Name
Reflexive Narratives of Music Educators Navigating Transnational Graduate Study
Date & Time
Thursday, July 30, 2026, 12:20 PM - 12:35 PM
Description
Graduate education provides a space for teachers to reflect on their assumptions, analyze curricular models, and reimagine music learning in diverse contexts (Després & Dubé, 2020). For instance, graduate studies in music education serve as transformative spaces where educators examine their assumptions about teaching and learning, reflect on curricular challenges, and engage with diverse pedagogical approaches (Barrett, 2009). Following this, I conducted a qualitative study that explored how postcolonial contexts pursuing graduate studies in a Western country engage in reflexive practice as they navigate transnational teaching and learning experiences. Drawing on Tardif & Moscoso's (2018) three-dimensional framework of reflexivity: reflection as social experience, reflection as recognition and interaction, and reflection as critique of ideologies. Through narrative inquiry methodology (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), this study employed semi-structured interviews with music educators who have transitioned from teaching in their home country to graduate study and exchange teaching in Western schools to explore how pursuing graduate studies in a Western context prompts these educators to interrogate their assumptions about music education and reimagine possibilities for music education in their home country.By centering the voices of music educators from postcolonial contexts in transnational settings, this study illuminates how reflexivity (Cousin, 2013; Hibbert, 2013; Ryan & Webster, 2019) enables music educators to develop critical consciousness, "a process in which men, not as recipients but as knowing subjects, achieve a deepening awareness both of the socio-cultural reality which shapes their lives and of their capacity to transform that reality" ( Freire, 1975, p.22), negotiate their professional identities across cultural contexts, and contribute to transformative educational change. The study findings have implications for music teacher education programs, particularly in postcolonial contexts, highlighting the importance of cultivating a reflexivity practice that enables music educators to move beyond rigid or essentialized music teaching ideologies and attachments that shape their thinking and actions in the music-making classroom (Musgrave, 2019).
Location Name
512A
Full Address
Palais des Congres - Montréal Convention Centre
1001, Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle
Montreal QC H2Z 1H2
Canada
1001, Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle
Montreal QC H2Z 1H2
Canada
Session Type
Short Paper Presentation
Presenting Author(s)
Godwin Paintsil