Activism in Vocational Music Education: Towards Norm-Critical Change

This chapter, which is based on the authors long experience of instrument teaching and vocational music education, argues that a change-oriented pedagogy can be used to expose norms that (re)produce the field's outdated hegemonic power structures. Music teachers can instead of uncritically administering standard repertoires or applying a market-driven neoliberal mindset, apply a norm-critical perspective so that future socially engaged educators and norm-critical musical entrepreneurs can, through their own activity, contribute to a process of change in the field. This perspective, rooted in Freirean thinking, highlights the pragmatism of master-apprentice pedagogy and its inherent knowledge hierarchy that dominate in craft focused vocational music education and thus complements activist music pedagogics more grounded in university settings.