Seeking Aporia: Experiences with Teaching Social Justice in the Undergraduate Music Education Program

Abstract

Maxine Greene’s (1995) concept of “wide awakeness” challenges educators to think outside routine and comfort. She asserts that morality in education depends upon educators’ commitment to problematize transparent and oppressive norms by calling into question long held beliefs. Socrates referred to this process as aporia, a state of confusion that occurs when previously held assumptions are challenged and new understandings are formed. What role can aporia play in the undergraduate music education program? How can we encourage undergraduate music education students to identify and question Western, heterocentric, masculine norms that go undetected in the name of job training? In response to these questions, this paper will focus on the experience of engaging undergraduate music education students in social justice based, aporia-triggering experiences designed to broaden students’ ideas about what constitutes a meaningful and valuable music education experience.