Abstract
In light of recent discussions on the importance of shared visions in teacher education, this inquiry raises necessary questions as to whose visions shape
Keywords
Introduction
It has been argued that “a unified vision for music teacher education is the means for advancing our work and meeting all of the challenges that we are facing” (Orzolek, 2015, p. x), and “that quality teacher education is designed around a clear and shared
The starting point for this inquiry was a set of shared visions (see Table 1) for music education in Nepal that were co-constructed with musician-teachers
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working in the Kathmandu Valley during a series of Appreciative Inquiry workshops I facilitated in 2016 (see Treacy, 2020). More specifically, the inquiry attends to the absence of the vision alluded to in the poem that opened this article, for a woman to “be a musician just like any guy.” Following Carducci, Pasque, Kuntz, and Contreras-McGavin (2013) who argue that “it remains vital that critical scholars continually investigate the absences, blind spots, and invisibilities inherent in research designed to interrogate, disrupt, and ultimately upend educational inequities” (p. 6), I investigate the absence of this vision in two parts. In the first part, I think with economist and philosopher Amartya Sen’s (2009)
Summary of the co-constructed visions (organized from micro to macro levels).
Mode of inquiry
This inquiry stems from my work as a researcher in the project
Appreciative Inquiry (henceforth AI, e.g. Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2005; Watkins, Mohr, & Kelly, 2011) emerged as both a pragmatic and ethical possibility for addressing my methodological concerns. Its 4D cycle of Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny incorporates co-constructing visions, while its starting point of appreciation appeared to present an inclusive approach for valuing local experience. Thus, guided by AI and its 4D cycle, I facilitated a series of 16 workshops during an 11-week period between April and June 2016. These workshops involved 53 musician-teachers in three different groups: Group A had eight 3-hour workshops, the first two of which were repeated on two separated days in an attempt to widen participation; Group B had four 2-hour workshops; and Group C had two workshops ranging from 1.5–2 hours long with the intention of Group C participants continuing with Group B. The processes that took place during these workshops (henceforth main workshops) have been described in detail elsewhere (see Treacy, 2020).
Extending the methodological strategy
In applying AI, I aimed to “relationally enact responsibility” (Kuntz, 2015, p. 140). This involved, for instance, reflexively engaging in “critical questioning and deeper debate around taken-for-granted issues that have potential moral and ethical implications” (Cunliffe, 2016, p. 745), and attending “to the way different kinds of linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements are woven together in the process of knowledge development, during which empirical material is constructed, interpreted and written” (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009, p. 9). As such, my initial plan for workshops open to all interested musician-teachers was necessarily extended as I decided to host one female-only workshop (henceforth women’s workshop).
This decision was based on a number of experiences. From the outset of my work in the Kathmandu Valley, I was aware of gender inequality in Nepal in general (e.g. GESI, 2017). Moreover, studies in ethnomusicology in Nepal have discussed the limitations on women’s musical participation and the status of female musicians (e.g. Henderson, 2003; Moisala, 1999; Stirr, 2010, 2018; Tingey, 1992, 1993; Widdess, Wegner, Tingey, & Moisala, 2001), while studies of music education in Nepal have highlighted activist practices aimed at increasing female access and participation (e.g. Shah, 2018; Tuladhar, 2018; Westerlund & Partti, 2018). During my first visits to the Kathmandu Valley in 2014, the school administrators, teachers and musician-teachers I encountered were almost exclusively male. The two female administrators I did meet were part of a husband and wife team in high administrative positions, and the only woman who participated in my pilot workshops in 2014 reflected on how important participation had been for her. Furthermore, in 2016 out of a total of 53 participants in the main workshops, only 9 were female, and only 6 of these women participated throughout their respective group’s series of workshops.
My limited encounters with Nepali women made me much more sensitive to my own position as a woman. I often wondered, for example, how this position was affecting the research project, especially considering the status of women in Nepal in relation to my work which involved facilitating workshops attended predominantly by men. Indeed, in 2016 the director of one music institute in Kathmandu told me that because I am a woman, men would likely be deterred from participating. However, “woman”, “girl”, or “female” are not fixed or homogeneous categories but can be seen through complex intersectional lenses (e.g. Crenshaw, 1989). Indeed, some musician-teachers described their motivation to participate in the workshops as being related to my position as a “foreign trainer” or “visiting teacher” “from [an] international university.”
Added to these experiences, what motivated me to organize the women’s workshop was the exclamation by a male participant in the midst of a lively and overlapping workshop discussion, “Actually, I am very bad in teaching girls.” This comment inspired the aim of the women’s workshop, which was to co-construct knowledge based on the experiences of success of female musicians and musician-teachers, and later share that knowledge with other musician-teachers so that they could perhaps better understand and support their female students. Consequently, the women’s workshop was titled,
The 1.5-hour women’s workshop took place after one of the main workshops in a cafe over tea, coffee, and snacks that I provided. Similar to the main workshops, the women’s workshop was guided by AI, and I prepared a handout in advance by adapting AI’s generic questions (Cooperrider et al., 2005, p. 25; Watkins et al., 2011, pp. 155–156). The workshop began with partner interviews focusing on sharing stories about each other’s best experiences learning music and overcoming challenges encountered along the way. This was followed by a full group discussion in which we introduced our partners and reflected on the partner interviews. Our group discussion then flowed in various directions, which we followed freely.
The women’s workshop was attended by a small number of women. 3 All of the women were university educated—some having studied abroad—and all were working and earning an income. Some of the women were employed in music and/or music education, however others were employed in a non-music related field, and others were employed both in music and non-music fields. They included vocalists and instrumentalists, and all performed musics not indigenous to Nepal. They were all in their 20s and mostly single but some were married. As is the norm, all were living in joint families, either with their parents or their in-laws.
Empirical material and ethical issues
The empirical material for this inquiry is drawn from two workshops. Whilst the women’s workshop is the primary source, I also draw from the discussions from the abovementioned main workshop in which the male teacher expressed difficulty teaching girls. The relevant sections of the latter workshop were transcribed and translated as needed by my Nepali co-facilitator. To maintain the female participants’ confidentiality, however, the women’s workshop was transcribed by external transcribers with whom I have a confidentiality agreement, rather than my co-facilitator who was a musician-teacher living and working in the Kathmandu Valley. All participants in all workshops gave informed consent through verbal agreements combined with a signed information sheet and participant’s agreement form that was in both Nepali and English.
Capability deprivation and the pursuit of music
The discussions during the women’s workshop highlighted a number of challenges the women perceived as being in conflict with their aspirations to pursue music. As many of these challenges were perceived to result from being a woman, they are interpreted, following Amartya Sen (2009), as injustices. In his theory, Sen (2009) contends that questions of justice should focus first, on assessments of social realizations, that is, on what actually happens (rather than merely on the appraisal of institutions and arrangements); and second, on comparative issues of enhancement of justice (rather than trying to identify perfectly just arrangements). (p. 410)
Thus, “social realizations are assessed in terms of capabilities that people actually have” (p. 19), and injustice is diagnosed through assessing individual advantage or deprivation.
Recalling that the aim of the women’s workshop was to co-construct and share knowledge that could potentially help musician-teachers better understand and support their female students, this section of the article narrates the social realizations and capability deprivations the women shared during the women’s workshop. Whilst I experience discomfort at having invited the women to share stories of their deprivations and writing about them (see e.g. hooks, 1990), Sen (2009) argues that “understanding the nature and sources of capability deprivation and inequity is indeed central to removing manifest injustices that can be identified by public reasoning” (p. 262). Furthermore, this narration is considered particularly necessary in light of the absence of visions to overcome these injustices in the shared visions co-constructed during the main workshops in which the women also participated. The narration is therefore understood as “
Because of the depth of emotion with which the women shared and discussed their stories, a traditional presentation of the findings was deemed inadequate. Instead,
The only girl in the band
My mother is calling me
Music lessons
Music cannot make your life
Aspiring to change the terms of recognition
While not all-encompassing, the poems re-present some of the injustices the women identified during the women’s workshop as being in conflict with their aspirations to pursue music. Although some of these issues also arose in the main workshops, it was the female-only space that allowed for deeper discussions of the women’s shared challenges. To provide a broader view of the women’s marginalized position both as musicians and in society as a whole, I now extend the interpretation begun in the poems. As one woman pointed out, these challenges are not limited to music, rather “[in Nepal] in any field females are not believed in.”
The capability deprivations described by the women can be understood as forms of social control (e.g. Moisala, 1999). Girls and women in Nepal are expected to behave in certain ways (i.e.
Prescribed gender roles and responsibilities also dictate how women should spend their time and therefore posed major obstacles to women’s success as musicians both before and after marriage (i.e.
Women maintain a marginalized position as musicians in the Kathmandu Valley, and continue to be considered “rare.” Though the participants aspired to be “musician[s] just like any guy”, to play and to perform, they expressed frustration that they “don’t get bands” because they are women, or that “the only guy that wants to play with me is my boyfriend, every time.” Despite the stories the women shared of the support they received in their pursuit of music from their family, boyfriends who were also musicians, and music teachers, the support and encouragement they receive is often complex. Sometimes encouraging music teachers were described as being driven by the sentiment that “we must do something” about the lack of female musicians. Sometimes a woman is invited to work with other musicians, “just because she is female and it is rare for females to play in a band.” At the same time, a female’s success was said not to be her own. While girls were sometimes seen to be complimented, only because they are girls (i.e.
Content and limitations of Appreciative Inquiry
As the participants of the women’s workshop also participated in the main mixed-gender workshops, it is imperative to pause and consider the absence of any visions countering the injustices the women described in their pursuit of music from the resulting shared visions. Thus, in this section I extend the critical (Kuntz, 2015) and reflexive work through reflection on another level (e.g. Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009), to suggest that the injustices were both reflected and obscured in the AI process.
It could be speculated that reference to the injustices experienced by female musicians in the Kathmandu Valley were absent from the shared visions that resulted from the main workshops due to AI’s positive principle. As a reaction to the focus of action research on problem solving (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987), the positive principle suggests that “momentum for change requires large amounts of positive affect and social bonding …. The more positive the questions… the more long-lasting and effective is the change” (Cooperrider et al., 2005, pp. 9–10). However, like others (see e.g. Bushe, 2012; Duncan & Ridley-Duff, 2014; Grant & Humphries, 2006), I had concerns about AI’s positive orientation. If “the questions we ask set the stage for what we ‘find’” (Watkins et al., 2011, p. 73), might framing the workshop discussions with only positive questions lead to only positive findings? At the same time, creating an appreciative atmosphere in the workshops was a conscious ethical choice, part of my aspiration to highlight the value of local expertise and nurture an ethos of learning from and with each other in a network of musician-teachers. AI, for example, has been found to create “a ‘safe’ environment characterized by respect for, and acknowledgement of individual uniqueness and an embracement of diversity” and consequently “encourages self- disclosure and the sharing of personal stories which aim to develop deep connections with others” (Dematteo & Reeves, 2011, p. 203). This finding also appeared to be relevant in the workshops I facilitated in Kathmandu, where the focus on appreciation may have contributed to creating a positive atmosphere and building rapport that made talking about challenging or sensitive issues comfortable. Indeed, both the main workshops and the women’s workshop featured animated discussions regarding not only gender issues, but other forms of discrimination based on social hierarchy, such as class and the caste system, that permeate the life and practices of musicians in Nepal. The co-constructed visions themselves also address a number of challenges such as the lack of both resources and collaboration between music institutions, and injustices such as the social stigma associated with music and being a musician (see also Treacy, Thapa & Neupane, in press). Thus, the focus on appreciation does not appear to have been the culprit.
Instead, it appears that the absence of these injustices from the shared visions may be due to the entanglement of consensus and voice. In other words, only experiences—positive or negative—inside common experience were attended to as the mixed-gender main workshop participants co-constructed the since injustices relate, often enough, to hardy social divisions, linked with divisions of class, gender, rank, location, religion, community and other established barriers, it is often difficult to surmount those barriers to have an objective analysis of the contrast between what is happening and what could have happened—a contrast that is central to the advancement of justice. (p. 389)
Thus, the same injustices and capability deprivations affecting the women’s desire to pursue music appear to have been reflected in the main workshops, and obscured in the resulting
Throughout this research project, I have continuously questioned my own power and influence as I aimed to adopt an anti-colonial stance (Patel, 2014). Sen (2009) argues, however, that there are two principal grounds for requiring that the encounter of public reasoning about justice should go beyond the boundaries of state or a region, and these are based respectively on the relevance of other people’s
Importantly, he stresses that listening to “distant voices” does not require the acceptance of or even respect for every argument or proposal (p. 407). Thus, in drawing attention to the women’s deprivations, through the questions I asked in the main workshops and offering a female-only workshop, I was exercising “the productive possibilities of [my] power” (Kuntz, 2015, p. 131) as someone seen as a “foreign expert.” The women expressed how just coming together to talk had value in itself, as they had previously felt alone in their struggles and were surprised that they were “talking about all this only in a workshop here.” Recognizing that “Together we are stronger”, completely independent of me or this research project, the women’s workshop was “fuel for action” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 7) as it led to an all-female concert several months later. This is especially important when recalling the women’s comments above about women not supporting each other and preventing each other from doing things.
Insights for music teacher education
The critical work (Kuntz, 2015) and reflexive interpretation (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009) guiding this inquiry offer important insights for those preparing future teachers to work in increasingly diverse environments, as well as those planning to facilitate AI-inspired processes in music teacher education. In this research project marginalization has been multifaceted. Females are marginalized in Nepali society in general, and this marginalization is reflected in their position as musicians. Added to this, however, is that despite extensive preparation focusing on methodological and ethical deliberations, and over a decade living and teaching as a migrant in intercultural settings, the main workshops that I facilitated in the Kathmandu Valley, with their starting point of appreciating “the best of what is” (Cooperrider et al., 2005, p. 5), marginalized some of the participants. As Sen (2009) states, “what we can see is not independent of where we stand in relation to what we are trying to see” (pp. 155–156). In the case of this inquiry, it was my position as a woman that both caused me to see and act, and motivated some women to participate. One woman explained her continued participation, for example, as being due to the “interesting discussions” and “cause Danielle is a woman and dealing with women’s issues and music was something we had a common interest in.” It is therefore possible that other voices were marginalized without me noticing, or because of my presence. The visions, for example, do not explicitly address caste/ethnicity, however, as an outsider I was unable to see how this form of social stratification was reflected and obscured in the workshops. A number of Nepali male musician-teachers I asked about gender issues commented on the improvements they had seen in terms of the increasing participation of women and girls, in the same way that I had initially been excited just by the presence of female participants in the workshops. Female musicians and musician-teachers are still so few that just their presence and participation seemed important, as was having these issues raised in the main workshops. This, however, is symptomatic of what Patel (2016) refers to as “gaining footholds on a slanted wall, rather than reconsidering the entire structure” (p. 18). Participation alone is not enough for representation, nor are well-meaning and supportive male musicians and teachers—and female researchers.
What this experience suggests is that as our teaching environments become increasingly diverse, it is not enough to merely recognize and appreciate the presence of minority or marginalized students in our classrooms and ensembles; rather, music teacher educators need to imagine ways to nurture broad participation and strengthen the
This experience also suggests the need to develop future teachers’ abilities to facilitate collaboration and collective reflection in an ethical way. This requires awareness of the inclusive and exclusive processes at work in our societies and classrooms, the processes that frame who speaks, who listens and who is heard, when and how, and who and what remains in the silences; and the ability to challenge and disrupt these, rather than continue to reproduce them. Indeed, recent articles in this journal have called for the need to challenge issues like social stratification (Jeppsson & Lindgren, 2018) and to better recognize and support minority students, such as the LGBTQ community (Palkki & Caldwell, 2018). Importantly, this work requires
In taking such steps, however, it should be acknowledged that working towards more ethical and inclusive teaching practice will always be an incomplete process, full of mistakes, “absences, blind spots, and invisibilities” (Carducci et al., 2013, p. 6). Through an openness to continuously and publicly reflect on, critique, and reform our own practice, and encourage students to do the same, however, our inquiries may affect “both what we know and how we live our lives” (Kuntz, 2015, p. 12), and thereby our ability to work together towards not only greater participation but also representation for a more ethical and equitable future.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the women who participated in the workshops and shared their perspectives and experiences as part of this research,
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been undertaken as part of the project 
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