Technology and the Gendering of Music Education PDF
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Technology and the Gendering of Music Education Victoria Armstrong Technology and The gendering of Music educaTion To my parents Margaret and George with love Technology and the gendering of Music education VicToria arMsTrong St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, UK © Victoria armstrong 2011 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Victoria armstrong has asserted her right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company Wey court east suite 420 union road 101 cherry street farnham Burlington surrey, gu9 7PT VT 05401-4405 england usa www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data armstrong, Victoria. Technology and the gendering of music education. 1. computer composition – study and teaching – sex differences. 2. sex differences in education. 3. Music and technology. 4. Technology and women. 5. gender identity in music. i. Title 781.3’4’081–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data armstrong, Victoria. Technology and the gendering of music education / Victoria armstrong. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-1-4094-1784-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)—isBn 978-1-4094-3413-9 (ebook) 1. computer music—instruction and study—great Britain. 2. Music—instruction and study—Technological innovations. 3. sex differences in education—great Britain. 4. Music and technology. i. Title. MT3.g7a76 2011 781.3’4071—dc22 2011010616 isBn 9781409417842 (hbk) isBn 9781409434139 (ebk) V Printed and bound in great Britain by the MPg Books group, uK. Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Challenging Technological Determinism in the Music Education Classroom 19 3 Gendered Cultures in the Music Technology Classroom 41 4 Gendering Technological Expertise 63 5 Gendering the Musical Idea 85 6 Computers as a Medium for Composition 103 7 Reclaiming Compositional Spaces 117 8 Conclusion 129 Bibliography 139 Index 153 This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks to those whose help and support has sustained me throughout the writing of this book. Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Lucy Green. She has been an inspiration not only for her challenging intellectual insights but for her kind and invaluable support and guidance over the years. I would like to acknowledge friends and colleagues who offered encouragement and invaluable feedback at different stages of the book including Diana Adams, Sally Barnes, Barbara Bradby, Nick Breeze, Ruth Craggs, Nicola Dibben, Marina Gall, Diana Leonard and Rosamund Sutherland. In addition, I would like to thank John Morgan for bringing to my attention the work of social geographers interested in critically examining educational spaces and to Ross Purves for his helpful remarks during the embryonic stages of Chapter 4 regarding the gendering of music software. I have also been lucky enough to benefit from the professional expertise and sensible advice about the writing process from Isobel Armstrong and John Burrow both of whom helped me to move forward when inspiration waned. I would like to pay particular tribute to the late Diana Wynne-Jones who showed me great kindness over the years. A much loved writer who, even in the final stages of her illness, continued to write with such passion and beauty. The memory of her great love of language, ideas and the world of the imagination remain strong and I will hold on to this memory when, no doubt, inspiration will again wax and wane in future writing projects! Thanks must also go to the editorial team at Ashgate, particularly Heidi Bishop and Ann Allen for their helpful editorial advice. Heartfelt thanks to the pupils and teachers who participated in this research, for their interest in the project and for their generosity and kindness in making me feel welcome in their classrooms. Conversations with them were often moving, always thought-provoking and tremendously enjoyable. I hope I have done justice to their creativity and passion for music. I would also like to extend my thanks to the GCSE and A level pupils at the secondary school I worked in during the late 1990s. They know who they are but unfortunately cannot be personally identified as I have written about their experiences in other academic papers. Their generous insights into their compositional processes sparked off my curiosity about gender and composition, which provided the inspiration for this book. Inevitably, I turn now to my family. This book is dedicated to my parents, whose love and encouragement have sustained me throughout my various endeavours and whose belief in me has never wavered. I owe them so much. viii Technology and the Gendering of Music Education Finally, as is customary but with a sense of extreme good fortune, I acknowledge the love and support of my husband, Tom Armstrong. As a professional composer, musician and music educator, over the years he has listened patiently to my ideas and arguments from first ‘hunches’ to fully fledged arguments, and his helpful musical insights through our many long conversations have made an important contribution to the ideas presented in the book, particularly with regards to the compositional process. He has stimulated, encouraged and challenged me every step of the way, and his support has been unwavering throughout. Chapter 1 Introduction This book is about the construction of gendered identities in the music technology classroom. It explores how gendered discourses around music composition and technology are constructed and how young composers position themselves within these discursive frameworks. Since 1987, music composition has become a key element of the National Curriculum (which sets national standards for what students should learn) for music in England and Wales, and increasingly music technology has become central to this activity in primary and secondary schools. The contemporary music classroom is not only becoming increasingly technologized but, as some would argue (Finney and Burnard, 2007), ‘revolutionized’ by the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) with ever greater investment in computers and compositional software. Ostensibly, the benefits of this increased technologization might appear unequivocal but, as Pitts (2000) points out, the level of debate within music education has been minimal in comparison to its level of use. Much of the current literature in music education focuses on pedagogical issues, educational outcomes and the role of ICT in raising standards (Busen-Smith, 1999; Mills and Murray, 2000; Savage and Challis, 2001; Pitts and Kwami, 2002). This literature appears to assume that, with sufficient access to both the computer and the requisite knowledge of music software, all pupils will benefit from engaging with music technologies when composing and will wish to do so. This deterministic trend in the literature ignores the socially constructed nature of computers and computer use, which renders the current rhetoric lauding the ‘democratizing’ potential of computers somewhat inadequate and naive. While there have been a number of studies exploring the gendered implications of music technology in the classroom (Comber et al., 1993; Caputo, 1994; Colley et al., 1997; Pegley, 2000; Armstrong, 2008), paradoxically, at a time when music technology courses1 are proliferating in schools and universities, the paucity of current academic studies in the field is surprising given that music technology is less likely to attract girls but is said to be of positive benefit for male pupils (Comber et al., 1993; Colley et al., 1997; Green, 1997; Byrne and MacDonald, 2002). This uncritical rhetoric is encapsulated in the assertion that ‘the most significant implications for the application of the software in the secondary classroom lie 1 Boehm (2007) charts the landscape of music technology in British Universities, examining the pedagogic and institutional differences between the 351 degrees that currently come under the category ‘music technology’, and some of the tensions inherent in the interdisciplinary model that typifies how music technology degrees are taught.
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