Performing Disability in Music Teacher Education: Moving beyond Inclusion through Expanded Professionalism

Overview & Synopsis

Disability is a neglected field of diversity within music education scholarship and practices. The study reported in this article sought alternatives for the hierarchical practice-model and ableist discourses that have thus far pervaded music teacher education, through a reconceptualization of expertise. The focus is on a Finnish university special education course, where musicians with learning disabilities conducted workshops for student music teachers over three consecutive years. Student teachers' written reflections (n = 23) were reflexively analyzed in order to examine how "performing disability" may disrupt, expand, and regenerate normative discourses and transform inclusive thinking in music teacher education. Performing disability is here seen to generate critical discursive learning, and create third spaces for pedagogical diversity and the co-construction of professional knowledge. It is thus argued that through teaching "with," and "by," rather than "about," we in music education may move beyond normalizing understandings and practices of inclusion, towards an expanded notion of professionalism.