, in the classroom
context the teacher is required to assume the role of “moral entrepreneur” (Becker
147) in making repertoire decisions, and promoting the adoption or maintenance
of dominant social norms. Becker divided the enterprises of the moral entrepre-
neur into two related categories: rule creators and rule enforcers. However, in the
school context, the teacher may be seen to complicate both roles, as the creation of
rules involves complex negotiations between the different actors and social groups
of public schooling and those of popular musics. Thus, who comprises the domi-
nant social group is dynamic and changeable, affecting the norms that are promot-
ed in the classroom. Similarly, the enforcement of rules is not a disengaged matter
of following the mandates of curricular documents or school principals, but rather
presents the teacher with situated, ethical dilemmas.
Becker illustrated the rule creator as an individual “crusading reformer”
(147). In many respects, the role of the teacher aligns with Becker’s descriptions.
Concerned with achieving a music education that fosters “human rights, equal-
ity, democracy, natural diversity, preservation of environmental viability, and the
endorsement of multiculturalism… promotes responsibility, a sense of commu-
nity, and respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual” (Finnish National
Board of Education 12), the teacher enforces rules that encourage such values in
students, believing “that if they do what is right it will be good for them” (Becker
148). However, while the Finnish National Curriculum for Basic Education pro-
motes particular values, and teachers undoubtedly teach with particular education-
al and social values in mind, these ideals are difficult to equate with actual teaching
practice, making it difficult to prescribe particular ways, or content of teaching
to achieve them (Becker 130). This gives little guidance to teachers with regards
to how educational values should (if at all) guide popular repertoire selections, or
how to engage with deviantised popular musics that students bring to classes.
All of this being said, it would be a mistake to assume that the teacher en-
forces the rules and norms of the school censorship frame as an unquestioning rule
enforcer. Nor do the ideals of pluralism mean that the teacher necessarily accepts
every, and any music as equal and valid. Rather, it may be seen that the teacher
does not only implement curricula, he or she creates and develops it, considering
the context in which s/he is teaching. In this way, we may reconceptualize the
teacher’s role as “neither scapegoat nor saviour, but as agent” (Allsup & Wester-
lund 127). Envisioning the teacher as agent suggests that conflict, and uncertainty,
are not hindrances to good teaching, but rather a prerequisite. This is particular-
ly true if we return to Giddens’ definition of deviance “as widely variable as the
187
norms and values that distinguish different cultures and subcultures from one
another” (687). Given the increasing diversity (or at least our acknowledgement of
such diversity) of music classrooms, it may be seen that a normative consensus of
values, morals and behaviors is impossible, and indeed undesirable.
However, this is not to imply that teachers’ repertoire decisions are
wholly relative, with equally valid musics labeled as deviant dependent on who
was judging and when. Indeed it may be seen that whilst a useful lens, labeling
theory is only the starting point in explaining the censorship of particular popular
musics or songs in school contexts, where norms and values often comprise part
of teachers’ tacit knowledge, enforcement is situational, decisions are momentary,
and deliberation is swift. A necessary addition to this lens is an aspect central to
the profession of teaching and conceptualization of teacher as agent: the ethical.
In this sense, teachers may be seen to be “guided by commitment to acting rightly
where “rightness” is not (and cannot be) set in stone” (Bowman, “Practices” 7) and
engaged in moral deliberation, involving “doubt, hesitation, the need of making
up one’s mind, of arriving at a decisive choice” (Dewey, “Theory of the Moral Life”
134).
As argued by Dewey decades ago, “all the aims and values which are
desirable in education are themselves moral” (“Democracy” 369), suggesting that
“education is distinctly ethical in character, concerned ultimately with the develop-
ment of character and identity” (Bowman, “Music’s significance” 64). The teacher
is required to ethically justify the inclusion of particular popular musics, but also
the exclusion of others. For instance, Allsup and Westerlund have suggested that
“the study and performance of Death Metal… may be an inappropriate way to
‘celebrate’ certain preferences or values, given that schools are public institutions
devoted to nonviolence” (134). However, their assumption that the teacher sees a
clear solution in excluding Death Metal altogether from school curricula, is ques-
tionable in its apparent certainty. As Dewey suggested,

The conventional attitude sees… only a conflict of good and of evil; in such
a conflict, it is asserted, there should not be any uncertainty. The moral
agent knows good as good and evil as evil and chooses one or the other ac-
cording to the knowledge he has of it… it is not right in a great number of
cases. The more conscientious the agent is and the more care he expends on
the moral quality of his acts, the more he is aware of the complexity of this
problem of discovering what is good; he hesitates among ends, all of which
are good in some measure, among duties, which obligate him for some
reason. (“Theory of the Moral Life” 156-157).

188
And so it may be seen that the outright exclusion of death metal may be seen as
equally problematic, if we understand constructions of the genre as varied with
respect to the musical, and ideological content and also how it is consumed, and to
what ends. It is also problematic to assume that teachers are unified in the values
with which they (ought to) approach popular repertoire selection. Rather, complex
moral and ethical deliberations may be seen as inseparable from understandings of
the teacher as ethical agent, and of the role of the school in nurturing the develop-
ment and growth of diverse, capable, agential young students, as Bowman (“Mu-
sic’s Significance”) suggests, “the ethical encounter is grounded in commitment,
caring, and responsibility” (69). This raises additional concerns in the moral delib-
erations over the role of deviantised musics in the music classroom, as imperatives
of child welfare may collide and intertwine with those of inclusion. Interestingly
however, these complex issues of ethics and morality have been largely absent from
discussions on teaching and learning music (Allsup & Westerlund 127).

Letting the outside in: An invitation

The passionate advocates for popular musics inclusion in school curricula have
done much to address opportunities for student participation, the diversity of
musics in schools, and the methods by which they are taught. At least when
compared with the liberal education models and philosophies, the welcoming of
popular musics and informal pedagogies have indeed encouraged more hands-on
music-making in classrooms with more students. However, while arguments justi-
fying popular music’s place in the curriculum (in dichotomous relation to western
art musics) have made great strides towards an inclusive and democratic music
education, in silencing the complexities and conflicts involved in teaching popular
repertoire, these ideals may remain distant goals.
In addition, how teachers navigate deviantised popular musics “is an
important aspect to the overall understanding of the ways in which people nego-
tiate social meanings” of popular music (Schneider 51). Without reflecting upon
the processes by which popular musics are deviantised, contextualized within the
school censorship frame, popular repertoire selection may assume the form of well
intentioned coercion: normative judgments of deviantised popular musics, nor-
mative understandings of the right and the good, and unreflective justifications to
exclude particular popular musics in the name of child welfare. Labeling popular
musics as a problem for school music education, and students, is an understand-
ing and act “invariably predicated upon who the teacher believes the student is
or should be” (Mantie & Tucker 262) and also upon who we believe the teacher
ought to be. Although informal pedagogies have called for the teacher to assume
new roles, and popular musics have found established positions in school curricula,
189
it is important to remember that “the mere entrance of a wider variety of musical
styles into an education system does not simply halt the construction and perpet-
uation of ideologies of musical value” (Green “Why ideology” 268), and does not
necessarily influence student alienation for the better.
It is important to emphasize that the introduction of popular musics and
accompanying informal pedagogies do not make the teacher’s job simpler. Whilst
they may call for him or her to relinquish control, they also call for more complex
decisions than traditional educational models may have necessitated. If the teach-
er’s role is to pass on the masterworks, a canon of the right, good and true, there
is little ethical deliberation necessary. However, with so many musics now made
available to the classroom, the teacher is required to question not only the “whats,
hows, and whys” but also the whose, “between uncertain options” (Allsup & West-
erlund 140). If we envision schools as more than institutions for the transmission
and reproduction of the status quo, and as institutions of change, development and
transformation (e.g. Mantie & Tucker; The Finnish National Board of Educa-
tion 12; Regelski, “Critical Education”), teachers’ repertoire decisions are caught
between two visions of schools: as regulating institutions that promote particular
values and norms, and as sites that encourage individual agency, emancipation and
social change. These moral deliberations may be seen as central in teachers’ naviga-
tions of the curricular and political conflicts that inevitably arise in school popular
music education. The moral tasks of teaching are then not so much a matter of
following a path of the right and the good, but rather one of questioning what
is right, for whom, and when, with definitions and boundaries of propriety and
deviance in constant flux.
With the music teacher envisioned not as curator but as ethical agent,
popular music teaching may be seen not as a practice of instruction, but as one
of inquiry; not as a practice of certainty, but as one of uncertainty; not as only
a practice of value-creation, but as one of value examination and interrogation.
Although writing with regards to racial and ethnic diversity in teacher education,
Cochran-Smith’s argument holds true in this context as well, as she cautions, “we
cannot shy away from unpleasant and uncertain conversations because the failure
and unwillingness to look, listen, and learn about diversity, oppression, and the
experiences of the cultural other significantly interfere with the ability to critique
and problematize schooling or ‘teach against the grain’” (xii). By adhering to the
guidance of the school censorship frame unquestioningly, ideologies remain invis-
ible, as values “are perceived… as objective, self-evident, neutral and - especially
- universal” (Spruce & Matthews 121). With an assumed consensus of values and
beliefs, the politics of music education are relegated to the margins of school life,
a scenario only serving those who “would dominate and control” (Woodford, xii) -
190
which is seemingly incompatible with the democratic and inclusive aims of music
education policy and practice. And so, if we are to take the democratic and inclu-
sive ideals of popular music education seriously, classroom doors should be opened
wide, to let the outside(rs) in.

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 IV

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Appendix 4: Article IV

Factional stories: Creating a methodological space for collaborative reflection

and inquiry in music education research.

Alexis Anja Kallio

Abstract

Stories have been one means by which qualitative researchers have attempted
to engage participants and construct, analyze and present data or findings in a
meaningful way. In this article, I look at the impetus for, and potentials, of crafting
and sharing researcher-written factional stories with research participants as
a means to generate rich, meaningful data, and facilitate collaborative inquiry.
Factional stories may be understood as a bricolage of previously collected data,
analyses and fictive elements, combining research participants’ and researcher
voices and presented as a short, first-person story. Through the use of factional
stories in my own research study as illustration, I examine how factional stories
may create a methodological space, within which participants and researcher may
collaboratively construct meaning, engage in reflection, negotiation and inquiry.
This article suggests that as a heuristic methodological tool, factional stories may
be a particularly appropriate methodological means to attend to the complexity so
often characteristic of teaching and learning music.

Keywords
Collaboration, Fiction, Narrative inquiry, Qualitative methods, School music
education

Introduction
The telling, listening to, reading and retelling of stories are familiar features
of everyday life. Encompassing the personal, contextual, emotional and
interactive, stories have been one means by which qualitative researchers have
engaged participants and constructed, analyzed and presented data or findings
200
in a meaningful way. Seen by many researchers as a means to attend to the
complexity and emotionality of educational phenomena (e.g. Barone, 2001;
Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Coulter & Smith, 2009; Polkinghorne, 1995),
stories and narratives have “become a powerful means of exploring aspects of
the teaching profession” (Barrett & Stauffer, 2012, p. 14). In this article, I look
at the impetus for, and potentials of using researcher-written stories as a means
to conduct research. In doing so I draw upon my own research study, describing
the challenges I encountered in interviewing five Finnish secondary school music
teachers about their processes of popular repertoire selection, and the means to
overcome the challenges I found in crafting what I term factional stories. Factional
stories are presented as researcher-written vignettes, based upon interview data
conducted in two stages of individual interviews and incorporating early analyses
and interpretations as participants’ and researcher voices are woven together.
These stories were shared with teacher participants as a heuristic tool for data
collection. Through reading, interpreting and responding to these stories, this
approach led beyond the generation of rich and meaningful data, to the creation
of a methodological space within which the teacher participants and I were able to
(re)construct, (re)interpret and refine meaning. Thus, factional stories may be seen
to encourage interaction and shared inquiry between research participants (and
the researcher), without necessitating a face-to-face group meeting. Responding
to Ellis and Berger’s (2003) call to “examine the collaborative activities of
interviewees from which ... outcomes are produced” (p. 469), I suggest that
factional story writing may be an appropriate means to attend to the complexities
of teaching and learning music in schools through their ability to facilitate
communication and collaborative, reflective meaning-making.

Theoretical bases of factional stories

Stories have been seen as particularly apt means to characterize and express
human experience (e.g. Bowman, 2006; Leavy, 2013), allowing individuals to
convey, construct and communicate meaning with others. Conceptualizing
narrative as the inquiry and stories as the phenomenon (Connelly & Clandinin,
1990), it has been argued that all life is narrative (Polkinghorne, 1988), and story
may be seen as “a portal through which a person enters the world and by which
their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful”
(Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 477). As stories are written or told to others,
and audiences contextualize writings within their own knowledge frameworks
and experiences in making them intelligible, they may be seen as “first and
foremost a way of thinking about experience” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p.

201
477). Clandinin and Connelly (2000) have made clear links between Dewey’s
philosophical writings and narrative inquiry, understanding this experience as
not confined to that of an isolated individual, but as socially constructed (Dewey,
1938). In this way, story may be seen as a way to promote dialogue, “which is
critical to cultivating understanding” (Leavy, 2009, p. 14). Seen through Dewey’s
notion of experience (1934, 1938), the collaborative potentials of stories mean
that they may be seen not only as a characterization of human experience,
but experiential in themselves, as “a changing stream that is characterized by
continuous interaction of human thought with our personal, social and material
environment” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 39). Thus, research into, using or
producing stories is unique in its “temporality or processual nature, together
with its situatedness or particularity” (Bowman, 2006, p. 7). In viewing stories as
contextualized products of ongoing interaction, research on stories and storytelling
cannot search for accurate depictions of past events; as Riessman (2005) has noted,
“narratives do not mirror, they refract the past” (p. 6). By refraction, Riessman
implies that stories are not simply products that represent the meanings that have
already been constructed (Bochner, Ellis, & Tillman-Healy, 1997), but are rather
a means to construct, share and communicate meaning with others, through (re)
tellings that involve interpretation, imagination, emotion and strategic interests.
In this way, understandings of story as experience may be seen as twofold, “as both
the essence of being and the source of knowing” (Barrett & Stauffer, 2012, p. 4), as
a means to experience, and as a means to make sense of experience.
Qualitative researchers have approached stories in a myriad of ways:
collecting stories, paradigmatically analyzing stories (Bruner, 1986) and of
particular interest here, producing stories themselves (Leavy, 2009, 2013).
Researchers’ processes of narrative construction (Barone, 2007) have often drawn
upon fictional forms, such as poetry, the novel, portraiture, autobiography, film, and
other literary genres, as a means to make sense of data and communicate research
findings, broadening ideas of whose stories are of use in research, and to what ends
(Barone, 2007; Coulter & Smith, 2009; Watson, 2011). However, as Barone and
Eisner (2012) have noted, the inclusion of fiction or fictive elements is “one of
the trickiest issues confronted in considering the possibilities of arts based forms
of social research” (p. 101). Indeed, Watson (2011) has warned that by declaring
one’s work as simultaneously fiction and social science, researchers run the risk of
not having their work read as social science (or indeed at all) and consequently
dismissed. This is of particular concern to educational researchers, as the field has
generally experienced a “narrowing of the officially sanctioned methodological
spectrum” (Barone, 2007, p. 454).
Skepticism over the inclusion of fiction or fictive elements in research
202
persists despite many researchers acknowledging the notion of an empirical reality
as problematic (see, e.g. Denzin, 1997; Watson, 2011). As argued already by
Clifford Geertz (1973), “the line between mode of representation and substantive
content is as undrawable in cultural analysis as it is in painting” (p. 16), suggesting
that the line separating the dichotomy between fact and fiction is itself fictional
(Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. 102). In addition, whilst fiction has been introduced
into scholarly and narrative work, it has primarily been limited to data or a means
to present data. It has been noted that scholars “rarely create it and even more
rarely do they mix fact and fiction together into a bricolage of research findings”
(Whiteman & Phillips, 2008, p. 291), or employ fiction or fictive writing as
method. However, despite the wary reception of fictional approaches in social
research, it has been suggested that such writings “may be particularly provocative
for telling ethnographic tales from the field” (van Maanen, 1988/2011), and

through their recasting of the empirical particulars of the world, achieve

extraordinary power to disturb and disrupt the familiar and commonplace,
to question and interrogate that which seems to have already been answered
conclusively, and to redirect the conversation regarding important social
issues. (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. 101)

In what follows, I explore the use of story as method in my own research

study, incorporating fiction and assuming an experiential perspective to story,
through the writing and sharing of factional stories. Factional stories were not the
ends of research, presenting or communicating data or analyses, but were employed
as a heuristic means to gather rich, meaningful data and deepen inquiry. Through
this example, I raise the question: what might we learn about the teaching of
music, if we view story as both the source and representation of knowledge and
experience? In casting our gaze to the experience of story(ing), the processes of
telling, reading, and responding to stories, the focus of the following discussion is
not what we can learn from stories but what we can learn through stories.

Factional stories as method in music education research

Focusing on learning through stories, rather than what we can learn from them,
the use of stories as a methodological tool may allow for research participants
and researchers to spend time living “in the story, becoming in it, reflecting on
who one is becoming, and gradually modifying the story” (Frank, 1995, p. 163),
reflectively searching for, and creating meaning. Story’s ability to generate or
facilitate reflection and interaction with others’ perspectives and meanings may
make it a particularly appropriate means for research on the teaching of music

203
in schools, where teachers constantly navigate, experience and make sense of
their own stories, and those of others (such as students, other staff members,
parents and policy makers; see Kallio, 2015). Following the very first international
Narrative Inquiry in Music Education conference, Wayne Bowman (2006)
suggested that narrative “offers considerable promise as a way of recovering the
complexity, multiplicity, and polyphony of musical meanings, and music’s deep
implication in the construction and maintenance of identities, both personal and
collective” (p. 14). In this sense, narrative has been seen as an appropriate lens with
which to view the complex world of the music classroom, enabling “the reader
to look at educational phenomena with renewed interest and a more questioning
stance” (Coulter & Smith, 2009, p. 578), allowing for the articulation of what
might otherwise remain tacit knowledge. However, if we are to take the social
and communicative aspect of stories and storytelling seriously, one of the main
strengths of attending to stories in research may be found in their interactive and
processual potentials.
Encountering challenges
In exploring the use of factional stories as research means, I refer to my own
instrumental case study (Kallio, 2015) that investigated Finnish secondary school
music teachers’ understandings of the influences that act upon their decisions to
either include or exclude particular popular music repertoire from school lessons
or activities. The study focused on popular musics or songs that have often been
understood to exist at odds with the values and aims of traditional schooling (see
Kallio, 2015; Väkevä, 2006), for instance songs with explicit language or more
“adult” themes. The use of story was not a feature included in the research design
from the onset of this study, but was, rather, employed to address challenges that
arose during the course of data collection.
Participating in the study were five Finnish secondary school music
teachers. Teachers were selected to include voices from different regions of
Finland, different levels of experience and to represent different types of schools.
Whilst a purposive sample (Creswell, 2009) was included in this study, teachers
were chosen not with hopes to maximize the generalizability by “sampling of
attributes” (see critiques of narrative sampling by Hargreaves, 1996), but to
maximize “opportunities to learn” (Stake, 1995, p. 6). To ensure their anonymity,
the five participating teachers are henceforth referred to by the pseudonyms: Julia,
Iida, Risto, Maria and Outi. As I am an immigrant and had been living in Finland
for approximately three years at the time of data collection, teachers were also
selected on their willingness to participate using the English language (my native
language), though some communication did take place in Finnish or Swedish

204
(teachers’ native languages) when it was considered necessary for clarification.
As stories express more than content information (e.g. Leavy, 2013), language
barriers present clear challenges where subtle meanings or understandings may be
overlooked or misinterpreted. However, given that even within a single language,
all stories are interpretations in kind, and in view of the increasing diversity of
music classrooms and music education research, the cultural differences and
potential confusions were not seen as an impediment to the study but rather as
an opportunity. When stumbles in communication did occur, they often provided
teachers or myself with an opportunity to spend more time on particular issues,
to clearly delineate what either of us intended to convey. Two of the teachers
noted that searching for particular words or nuances between two languages often
intensified explanations and understandings of particular meanings. As one of
the participating teachers Julia exclaimed, “this [interview process] makes me
crystallize some things beneath my own thinking, realize and crystallize better
than I’m able to do in my own language, Finnish” (third interview, May 10, 2012).1
Data collection took place through three individual, face-to-face semi-
structured interviews held in each teacher’s classroom, over a period of seven
months from 2011 to 2012. The interviews were initially designed to follow a
similar format to that suggested by Seidman (1991), with the first interview
intended to gain data on participants’ identities and roles as music teachers, the
second focusing on their individual processes of repertoire selection and personal
experiences in the classroom, and the final interview reflecting on the meanings
of these experiences, providing an opportunity to clarify earlier responses and
member check (see Creswell, 2009, p. 196). The first two interviews were between
one and two hours long, and were audio-recorded and transcribed. Interpretative
analysis of the data from these first two interviews followed Kelchtermans’s (1994)
narrative-biographical approach, thematically analyzing the data. It was during
this first stage of analysis that I realized that I had encountered a problem. If
understanding may be seen as a deep lake, the interview transcriptions suggested
that I was merely skimming the surface. I wanted to dive in.
One suggestion that my understandings and access to teachers’ knowledge
was limited came from teachers expressing their curiosity as to what other
teachers thought, what others’ responses to my questions were, and whether
others experienced similar challenges in selecting popular repertoire. Specialized
music teaching is often thought of as a solitary pursuit, and indeed four of the
teacher participants were the sole music teacher in their schools. One teacher,
Outi, worked alongside a colleague at a music-specialized school, though she
emphasized that collaboration was usually reserved for school concerts and
performances. Another teacher, Iida, was the only music specialist in the region,
205
and noted that,

we don’t have other [extracurricular] music schools. It’s not possible to learn
music in other levels, there is no system ... if there is somebody playing
violin, they need to go to [a larger city over 300km away] to have the
lessons, we have no teachers, so it is in my hands. (first interview, December
11, 2011)

Whilst not all teachers worked in such remote areas of Finland, all expressed
uncertainty and curiosity regarding how other teachers might respond, as Maria
explained: “I take it that every teacher thinks like this but I’m not sure” (second
interview, November 7, 2011). Three of the teachers related the work of a music
teacher to the Finnish saying Siperia opettaa [Siberia teaches], emphasizing the
urgency and hardships of learning fast in isolated environments.
In addition to identifying the uncertainty stemming from this sense
of isolation, I also noticed limitations of the data during the preliminary data
analysis. Whilst the first stage of analysis following the first two rounds of
interviews identified “common and contrasting threads of experience” (Pearce,
2008, p. 44), meaning was often communicated by a generalized description,
rather than an in-depth active inquiry. One reason for this may have been my
Outsider role in the Finnish music classroom. As a foreigner, I did not share
common educational experiences as musician, student or teacher. Therefore,
teachers described for me, in detail, how things work in their Finnish classrooms,
without addressing why or what for. Another reason may have been the difficulty
for teachers to communicate tacit knowledge of their teaching context and
environment, knowledge that is “often acquired through a process of socialization
through observation, induction and increasing participation” (Eraut, 2000, p.
122). As a result, there may have been a gap between the knowledge generated or
expressed during the research process and tacit understandings of teaching, and
the norms and values inherent, though perhaps assumed and unarticulated, in
selecting popular repertoire for the classroom. Nevertheless, the discussion often
ended at descriptive recollections or generalizations, indicative that “[r]eflection on
practice and making explicit one’s choices is no easy matter” (Pope, 2012, p. 29).
The collaborative potentials of narrative inquiry have been emphasized by
Margaret Olson (2000), suggesting that the sharing and retelling of stories “can
lead to seeing experience from different perspectives and can lead to a new spiral
of retellings” (p. 350). In thinking about experience and perspective, I approached
the data I had from the first two interviews and the preliminary analysis with
many questions: What did teachers think of the stories they had shared with me?
206
What did I think of their stories? What might they think of each other’s stories?
A new spiral of retellings
In an attempt to create an opportunity to look again, to interrogate what already
seemed to have been answered, and to dive deeper into a new spiral of retellings,
I began crafting short factional stories, each approximately a page long, restorying
the music teachers’ own experiences, combining narrative threads, highlighting
similarities and incorporating dissent, raising questions (both teachers’ and my
own) that arose during previous interviews, and emphasizing issues they had
raised that I felt were unresolved or unclear. I here employ Coulter and Smith’s
(2009, p. 587) term crafting (rather than for example, fictionalizing), to emphasize
not only the literary nature of factional stories, but also the inseparability of these
factional stories from research data; factional stories thus incorporate fiction “in
the sense that they are ‘something made’, ‘something fashioned’ ... not that they are
false, [or] unfactual” (Geertz, 1973, p. 15).
Written in the teacher first-person, the composite voice of each factional
story voiced a polyphony in which each of us (teachers and researcher) were
ever-present (Bresler, 2005, p. 174). Simultaneously, the factional stories voiced
none of us in particular, with individual voices rendered invisible through an
anonymous narrator (Leavy, 2013). The stories allowed me as researcher to join
the landscape of music teaching in Finland (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), to test
my interpretations by (re)telling the stories of Finnish music teachers in my own
words and to participate in the conversation. The process of story writing was not
one that aimed simply to represent interview data in storied form, being neither
a matter of “textual arrangement”, thematic categorization or rewriting the story
in terms of plot, location or chronology (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002, p. 332).
Rather, the factional stories may be understood as a reconstructed, (re)storied
“fiction[al] form ... laid over a ‘fact-oriented’ research process” (Agar, 1990, p.
74); a bricolage of the raw data, analyses and further questions as raised by all six
individuals involved.
Teachers emphasized in the first two interviews that teaching music
was not simply a matter of skill transmission, but a personal, emotional,
communicative and collaborative process. In reflecting and attempting to convey
this, the crafting of factional stories adopted an ethnopoetic structural approach
(Blommaert, 2006). Ethnopoetics is an approach to oral poetry that uses page
layouts, stanzas and verses to capture the work “on its own terms” (Foley, 2002,
p. 95), so that the performative elements of particular traditions are not lost in
written text, including emotion. Building on works from the 1980s by Dell Hymes
and Dennis Tedlock, ethnopoetics concentrates on reading, representing and

207
reperforming (Foley, 2002), three processes that may be seen as closely related to
the crafting of factional stories. Riessman (2005) suggests that “an ethnopoetic
structural approach is suitable for lengthy narratives that do not take the classic
temporal story form” (p. 3). Given that six individual voices were combined and
interwoven, an ethnopoetic representation and reperformance was appropriate, in
order to condense the stories, emotions and ideas into tightly packed, page long
factional stories. This meant that words were often unconventionally placed on the
page, and incomplete sentences and non-temporal presentations of narratives were
a common feature.
This encouraged readers to pause.

To physically incorporate different angles and sides of the issue

from different angles and sides of the page

To give space

and time

for reflection.

Organizational researchers Whiteman and Phillips (2008) have noted that

through “adopting different textual strategies ... scholars shape ... knowledge in
different ways” (p. 6). Contrasting with the aims of ethnopoetics, the decision to
present the factional stories in an ethnopoetic form was not so much to capture
and present the performative elements of a story in a textual representation, but to
employ these elements as an intermediate stage in the construction, shaping, and
presentation of knowledge.
Factional stories were titled (I) Trust, (II) Real Rap, (III) Music Speaks
what Words Cannot and (IV) We Wish You a Rockin’ Christmas. These stories
explored the main themes identified by the first stage of data analysis: the role
of the music teacher and the unique nature of music as a school subject; the
difficulties of grading compositions that, whilst of musical quality, challenge the
values and norms of schooling and the school; the associations between emotions
and music for students and the role of textbooks; and the balance between
tradition and innovation in music education. After many rewritings, the four
factional stories were shared with each teacher via email, approximately two weeks
before I met each of them for the third and final interview. Attempting to avoid
misunderstandings as to the purpose these factional stories were to serve (Barone

208
& Eisner, 2012, p. 119), I sent all teachers the same four factional stories and
provided explicit instructions regarding how they had been written, and their

purpose. It was explained to teachers that the stories had been written by me as
researcher, based on my own interpretations of the interviews with all five teachers.
They were told that each factional story was a composite of all teachers’ interview
discussions, my own understandings, and questions that had been raised by either
teachers or myself during the interviews or analysis stages. It was emphasized
that because of the blending of these six voices, it was not expected that teachers
would agree with every (or any) story or perspective, or respond with any degree of
certainty. Factional stories were thus not seen as presentations of data or analyses,
but as tools for reflection, through which I was seeking their own, personal
meanings and knowledge of popular repertoire decisions, no matter how uncertain
or contradictory.
The third round of individual interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed
and approached in a second stage of analysis, together with the data from the first
two interviews, through Polkinghorne’s (1995) analysis of narratives to identify
emergent themes. Factional stories’ role in the research process is illustrated in
Figure 1 below.

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Figure 1. Research process

Crafting factional stories

Before turning to teachers’ responses to the factional stories, and their role
in data collection and meaning-making, this section of the article focuses on
how the factional stories were crafted. For reasons of brevity, all four factional
stories cannot be presented in this article; however excerpts have been included
to illustrate their construction and function. The first factional story explores a
number of important themes that arose during the analysis. All five teachers had
emphasized that they felt that as music teachers, they had unique relationships
210
with their students that differed from those held by teachers of other subjects. As
a result, teachers felt that both they and their students were afforded freedoms to
engage with music, and each other, in a meaningful and democratic way. However,
they too noted that these freedoms made their work as teachers uncertain and
more complex, particularly when dealing with popular musics that so often
expressed ideas and ideals that may be seen to oppose the norms and values of
traditional schooling. These issues are explored in the first factional story, entitled
(I) Trust, which is presented in its entirety in Figure 2.
As an example of the relationship between the raw data from the first two
rounds of interviews and the factional stories, Figure 3 presents short excerpts
from interviews that contributed towards the crafting of the first part of (I) Trust,
serving as a brief illustration of the writing process.
Whilst a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this article, it should
be emphasized that the collaborative construction and interactive interpretations
of factional stories bring with them issues of power and research ethics (see
Schulz, Schroeder, & Brody, 1997) that warrant careful consideration. Accordingly,
attention should be paid to whose stories are included and heard through the
construction, sharing and analysis of data gained from factional stories, and these
issues should be critically reflected upon to allow for multiple voices, meanings
and understandings to emerge.
Factional stories were purposefully written with the aim of nurturing
a large degree of “productive ambiguity” (Barone & Eisner, 2012, p. 118),
introducing questions raised by both teacher participants and myself as researcher
during earlier interviews. As illustration, the second story, entitled (II) Real
Rap (see excerpt in Figure 4), was based on Maria’s experiences of a student’s
improvised rap on stage at a school event, which he wanted to perform to fulfill
the requirements of a graded term project. The performance included profane
language, which generated considerable doubt for Maria with regard to assessing
the performance. The story elaborates on Maria’s experiences, and addresses the
issue of age-appropriateness as raised by Maria, Outi and Iida in relation to
composition and rap musics (among others), includes my own questions that
arose during interviews, and relates to the analyses of the first two interviews and
theoretical readings. It also poses questions that all teachers raised during the
first two interviews regarding how teachers perceive their roles as teachers, the
roles of their students and understandings of school culture. In reflecting upon
the factional stories, teachers were able to learn about and negotiate each other’s
uncertainties and questions.

211
 Instructor. I move fingers on guitar frets and mould hands to drum sticks.
Disciplinarian. I keep the peace.
Friend. I shake bodies to relax them in front of microphones.
Protector. I won’t let anyone laugh at others’ mistakes.
Composer/Arranger. I alter pitches, rhythms and ensembles to suit my pupils.
Role model. I set an example of musicianship and citizenship.
Confidant. I listen to vulnerable words written of romance and heartbreak.
Mentor. I suggest, advise, and correct.
Counselor. I console, empathize and encourage.
Band manager. I manage new bands, rehearsals, recordings and concerts.
Musician. I join in.

I am not simply a teacher. For me to fulfill all of my roles in the music

classroom, there must be trust.

In another subject, topics may be met differently. A textbook is opened in a

health class, today’s lesson is about drugs:

You cannot read about the experience of taking drugs. There are no words
about the emotional or mental effects of smoke or pills or needles. The topic is
restricted to the pages of the textbook, a diagram, the biology, the chemistry.

In music class, a young girl brings the lyrics to a song she would like to learn.

‘they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no’.

There is no biology, there is no chemistry. There is no textbook.

There is much more. There is denial, support, addiction, pride, rebellion, pressure,
excitement, expectation, sadness, consequences, stress, culture, celebrity. Life.

With freedoms, come constraints. In order to create an atmosphere of trust and

openness, there must also be boundaries.

Figure 2. Factional story (I) Trust.

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 Role Excerpts of Teacher Interviews
‘Maybe just play drums with the hands and forget about the foot’ .
Instructor . . ‘oh that is good, you just do it like that, just with the hands, don’t
worry what your foot is doing . . . just like that.’ (Risto)
There are pupils that are so motivated and exactly how you would like
to do with them and there are pupils who . . . are thinking only what
Disciplinarian to drink and when to drink and when to have sex with . . . somebody,
with anybody (laughs) we have to handle all these young people.
(Outi)
We are teaching hand-to-hand and we are discussing all the things
at the same time as we are making music . . . I have noticed they have
Friend problems maybe at home or with other teachers, they mostly come to
me saying ‘please, what can we do, can you help us?’ because I think I
get closer to them because of the subject. (Outi)
Every time someone makes a mistake here [one student says] ‘Whoa
Protector
fail! fail! fail!’ and I’ve talked to him about it. (Maria)
The top guitarist is not there today, so we won’t take the guitar, or
somebody else [won’t] play the difficult solo but plays the chords, so
Composer/
it’s a lot of arranging, rearranging and improvising during the lessons,
Arranger
even though I have exact plans, it depends on the day and the group.
( Julia)
Culturally educated. This is what I want also my pupils to be after
Role model
they leave my school. (Maria)
One girl said to me about one love song we were singing today ‘I was
Confidant singing this to my girlfriend’. She just wanted to show me that she’s
dating with a girl, saying it only to me. (Iida)
He was a really good heavy, heavy drummer but . . . quite unsure
Mentor about his playing if we are playing some beat music . . . so it was quite
easy to teach, and he was a very . . . he took my advice. (Risto)
She was so nervous, obviously very nervous, couldn’t watch me in the
eyes . . . She was out of tune almost all of the time . . . What can I say?
Counselor I have to be their support, not the one who judges them, I have to
understand my own affect as an educator . . . responsibility—that’s the
word. ( Julia)
I am in charge of the [school] performances . . . so I have to have that
Band manager in my mind also, that we have to practise and have something that
you can present. (Maria)

The students they expect that I can play every instrument as well as
possible and I can show everything so they can be disappointed if I
Musician
am saying ‘well, actually I couldn’t do this now . . . I need to practise
it’ . . . they are like ‘teacher! So bad! Couldn’t play it’. (Laughs). (Iida)

Figure 3. Excerpts of discussions from interviews 1 and 2 that contributed

towards the composition of (I) Trust.

213
The degree of indeterminacy has been seen to greatly affect and shape reader
responses to text (Barone, 2001; Fish, 1980; Iser, 1974). This is related to “how
much ‘textual ambiguity’ the reader may encounter wherein the reader can insert
meaning” (Atkinson & Mitchell, 2010, p. 10). The ambiguity, indeterminacy
and questions raised in the factional stories all contributed towards the
creation of a space to engage with other voices, within which meaning may be
constructed.

A week later I was to give Niko a grade for his performance. A very good
performance. I couldn’t give him the highest grade, the rap simply was not age-
appropriate. What a strange reason. Do we limit what elderly people listen to
because it is not “old-people’s music”? Do we allow small children to listen to
Tchaikovsky even though they do not understand the harmonies or appreciate
the meaning? Why does age-appropriateness only relate to young people and
the music that belongs to them?

It was difficult for me to explain. “Niko, I know that swear words and all of
this rebellious stuff are part of the rap culture, but they are not a part of school
culture,” I had to say. He really was a very good musician, and rapper,

but I couldn’t grade him as a rapper, I had to grade him as a student.

Figure 4. Excerpt from factional story (II) Real Rap.

Participant responses to factional stories

Held approximately two weeks after sharing the factional stories with teachers
via email, the interviews in the third round were significantly longer than the
others, lasting between two and five hours, with informal discussion sometimes
continuing beyond the “interview” setting. Three of the teachers came to their
interviews with notes that they had written during their two weeks of reading and
reflecting on the four factional stories which they wanted to discuss during our
final meeting, suggesting that the experiences of reading these stories extended
far beyond a traditional member check. The factional stories may be seen to
have provided the bases, but not boundaries, for discussion, with degrees of
indeterminacy that served “a heuristic purpose ... to evoke ... a vicarious experience
that reduces certainty about the matters in which the dimensions of the ‘outside’
world are regarded” (Barone, 2001, p. 738), in other words, making the familiar
unfamiliar, and interrogating the seemingly obvious.

214
 Through this uncertainty, factional stories allowed for reflection to take
place through interacting with their own, now distanced, stories, and other
teachers’ experiences and narratives. This weaving together of five teachers’ and one
researcher’s voices, allowed not only for connections between different experiences
to be made, but also invited dissent and new questions. With isolation being
characteristic of so many teachers’ experiences (Little, 1990), it may be seen that
there are few voices that are “generic to all teachers and teaching” (Hargreaves,
1996, p. 13). Thus, rather than being representative of the teacher collective, the
composite narration of the factional stories created a space for teacher voices to
meet, agree or disagree, be comforted or challenged, and raise uncertainties. This
highlighted the “interplay between personal interests and experience and societal
values, norms and knowledge” (Garrison, 2011, p. 10), foregrounded conversation,
and welcomed complexity. In this way, it may be seen that the sharing of factional
stories, and discussion that ensued, allowed for social processes that delved deeper
into teachers’ experiences and the meanings they ascribed to them (Leavy, 2013).
The amalgamation of six individuals’ experiences in the single first-
person voice of the factional stories did not prevent teachers from recognizing
their own words in particular stories, and many were comforted by confirmations
or contradictions in the experiences of others, moving from “a state of doubt,
hesitation, perplexity, mental difficulty in which thinking originates ... to find
material that will resolve the doubt, settle and dispose of the perplexity” (Dewey,
1933, p. 12). This is illustrated by Outi’s exclamation on finding the account of her
own experiences in the factional stories:

Outi: Ah! My story! This was the closest to me!

Researcher: Did it make sense when I retold your story?
Outi: Yes, for me. What did others say? [Reads aloud passages in the
factional story that were based on other teachers’ interview data]
... yes ... So this is normal! [Laughs].(Outi, third interview, May
29, 2012)

When experiences are distanced from the personal, educational psychologist

Kegan (1994) has suggested that it is easier to engage in reflection as “an active
demonstration of a mind that can stand enough apart from its own opinions,
values, rules and definitions to avoid being completely identified with them” (p.
231). With the addition of five other voices to the discussion, teachers had more
material upon which to reflect, and situate their own experiences and beliefs. This
may be seen in the beginnings of a conversation with Iida regarding one of the
factional stories that elaborated upon one of her experiences in the classroom.
215
The factional story described her feelings that she had missed some of the signs
of a young student’s emotional instability and problems, expressed through
songwriting. In previous interviews, Iida’s focus had remained on the particular
student and her reflections on that particular incident. However, when the story
was interwoven with other teacher stories about emotions and music education,
she broadened her focus from the incident described in the story to address
student wellbeing in general, and how students relate to the school as institution:

I found [my story] there, and I just started thinking about this past year. Is
it always good that we listen to so much [popular music that the students
choose] to do? I think we need to make a good balance. It is difficult ... a
teacher should be able to [ensure] everybody’s wellbeing but it’s impossible
really. I think some people they really cannot feel well in the school, school
is a system ... I like to be in the system. But I have learnt that school is not
a good place, or the best place for everybody, and they need maybe special
support if they just cannot fit in this atmosphere. (Iida, third interview, May
16, 2012)

The inclusion of many voices in the formation of stories may be seen to resonate
with Dewey’s (1958) understandings of experience as transactional. In this
sense, meaning is constructed through the relationships between voices and the
relationships and experiences that emerge between textual factional stories and
the teacher-reader. Louise Rosenblatt emphasized in her transactional theory
of literature (1938/1995) that transactions between the reader and text permit
“emphasis on the to-and-fro, spiraling, nonlinear, continuously reciprocal influence
of reader and text in the making of meaning ... [which] ‘happens’ during the
transaction between the reader and the signs on the page” (p. xvi). However,
beyond a text–reader relationship, the experiences/transactions that took place
through the use of factional stories were additionally complex, due to the way
in which the stories were constructed. As both representative of, and distanced
from, each reader’s personal stories and voices, insights and transactions between
teachers themselves were facilitated without necessitating a face-to-face meeting.
This also allowed for reflections upon the self, one’s own pedagogical beliefs and
teaching practices, and also those of others. In this way, factional stories aimed to
“generate a new relation between a human being and her environment—her life,
community, world” (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 39), allowing for both personal
and broader sociocultural meanings to emerge through collaborative reflection and
inquiry.

216
Beyond the traditional member check
With factional stories distanced from the personal account, teachers were
encouraged to further explicate their thoughts and understandings. For instance,
discussing the first story, (I) Trust, teachers agreed with all of the teacher roles
listed, Outi and Maria added further roles that they felt were missing from the list,
and all teachers explained how these roles worked in their own teaching practice:
which were foregrounded, which were less important, and how these different
roles were fluid and interrelated (indeed, sometimes in conflict). As Iida explained:
For me to be a musician, it’s maybe not so important [when I’m teaching
at school]. I want to be maybe a mentor more, and sometimes I need to be
a band manager. But on the other hand, I want to play always with them, I
want to join the group. (Iida, third interview, May 16, 2012)

Although teachers did not disagree with any roles in particular, some took great
care to clarify certain roles, ensuring that my interpretation of interview data
was correct when they used particular terms, or spoke about particular issues. For
instance, one role that was focused upon by all of the teachers was that of friend:

This word friend is to have ... a good friendship, but you can’t be a friend.
(Risto, third interview, May 18, 2012)

I know that a friend role, it’s not the same way that they have their
own friends or I have my own friends. I think that friend means that I
understand how they feel and I come a little bit closer, but they can’t get
too close to me. That kind of friend ... I have that responsibility. (Outi, third
interview, May 29, 2012)

The inclusion of this role also highlighted dissenting voices between teachers,
particularly in the relationships they felt they had, or ought to have, with their
students. These roles were also discussed as they related to other factional stories,
for example the second story, (II) Real Rap. The professional and personal
narratives of themselves as teachers—as protector, as leader, as colleague—were
not only inextricably intertwined with the unique nature of teaching music as
a subject, but also how they perceived their students, as child or as young adult.
Whilst Maria emphasized her preference to have a more “adult” role in the
classroom, Iida expressed her challenges in separating her teacher identity from
that which was closer in age and experience to her students. Julia adopted a more
reflective, analytical approach to discussing these relationships, raising the issue of
power as a key factor:

217
 When you are with young pupils, like teenagers, I think most important is
that you are a grown-up with a heart and a brain ... you have to also take
charge, and say what to do. (Maria, third interview, May 11, 2012)

I have heard so many things now [from students], I think they really trust
me. Sometimes I think should they trust me? Should I now call their
parents? About these kinds of topics. I’m not afraid for them, it’s not a
safety issue, it’s only privacy. They really share their thoughts. (Iida, third
interview, May 16, 2012)

I believe I have very deep thoughts about those issues and for me personally
in my own life also— empowerment and emancipation are very important,
and trusting people is an important thing. To recognize as a teacher that
these questions of who is in charge and who has the power, are inevitably
present in those situations. Whether you want it or not. You can say that I
am a friend with my pupils and we have a very straight relationship and can
talk to each other almost about anything ... Even after that, and before that,
there are always questions of power present. ( Julia, third interview, May 10,
2012)

Reflections on the literary elements of factional stories

The literary elements of factional stories were raised by teachers when describing
their initial responses to reading the stories. Using the factional story (I) Trust as
example, the technique of listing teacher roles was intended to not only convey
the content, but also the emotion of previous interview discussions, that the work
of a music teacher was at times overwhelming, requiring the ability to navigate
many roles and skills instantaneously. Iida’s response suggested that this technique
brought to mind thoughts about the nature of her work as “kokonaisvaltaista
[holistic, or all-consuming], that you cannot easily put the work away when you
are on holiday or when you are spending your time at home cooking, you think
about the kids, or the music” (third interview, May 16, 2012). However, Maria
initially found the structure confusing, as she explained, “my first reaction was,
are they different lines? Like an instructor says this ... but then I thought they are
the pupils, but then I understood, ‘composer’, ‘arranger’—it’s the teacher” (third
interview, May 11, 2012).
Teachers also reacted to the ethnopoetic structure of the factional stories,
noting that the heteroglossic (Bakhtin, 1981) style of the stories was able to
capture the experiences and/or emotions of a music teacher, without directing
the reader to a specific interpretation. This implied that factional stories were not

218
neutrally mirroring reality, revealing preconstituted meanings (Bochner, Ellis, &
Tillman-Healy, 1997), but rather expanding the scope of what teachers could raise
in interviews, urging them to consider additional issues, generate new meanings
and additional concerns that any of us felt were relevant:

There are a lot of things in this page. Big ideas, from different sides,
different perspectives. Different views. (Outi, third interview, May 29, 2012)

This was like reading poetry ... writing a very good report, but at the
same time like a writer, like novelist, or artist in text ... You haven’t found
things from archives, or studied some lists. You have met real people, from
real life who have told you real life experiences, some of them very lively
experiences, and in themselves very descriptive [yet the stories] let the
listener make their own interpretations. ( Julia, third interview, May 10,
2012)

If not a mirror, it may be assumed that factional stories serve as prisms, refracting
ideas allowing for alternative perspectives, as described by Riessman (2005).
However, a prism still serves a passive role. Rather, factional stories may be seen
as an active “tool of reality construction” (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 12), reinterpreting
and refining the meaning of data in collaboration with the other voices on the
page and those of the readers.
Reflective thinking and meaning-making
The distanced account of teaching experiences provided by the factional stories
encouraged teachers to question what was previously certain, and reflect critically
upon the stories of the composite story-teller. As noted by Golden-Biddle
and Locke (1993), working with stories draws upon the “criticality dimension”
of convincing narrative texts, challenging readers to “re-examine their beliefs
and suppositions about the world and the meaning of research” (Whiteman &
Phillips, 2008, p. 291). The descriptions of teacher roles led Iida, the youngest
and the teacher with the least years of school-teaching experience, to an in-depth
questioning of what it means to be a teacher, and whether she was able to fulfill
her own expectations:

219
 I was thinking, am I able to be [all of these] ... sometimes I have found
that I am not as big an authority in the classroom as I would like to be ...
Sometimes I am thinking in my own head, what is this role of a teacher?
Am I really sure of how I should be? Am I enough adult for them? Should
I even talk [with students] about these kinds of subjects [that popular music
raises]? (Iida, third interview, May 16, 2012)

In contrast, Julia, a teacher with 16 years of teaching experience, expressed doubt

whether any teacher could satisfy all of the roles, and related such expectations to
the importance of ethical reflection for her as a teacher:

This tells a lot about the sides of a music teacher, but it easily gives the
impression that this music teacher, or this imaginary music teacher, or the
many teachers behind this text, they have a false perception of themselves,
that they are perfect ... Nobody can fulfill all of these [roles] ... you have
to question your own principles, your own morals and ethics ... you have
to understand your responsibility to have a kind of inner discussion with
yourself, all the time, “On what moral grounds do I base this idea, or
opinion which I try to transfer or give as an example?” It’s a constant
questioning. ( Julia, third interview, May 10, 2012)

Both Iida and Julia’s comments illustrate Dewey’s notion of reflective thinking,
in the sense that the transactions that took place between the individual and the
voices included in the factional stories encouraged new meaning-making, through
making connections between past experiences and expectations. As Dewey stated:

To “learn from experience” is to make a backward and forward connection

between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in
consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes trying; an experiment
with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes
instruction— discovery of the connection of things. (1916/2004, p. 134)

Creating a methodological space for collaborative meaning

construction

The third round of interviews illustrated a shift from recollections of past

events, the “told stories of participants” (Clandinin et al., 2006) to an “invitation
to problem finding” (Bruner, 2002, p. 20), learning through stories (together).
Through approaching factional stories as both the source and representation
of knowledge and experience, teacher participants were able to gain insight
220
into each other’s experiences and knowledge, engaging in collaborative inquiry
without necessitating a face-to-face meeting. Through the inclusion of both the
researcher’s and participants’ voices in the text, knowledge and meaning emerged
not from the capacity of the factional stories to capture them, but were, rather,
co-constructed through the provision of a methodological space. Within this
space, teacher participants were able to engage in the interpretation and analysis
process together with one another and the researcher, mediating, broadening,
correcting and deepening understandings. In conclusion, through their potential
to facilitate communication, factional stories may thus be seen not only as a lens
through which we may look again, look differently, or look more deeply at the
complexities of teaching and learning music in schools, though they certainly
do encourage us to do so. They may, perhaps more importantly, serve as a tool to
create a space within which the reader and researcher may dive in, and “enter the
story and vicariously experience the events portrayed” (Phillips, 1995, p. 634), in
collaborative communication, negotiation, reflection and inquiry.

Note
1. It should be noted that teachers, when quoted, are quoted directly. Often
their words are not expressed in grammatically correct English, but I do
not feel it my place to correct them, and do not feel it has affected their
ability to express meaning, nor my understandings of what they intended
to convey.

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Appendix 5: Participant information form

Hei [participant name],

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. I have found your contact details from
your school website. I am a doctoral student in the music education department at
the Sibelius Academy, conducting research on how Finnish music teachers make
decisions about using popular music with grades 7-9.

I hope that you might be interested in taking part in my doctoral research project.
It would involve two interviews in November or December, and one next year.
Each interview will be approximately 1-2 hours long and could be held in your
classroom at school. Many teachers have great stories to tell and the questions
in these interviews will focus on your own stories as a teacher, your students and
your experiences with choosing and teaching popular music for grades 7-9. Your
identity and the school you work at will remain anonymous when the study is
published. You can withdraw from the study, or any part of it, at any time, and
any information you have told me will not be included in the research analysis or
reports.

There is not very much information about how teachers decide what popular
music to, or what not to, teach, and I hope that this study might help other
teachers, researchers and education students understand some of the processes
involved. If you are interested, please let me know via email [email address], and
we can arrange the dates and times for the interviews. I have not booked any
particular time to visit [name of city] yet, so we can meet at a time that suits you
best!

If you have any questions before you decide if you want to participate or not,
please do not hesitate to ask.

Best wishes,
Alexis Kallio
[contact information]

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Appendix 6: Interview guides

Interview 1
Could you tell me a bit about your own musical background?

What are your experiences with popular music?

How did you decide to become a music teacher?

How long have you been teaching for?

In what ways do you think that your personal music history shapes who you are as
a music teacher?

What do you feel the expectations are of you as a Finnish music teacher?
Who expects these things?
Role of the curriculum
Who makes up the school community
What if different people expect different things?
Are there any expectations you find challenging or difficult?

How do you find popular repertoire to teach?

What do you look for when choosing repertoire?
Do students bring their own music to class? Why/not?
Are there any songs or pieces you would not allow students to share with
the class?
Textbooks?

Can you describe for me a typical class of yours where students are leaning popular
music?
What happens?
Have you chosen this approach for specific reasons?

What do you see as the point of including popular music in your lessons?
What do you hope students learn?
Why do you think those are priorities for you as a teacher?
Could you describe a lesson that shows how these look in
practice?
How do these aims influence which musics you choose?
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 How do these aims influence the way in which it is taught?

Can you tell me about one lesson or moment that was particularly rewarding for
you as a music teacher teaching popular music?

Can you tell me about one lesson or moment that was particularly challenging for
you as a music teacher teaching popular music?

Interview 2
The curriculum lists one of the objectives of music education as to ‘support
students’ overall growth’. How do you understand that?
Do you think that this is something music is especially good at, or is it for
all subjects?
Responsibility as a teacher

Are there any songs or pieces you feel you could not include in school music
lesson?
Why?
Who influences these decisions?
To what extend does the group of students affect what can and cannot be
included?
Can you give me an example from your own teaching?

Have you ever been advised or taught about which musics you should, or shouldn’t
teach?
How do you learn to deal with these challenges that arise?

Interview 3
What do you react to first in this story?
Why?
Can you tell me about your own experiences?
What does this mean for you in your own teaching?
What would you do?
How would you explain this?

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Appendix 7A: Factional Story Information

Dear [insert teacher name],

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me for one final interview. I have thoroughly
enjoyed speaking with you and the other four teachers and look forward to
continuing these discussions.

During the interviews many of the teachers raised questions and wanted to
know what each other thought on particular issues. In addition, many teachers
had similar experiences, though may have understood them in different ways.
In order to explore these ideas further I have written four short stories. Each of
these stories is around a page long, and includes things you may have told me, and
things the other teachers have talked about too. As such, the narrator of each story
is no one in particular, but has elements of all of the teachers I have interviewed,
and myself – as I have included some of my own questions and ideas in there too.

I thought that we could use these stories as the basis for our final discussion,
though if you have other things you wish to talk about this is okay too.

You are not expected to agree, or disagree with any of these stories. Actually, if you
are unsure what you think, this is okay too, they are just a few ideas and themes
that I would like to talk about together. If you have any questions about these
stories or our final meeting, please be in touch.

Best wishes,

Alexis Kallio
[contact details]

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Appendix 7B: Factional Stories

(I) Trust
Instructor. I move fingers on guitar frets and mould hands to drum sticks.
Disciplinarian. I keep the peace.
Friend. I shake bodies to relax them in front of microphones.
Protector. I won’t let anyone laugh at others’ mistakes.
Composer/Arranger. I alter pitches, rhythms and ensembles to suit my pupils.
Role model. I set an example of musicianship and citizenship.
Confidant. I listen to vulnerable words written of romance and heartbreak.
Mentor. I suggest, advise, and correct.
Counselor. I console, empathize and encourage.
Band manager. I manage new bands, rehearsals, recordings and concerts.
Musician. I join in.

I am not simply a teacher. For me to fulfill all of my roles in the music classroom,
there must be trust.

In another subject, topics may be met differently. A textbook is opened in a health

class, today’s lesson is about drugs:

You cannot read about the experience of taking drugs. There are no words
about the emotional or mental effects of smoke or pills or needles. The
topic is restricted to the pages of the textbook, a diagram, the biology, the
chemistry.

In music class, a young girl brings the lyrics to a song she would like to learn.

‘they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no’.

There is no biology, there is no chemistry. There is no textbook.

There is much more. There is denial, support, addiction, pride, rebellion,

pressure, excitement, expectation, sadness, consequences, stress, culture,
celebrity. Life.

With freedoms, come constraints. In order to create an atmosphere of trust and

openness, there must also be boundaries.

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(II) Real rap?

We have a project week in our school, where each student works intensively in one
chosen subject instead of normal classes. The music projects were to be performed
at the school open day concert and would go towards each pupil’s grades for the
term. One of the students who had chosen a music project was Niko. He was a
talented grade 9 pupil, but I could see he was getting frustrated towards the end
of the year, and was more than ready for the freedoms and responsibilities of high
school.

Niko had decided to write the music and lyrics for a rap performance. He brought
his laptop to school and showed me carefully arranged rhythmic and melodic
loops, and had refined his ideas to a well thought-out and quite professionally
created piece of music.

¨what’s the rap about Niko? Have you got any words written down yet?¨

He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. Words had been scribbled
over, new words written above them – again, crossed out and rewritten. The rap
he had written was a commentary on things he felt were not fair in his world, his
responses to the many changes that were happening in the world, as reported on
the news, and his own frustrations, being treated as a child in this world, when
he felt he was adult. It was personal, cleverly constructed and well articulated, but
there seemed far too few words for the accompanying music track,

¨are you planning on writing any more Niko?¨

Niko said that he wanted to freestyle, like ¨real rappers do¨, and I agreed it was a
good opportunity for him to try, and we planned some ideas in advance and spoke
for a little while about improvisation and the best ways for him to approach it.

The big performance day arrived, and the school hall was full of students, teachers
and a few parents who had come to the open day. He had worked on the loops
after we met and they were even better, and his rapping was effortless. He had
practiced, and was skillfully – and quickly – rhyming along to the beats. I could see
feet tapping and a few of the students had started to clap along. His rapping went
so quickly, so quickly in fact, that I almost missed...

The news, the rules, it’s all a sign

they want to see us standin’ in some motherfuckin’ line

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A few heads turned. A few eyes blinked. A few mouths tensed at the corners.

I hoped that Niko’s rap went fast enough that most of the audience missed it, and
he continued with the same fluency as the rest of the performance, and walked
off stage to an enthusiastic applause. I was ushering a group of nervous seventh
graders on stage and didn’t have any time to react.

A week later I was to give Niko a grade for his performance. A very good
performance. I couldn’t give him the highest grade, the rap simply was not
age-appropriate. What a strange reason. Do we limit what elderly people listen
too because it is not ¨old-people’s music¨? Do we allow small children to listen
to Tchaikovsky even though they do not understand the harmonies or appreciate
the meaning? Why does age-appropriateness only relate to young people and the
music that belongs to them?

It was difficult for me to explain. ¨Niko, I know that swear words and all of this
rebellious stuff are part of the rap culture, but they are not a part of school culture¨
I had to say. He really was a very good musician, and rapper,

but I couldn’t grade him as a rapper, I had to grade him as a student.

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(III) Music speaks what words cannot
I turned the corner, coffee in hand, to see Sofia waiting at the classroom door.
She was a small, quiet and shy seventh grader, and was waiting almost every day
with another song she had written at home to show me. I knew that she had few
friends at the school and mostly kept to herself. Except for her music, which she
openly shared with me. It wasn’t difficult to be supportive, she was a talented
songwriter and musician. She wrote beautiful songs, but very sad music, and very
sad lyrics.

I often wondered how such a young, silent girl could write such emotionally heavy
songs. Did she have such a vivid imagination, or were these really her own
experiences, emotions and thoughts?

I wanted to give her the encouragement she needed to find a voice through music,
to become empowered by gaining confidence in her abilities, and as a person.

But it was quite extreme.

She would bring me so many songs, and all of them were so depressing. I
reassured her there was no pressure to write so much music so quickly, but with
each week she came to play me more and more songs.

One day I arrived to school and Sofia was not at the classroom door. I didn’t think
too much of it. Perhaps she had made a friend to share her songs with. Perhaps
she had other activities on that day. There was a teacher meeting in the afternoon.
The principal informed us that Sofia had suffered a breakdown and would not be
returning to school that term. Sofia did not return to school that term, nor the
next. Her parents had enrolled her in a hospital school due to her psychological
problems.

I was so upset. I felt terribly guilty. I couldn’t see that her songwriting could be
anything other than a very talented young girl, now I realized that it was a
symptom of her psychological problems. Earlier in the year I felt responsible for
supporting her musical creativity and expression, now I felt partly responsible for
her illness. I had encouraged her, and perhaps allowed her to go deeper into these
thoughts and emotions than was healthy.I now teach Sofia’s younger sister. She
doesn’t write her own music, but often asks if the class can learn particular songs.
More often than not, these songs are very negative, sad lyrics and depressing
themes, and I feel a tension between giving her confidence by allowing her choices
to be learnt in class and my concerns related to her sister’s experiences.

237
I understand that music can act as a channel for emotions, a sort of therapy, but I
also understand that music can influence people, their thoughts and feelings.

¨perhaps we could learn a song from the textbook this week¨

is sometimes a much safer option.

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(IV) We wish you a rockin’ Christmas
Christmas was approaching and each school day seemed to be getting slower
and quieter. Snow fell to a white blanket over the playground and roof tops, a
tall Christmas tree stood decorated with twinkling lights at the school entrance,
and it seemed as though the whole school was ready to spend the holidays with
their families. All except for one class. My eighth grade class, who were noisier,
more excited, more boisterous than ever. I had given them the traditional task of
performing a musical of the Christmas nativity at the end of year concert, and
together we had decided to adapt and modernize the story.

In the process, Mary, Joseph and the three wise men (who were now three wise
women) had been relocated downtown, the donkey was a scooter, there was no
room at the local Scandic or Sokos hotels rather than an inn, and the baby lay in a
sled, instead of a manger. The text from the bible was adapted into local slang, and
the class were enthusiastically composing music to set the words to.

Groups of students composed the beats, while others sat with guitars, and others
debated bass lines. Everyone was involved. I thought it was wonderful, and it had
become quite a polished performance by the time the annual Christmas concert
arrived, and they performed as energetically as they had rehearsed, clearly enjoying
themselves.

After the concert I joined other teachers for our staff celebrations. Candles had
been lit, smells of glögi and pipari filled the staffroom and Vesa-Matti Loiri was
singing carols through the CD player. A few teachers came to speak with me,

¨Did you let this happen?¨ was not what I was expecting.

I hadn’t let this happen. I had encouraged it, and enjoyed it!
No one told me about any rules about religious topics.

I think I would find my work quite difficult if there were set rules about what we
can and cannot do, but it seems that even though there are no written or spoken
rules, there are some traditions or topics, that are sensitive.

We only perform religious music at a few occasions, such as Christmas and spring,
as I think I would also make some people, such as parents or other staff at the
school, upset if I did too much religious repertoire.
I often think that if I did select too much of one thing, or didn’t select something
else, a parent might phone me or the school to complain – or at least to ask
questions. But that has never happened. Nobody has ever called me about my

239
choice of repertoire. I do imagine that I might get some phone calls if I did make
inappropriate decisions though. It is strange that I imagine what ‘inappropriate’
music might be, based on imagined disapproving phone calls.

But this experience of the modernized nativity had me asking questions. The
curriculum mentions the importance of transferring cultural traditions from one
generation to the next, but also revitalizing ways of thinking and acting. Is there
a balance between traditional and modern, canon and creativity, familiar and
unknown, old and young? Whose values, principles or criteria create and maintain
school culture?

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Appendix 8: Interview excerpt

Excerpt from Interview 2 with Iida

Alexis: Is that part of the music that doesn’t fit too? Like... if it doesn’t fit
with that school’s culture? Or is it more a personal thing for you?

Iida: Well, maybe it’s the feeling, like, ghetto. Or something that is
very far from school, that it’s not so easy to... you cannot make
it somehow in a realistic way, in the school. And it would be very
hard to describe that, and somehow go into it very deep. Maybe
it is also my own experience of life, I haven’t been... I have had my
way, and for me certain styles are much easier to know or explain.

Alexis: When you say it would be hard, what in particular would be

difficult?

Iida: Not exactly the music, but, we say in Finland ulkomusiikkilistaa

[from outside of music]

Alexis: Like things that are associated with it?

Iida: Yes exactly.

Alexis: Do you mean that there are kinds of music that are automatically
associated with those non-school sorts of things?

Iida: Yeah, I think so. Like black metal. I think it’s good to talk about
the ethical aspect of lyrics... but these, for me, it’s very hard to
even understand why they... i haven’t any - I’m not in the church,
I’m not religious, so for me it wouldn’t be deserting my own
ethical way of thinking, but I think it’s so far away when I think
of these really hardcore black metal lyrics. Like the singing
‘raaaaah’, it would be very hard for me to learn how to do it in
a very good way, when I’m not just some stupid teacher who’s
trying to teach something that doesn’t fit, or which is just very
hard. Of course if there would be somebody very much asking
about it or very motivated, I think it’s...they - also the kids, they
242
(Iida cont.) maybe don’t bring this kind of music.

Alexis: Do you think that’s because they don’t like it or because they have
a certain understanding of what school music is?

Iida: Yeah, maybe they understand already. They are not expecting that
I’m teaching all the music in the life. Of course we can talk about
it, I don’ t think there is any such subject which we cannot take to
the discussion.

Alexis: You said that your ethics don’t come from religion or things like
that -

Iida: Well, my ethics come from many things. My father is anyway a

priest, so I have that kind of background, but my parents divorced
and I was living with my mother. I think maybe the biggest
influence in the ethical aspect is the people I have met and a good
way of thinking how life is, or what is... how people are different.
I don’t know. But I have found somehow the idea of the good
person or how you should live, and how you should think. I try to
use it as my ethical background but I don’t know what all the
things are.

Alexis: Do you think that could be seen in your teaching?

Iida: Yeah, I think we are whole persons in the school, so I’m not able
to hide it. Sometimes it is possible and I say something and they
can notice that I don’t respect this side of school rules or some
thing as much as some other teacher. I hate for example rules just
because of the rules. I need always that there is always some
thing... a reason. Many times in the school when there is a lot of
the rules, some of them are really stupid ones. Or at least they
sound, when they are not fitting with the concept of what we are
doing and... yeah... but it’s not coming every day, this is only now
and then. Once a year, twice a year, something like that. I was also
saying that maybe I stay in the school when we are going now,
like tomorrow is the day when we go to the church and I am
saying that maybe I can stay and put the music equipments on
and you know... do the... of course it’s also saying for the pupils
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Iida (cont.) I’m maybe not respecting the church so much. I don’t need or
want to be there, I’m staying at the school. I have also been doing
some religious stuff at the school, if there is some religious party
or something coming. It doesn’t make a difference, I can also do
it.

Alexis: A lot of the Finnish schools seem ot have church services. Do you
feel that your school as a religious foundation?

Iida: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s quite liberal. Maybe this Sámi
culture makes it so, because Sámi people, they can be in the
church and be quite religious but also they have these
shamanistic beliefs and they are getting along quite well I think.
So it makes people more, when people can understand very well
many different kinds of people. They are open-minded.

Alexis: You were saying something about the associations of music that
make it difficult to include. I thought that was very interesting.

Iida: Yeah, it’s not only the lyrics, it’s also the atmosphere, the strong
spirit that the music makes. When it’s very hardcore, aggressive
or so deep somehow, also when we have been playing this grunge
music or other metal music. It depends also on the persons which
I have in this classroom. If I have very sensitive personalities, it
goes very... I notice from them, when they take the spirit or how
the music influences them. Of course it’s not... I think I shouldn’t
be afraid of these atmospheres when we are not only happy and
not only laughing. There could be so deep and also sad feelings
that we are sharing in the music, but maybe it’s harder when they
really need to concentrate the whole day at school then they are
just visiting the music class and playing something very, very
hardcore. I can think some school groups go in the break to play
in the classroom, and I think they have some therapy bands when
they are playing very hardcore and they want to put all their
energy and all their bad feelings in, also good things, but
everything. I think it’s some kind of therapy, but I don’t know if
the teacher fits into this kind of concept.

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Appendix 9: Illustration of thematic categorization

In this section of the dissertation I offer a brief illustration of how the

thematic categories of the analysis were identified from, and applied to interview
data. What follows may be of most use when read alongside the three tables pro-
vided in chapter four of this dissertation, of the thematic categories of the vertical
and horizontal analyses of this research, and the thematic categories of the analysis
of narratives.

Excerpt from the beginning of interview 3, discussing the first factional story
with Julia

Julia: Anyway, what would you like to ask? Maybe we can go through
one by one. One thing I would like to mention, that I see is
missing, this tells a lot about the sides of the music teacher but

it easily gives the impression that this music teacher, or this
imaginary music teacher, or the many teachers behind this text,
they have a false perception of themselves, that they are perfect.
That they can do everything like Gods, because there are so
many roles. Nobody can fulfil all these.
Uncertainty: Teacher’s role

For me, these different roles, I recognize them in the work, and
in myself, but like I say, with freedom comes responsibility, also
it is with different roles. I try to be a protector and mentor and
guide and role model, these go very deep, like role modeling,
you have to question your own principles, your own morals and
ethics, all the time.
What makes a great music teacher: Reflection
Uncertainty: Teacher’s role

246
 ( Julia cont.) So (sigh) you can never be kind of ready, in all of these, and
perfect at the same time. But these are things you can recognize
in your work, if you think it deeply. And at the same time you
have to understand your responsibility to have a kind of inner
discussion with yourself, all the time, ‘am I giving a good example
if I do this?’ ‘on what moral grounds do I base this idea, or opin-
ion which I try to transfer or give as an example?’ it’s a constant
questioning.
Uncertainty: Identifying problems;
Situation and context;
Teacher’s role

Alexis: Is that only questioning after things have already happened, like
you talked about earlier?

Julia: Both after and before. If I know I have something coming ahead,
of course I try to prepare beforehand and I think what kinds of
things we are doing, what kind of roles I am doing and what
if this comes, what do I do then, what do I say then, and why
do I say this? of course I think about this. I think the nature of
reflection is that kind of, both. Then you wouldn’t learn from your
self-reflection if you only looked backwards, ‘oh, I did this oops!’
(laughs) (sings) ‘oops, I did it again’. I think one part of learning
to become better or more skillful as a teacher is to be able to
think beforehand, to be able to reflect. I don’t believe I’m the only
teacher who does this. I believe every teacher does this, more or
less, and more or less consciously or unconsciously. But this is
just a feeling, that this... this self reflection which consists of also
thinking beforehand, it kind of gets more space when you are
older teacher and you have more years behind you. First it’s more
like ‘oops, what did I do?’ (laughs)
What makes a great music teacher: Adaptability;
Reflection
Uncertainty: Situation and context;
Identifying problems; Teacher’s role
Expectations of a music teacher: teacher self: Professionalism

247
Alexis: So is this reflecting and thinking beforehand a way to anticipate
the challenges and problems that might -

Julia: (interrupts) but then again, school life is always somehow unex-
pected. You can anticipate and expect things to come, but then
again it’s always changing and something new comes up. Every
day. So what I’m trying to say is that you cannot be prepared for
everything. You’re never prepared for everything.

Alexis: So did I understand it right that you understand that these

different roles take priority at different times?

Julia: It’s very flexible. And somehow different ones come out intuitive-
ly, depending on the situation, and the more experienced teacher
you are, or become, the more consciously it happens. First it
happened for me at least very intuitively, and I afterwards under-
stood what roles I took there. But now, I more or less understand
it already when in that situation.
Uncertainty: Situation and context;
Identifying problems;
Teacher’s role

Alexis: This idea of trust came up in all of the interviews, and it mainly
focused on the trust between teacher and students. I wonder if we
can talk about the importance of trust in your work more.

Julia: Of course it is important. With your colleagues. But it’s a two-

way street, meaning that it doesn’t only depend on yourself.
Sometimes I’ve recognized that myself, as a teacher, as a member
of school professionals, that the trust is more present, the real
honest trust, is more present between teacher and pupil than
teacher and another colleague. Of course there are exceptions.
Every work place I have worked I have had really good colleagues
that I can totally trust, but there are other people too. More or
less trustworthy.
Expectations of a music teacher: Staff;
Students;
Teacher self: professionalism

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Alexis: So do you see the relationship between teacher and student as
more simple in a way? The roles are more defined?

Julia: Maybe. I don’t know if there are power issues there. Because,
always when you are somebody’s teacher, even though you don’t
want to use power, for me particularly I have questions of owner-
ship, emancipation and empowerment, I believe I have very deep
thoughts about those issues and for me personally in my own life
also – empowerment and emancipation are very important, and
trusting people is an important thing. To recognize as a teacher
that these questions of who is in charge and who has the power,
are inevitably present in those situations. Whether you want it or
not.
Expectations of a music teacher: Teacher self;
Students

I think many of us teachers don’t stop to think about this. You

can say that I am a friend with my pupils and we have a very
straight relationship and can talk to each other almost about
anything, if I exaggerate a little bit, but still. Even after that, and
before that, there are always questions of power present. When
you work with your own colleague, he or she is equal, in that
sense, with you. Because you have the same amount of power, if
you express it this way. You are both professionals, both teachers,
both adults. One is not teaching the other one, even though I
have met those kinds of teachers as well (laughs) who try to teach
younger teacher (laughs), and particularly those kind of princi-
pals I have met! But if you go to the basic ground in life, in every
relationship there are features of power or using power somehow.
But particularly in school.
Expectations of a music teacher: School: School as institution;
Staff: Hierarchy and autonomy;
Students: Conceptualization of adolescence;
challenges

Alexis: Hmmm, particularly in school. What are the main power

relationships there?

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 Julia: Where power relationships are emphasized? well of course
between principal and teachers. The principal is the leader of
the school and the teachers must go with, but it depends a lot
of the principal, or maybe more depends on the teachers, again,
it is a two-way street. But, if we go to the basics, the principal
leads, the teachers teach and work as they are expected or
demanded to work. But nowadays, leadership issues are
understood also more flexibly and it’s not so strict like in earlier
decades, or at least before my time as a teacher, like the 70s or
60s or even earlier, then it was quite strict.
Expectations of a music teacher: School and staff:
hierarchy and autonomy

Alexis: So that makes power relationships maybe more complex because

it’s less clear – like you said, a two-way street.

Julia: And I think, when we talk about principals, when we talk about
leading a group as a teacher, or leading teachers and the whole
school as a principal, it’s a two-way street in that sense too, no
body can lead by themselves. You need the other one to come
forward and participate. It’s not like you can come and just be
lead, but to participate. Nobody can do anything by themselves,
in that sense people in every community, in the school also, are
more equal.
School and staff: hierarchy and autonomy

Alexis: Do you think it’s equal or compatible?

Julia: What is compatible?

Alexis: Um, like puzzle pieces, that might not be equal, but they fit
together

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Julia: I think it’s a better way to express it. Not equal, but as puzzle
pieces, to get to the whole picture you need all the pieces. Some
of them are bigger, and some are more meaningful, like the head
of the character is there and another might just be a green area,
but is needed in a way. But of course in teaching, the power issues
are always present. They are also present between pupils.
Staff;
Students

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