Conference Agenda

Organized by the AMS Pedagogy Study Group.

In today’s globalized world, there are significant challenges facing equitable, or “social justice-informed” music teaching in cross-cultural contexts (Volk, 2004; Green, 2011; Kertz-Welzel, 2018). Responding to the prompt of the AMS Pedagogy Study Group’s call for a multi-format session that included the theme of “Teaching Beyond North America,” we come together as scholars who have worked in academic institutions in four distinctive settings for higher education teaching and learning (Hong Kong; South Africa, the Netherlands; the United Kingdom). In this session we propose to think about equitable – and feasible – pathways to approaching social justice in music pedagogy in ways that avoid tokenism (Hess, 2015) while staying in dialogue with global and decolonial trends (Schippers, 2009; Roy, 2022).

We will lead two activities structured around “pathways to equity” in global music education that will enable participants to take away the following LEARNING OUTCOMES:

1) Broadening understandings of the complexities of teaching (for) social justice beyond North America;

2) Increasing their awareness of the colonial roots of many music education systems in the world today;

3) Developing strategies for approaching cross-cultural dialogues about music pedagogies; and

4) Empowering participants to embed pathways to “global” music teaching within their own institutions.

Timed Format:

PART 1 – WELCOME / ACTIVITY (30 minutes)

• Welcome and Introduction to the session (5 minutes)
• ACTIVITY 1: Teaching (for) Social Justice, North America and Beyond: Cross-communicating Contexts and Complexities (25 minutes)

PART 2 – PRESENTATIONS (30 minutes)

• Perspectives from Hong Kong (Yvonne Liao; 10 minutes)
• Perspectives from South Africa and the Netherlands (Mia Pistorius; 10 minutes)
• Perspectives from the UK (Erin Johnson-Williams; 10 minutes)

PART 3 – ACTIVITY / WRAP UP (30 minutes)

• ACTIVITY 2: Ongoing (Mis)Conceptions: Brainstorming Strategies for Cross-Cultural Dialogues (20 minutes)
• Q&A / wrap up (10 minutes)

Collaboratively chairing this tripartite workshop structure, the three speakers will draw on their knowledge and experience of living, working and teaching beyond the USA. In 10-minute interactive presentations, each speaker will offer perspectives on their current and past locations of teaching, reflecting on topics such as: legacies of colonialism in post/colonial music institutions; the complexities of defining terms like “social justice” and “decolonization” across different cultural contexts and languages; and recommendations for / challenges to embedding pathways to equity within post/colonial institutions.

Together, we will facilitate activities so that participants can take away ideas and techniques for embedding equitable pathways to cross-cultural music teaching within a wide range of teaching contexts, in and beyond North America.