Name
Quantifying Curricular Patterns in Music Education Within and Between Institutions
Date & Time
Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 10:50 AM - 11:20 AM
Description
Dylan Robinson (2019) offers nine calls for action to address deep-seated systemic issues that have impeded Canadian postsecondary institutions of music education from changing markedly and meaningfully. Two calls to action refer to admissions and curricula, respectively: “Abolish the current configuration of entrance requirements” (p. 138), and “End the dominance of Western Art Music performance, historical knowledge, and ‘rudiments’ of music (and centralized Western forms of popular music to a lesser extent) across your curriculum” (p. 139). Such criticisms are not uncommon, often linking programs, institutions, and educational ecosystems to Eurocentrism, colonialism, anti-Blackness, and inaccessibility. Such criticisms are especially poignant in considering the curriculum of post-secondary music education programs—often the primary pathway for music teacher licensure—which tend to share this "Eurocentric core" (Walker, 2023, p. 53). While widely discussed anecdotally and academically, there is a lack of definitive empirical analysis of such concerns. In order to substantiate these concerns, this presentation reports on the development of a novel methodology designed specifically to address the logistical challenges of inter-institutional curriculum analysis. The project objective was to create a systematic method to analyze curricular content across multiple institutions, accounting for variable course weighting and program structures. The method is based on systematic cataloguing of individual courses using Airtable, a database platform that enables large-scale coding, tagging, and comparison of curricular patterns across institutions with differing program structures. Following cataloguing, data were exported to Google Sheets for visualization and weighted calculations. Combining qualitative coding with quantitative aggregation of required and elective coursework, this approach supports comparative analysis across institutions that are otherwise difficult to align. As a working example of our method, we report on the trial of this method in an analysis of the curriculum of all music education programs in Canadian universities. In this trial, we sought to determine the extent to which Western Art Music is privileged in the content of undergraduate music programs. Our aim in sharing this method is to offer a replicable, scalable framework for quantifying curricular patterns within and across institutions, supporting future empirical work in decolonization and accessibility in music education.
Location Name
512D
Full Address
Palais des Congres - Montréal Convention Centre
1001, Place Jean-Paul-Riopelle
Montreal QC H2Z 1H2
Canada
Session Type
Paper Presentation
Presenting Author(s)
Lloyd McArton, Ran Jiang