Knowledge and social justice in English school music education: reflections on the report ‘Questioning the gap in music literacy’ (McQueen 2020)

ABSTRACT

This article explores some of the intersections and relationships between ‘knowledge' and ‘social justice' particularly as manifest in the context of English school music education. It takes as its starting point the tensions resulting from different understandings of these terms as revealed in the Society for Music Analysis's (SMA) report ‘Questioning the gap in music literacy’ (McQueen 2020). Drawing on neo-traditionalist, social realist and constructivist perspectives, different conceptions of musical knowledge and its relationship to social justice are briefly examined. Drawing on the work of John Rawls and Nancy Fraser, the argument is made that socially just approaches to music education are enhanced by going beyond distributive and redistributive paradigms to embrace issues around respect, recognition, and participatory parity. Inter alia, the article examines the challenges resulting from an identity politics approach to social justice, particularly its tendency towards reifying cultural identity and knowledge. The article concludes by suggesting that the tensions around musical knowledge and social justice revealed in the SMA Report might be ameliorated through dialogical approaches to pedagogy that recognise the centrality---but not exclusivity---of the learner's world in endowing meaning on musical knowledge and understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• music education
• music literacy

Introduction

Knowledge and Social Justice are conceptual terms that pervade the contemporary discourses (including policy discourses) of education and particularly those discourses that relate to education in schools, including music education. In England, the concept of ‘knowledge’, particularly when appendaged to ‘rich’ and ‘powerful’ has come increasingly to the fore in debates and discussions about what should be taught in schools and, adopting a social justice dimension, the knowledge to which all young people should have ‘access’. In the discourses of music education, ‘musical literacy’, understood as staff notation, and Western art music are often cited as exemplifying powerful knowledge in music, the presence of which is an essential element of a ‘knowledge rich’ music curriculum (e.g. Ashbee 2021).

More widely, notions of ‘social justice’ also typically underpin deliberations determining the distribution of finite resources amongst different groups of young people. In the wider, increasingly neo-liberal ecology of music education, the term ‘social justice’ appears more and more as a marketing trope deployed by music education organisations in order to secure access to funding (Spruce 2017). These marketing tropes are sometimes linked to a ‘changing lives’ narrative which often conflate economic and cultural deprivation, positing them as synonymous and thus, ironically, creating paradigms of injustice rooted in a deficit conception of, for example, working-class culture (Allan 2010; Spruce 2017).

The concepts of Knowledge and Social Justice find a significant place in a recent report by The Society for Music Analysis (SMA), ‘Questioning the gap in musical literacy’ (McQueen 2020). The Report sought to identify and examine whether stakeholders in music education agreed that there is a gap in the musical knowledge and skills (and particularly ‘literacy’ skills) of those entering higher education music courses in England, and to interrogate the impact of this gap on students’ ability to engage in musical analysis. The issues raised in the Report include epistemological questions about what counts as important knowledge in music, what it means to be ‘musically literate’, and the extent to which access to such knowledge is a matter of social justice. These questions thus have relevance not only for those young people studying (or wishing to study) music in higher education but also for young people’s experience of music education as part of the statutory school curriculum.

It is evident from the many voices from music education that the Report draws on, that epistemological issues and issues of social justice are understood as being intimately bound together. It is also clear that these terms are highly contested, both conceptually and in terms of their pedagogical working out in schools and other educational settings. For example, the Report notes restricted and more expanded views of what constitutes ‘music literacy’ (McQueen 2020) and how understandings of social justice in relation to the epistemological dimensions of music education are strongly influenced by an individual’s ‘own music education and related experiences’ (McQueen 2020, 56).

One of the main purposes of this article, then, is to explore the tensions revealed in the Report and, more widely, around differing conceptions of social justice (both explicitly and implicitly expressed) through drawing on the wider epistemological and social justice debates and theories in education and particularly music education. Through doing so, it seeks to go some way to supporting one of the Report’s key aims: ‘[to] contribute to a debate about the meaning of social justice in music education, with the aim of bridging the gap between the opposing views currently held’ (McQueen 2020, 4). The main focus of the article is on contemporary music education in England, and especially the music curriculum in school during its statutory phase for young people from five to thirteen years of age. However, although its focus is primarily on the English context, the issues and concepts addressed around knowledge and social justice will hopefully have international resonance.

The article will begin by exploring some philosophical positions in relation to knowledge in music education, focusing particularly on social realism and social constructivism. It will then proceed to examine some influential paradigms of social justice, relating these to music education. I will suggest that under-theorised conceptions of both knowledge and social justice can lead to problematic epistemologies that can result in social injustices in music education. The article will conclude by exploring pedagogical relationships as a means by which more socially-just approaches to music education might emerge. Connections to the Report are made throughout the article.

In writing this article I acknowledge my own positionality in relation to both knowledge and social justice. In respect of knowledge and particularly its imbrication in the epistemological structures of school music education, I occupy a broadly constructivist position. My experiences over forty years as a teacher in secondary state schools, as a lecturer in higher education (working primarily with pre-service music teachers) and as a musician in a community theatre, convince me that musical knowledge is strongly connected to musical meaning that emerges directly from engagement with music as a social practice. From the social justice angle, my belief is thar social justice must reach beyond resource distribution to engage with young people’s sometimes alienated relationship with formal music education in schools.

Music education and the ‘knowledge’ issue: the social justice dimension

The question of what is important and valuable musical ‘knowledge’, and thus should be included in the school music curriculum, has a long history in the debates and discourses of music education (e.g. Finney 2011). The issue regularly attracts significant and, at times, critical attention not only from music educators in schools but also more widely from, for example, musicians and musicologists in universities and conservatoires. Recently, the musicologist Ian Pace (Pace 2023) has argued that the knowledge and skills gap posited in the Report results directly from deficiencies in formal school music education, and particularly music education in state schools. Pace suggests that the gap in musical knowledge of those entering higher education has its roots in another gap, which is between the musical knowledge of those educated in independent or specialist music schools and those educated in state schools. He contends that young people in state schools are not given the same access to the specialist musical knowledge, particularly staff notation and knowledge of Western art music, provided as a matter of course to those in independent schools, and therefore this is an issue of social justice. He perceives a

… deskilling of musical education, whereby young people fail to learn basic skills, not least those from less privileged backgrounds who would not encounter them otherwise. (Pace 2023, np)

As already noted, many contributors to the Report also believe there to be a strong relationship between knowledge and social justice. However, as McQueen acknowledges, the nature of this relationship is contested:

… it was clear that there is a clash of allegiances between those who view education as an opportunity to go beyond personal experience and preferences bearing in mind that the current education system works best for those with experience of, and preference for, WAM [western art music], (even though they are in the minority) and those who seek to base music education on personal experience and preferences (which at secondary level tends to be more popular music). These are two versions of social justice pervasive in music education. How these can be reconciled needs further consideration. (2020, 8)

Neo-traditionalism and social realism

For Pace and those aligning themselves with the ‘first allegiance’ there is a body of musical knowledge to which all young people should have access as a basic entitlement. Access to such knowledge is, for them, a matter of social justice.

McPhail (2023) adopts a social realist epistemological framework to articulate a more strongly theorised account of this position. At the core of a social realist epistemology is the belief that there is ‘powerful’ knowledge (Young et al. 2014) that exists separately from the knower. This knowledge is conceptual, abstract, universal and transcendent, rather than context bound. It is ‘powerful’ because it provides access to the epistemic structures of, for example, music as a discipline.

McPhail similarly argues that access to particular kinds of ‘conceptual’ or ‘specialist’ musical knowledge is a matter of social justice. A primary purpose of school music education is, he believes, to provide young people with access to such knowledge, arguing that for many it is only in schools that such knowledge can be obtained. Writing from the New Zealand context, he argues that conceptual knowledge has been marginalised in school music curricula in recent years.

Social realism draws on, amongst others, the work of Durkheim (1912/1995) and a particular (and arguably partial) reading of the work of Basil Bernstein. Both make a distinction between knowledge that is developed through the social interactions of everyday life, and the knowledge which can be gained only through formal education/instruction. Durkheim (1912/1995) describes the distinction as being between ‘secular’ (everyday) and ‘sacred’ knowledge (that which is taught in formal educational contexts). For Bernstein, knowledge is realised through vertical and horizontal discourses (Bernstein 1999). Horizontal discourses refer to the ‘common sense’ knowledge that is obtained from everyday interactions and experiences. The knowledge that emerges and is constructed from vertical discourses Bernstein describes as:

Being in the form of a coherent, explicit and systematically principled structure hierarchically organised, as in the sciences, or it takes the form of a series of specialised languages with specialised modes of interrogation and specialised criteria for the production and circulation of texts as in the social sciences and humanities. (Bernstein 1999, 165)

It is this knowledge that typically can be accessed only within formal education structures and settings. Although not always named as such, the social realist position along with the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has gained significant traction in music education in England. It has underpinned a renaissance in more traditional approaches to music education which have found support in both political rhetoric and policy (Young 2023). However, as McPhail (2023) notes, these neo-traditionalist approaches are often based on a misreading of social realism in that, often drawing on the work of Hirsch (2006) and his ideas of ‘core knowledge’ and ‘cultural literacy’, they place greater emphasis on the content of a curriculum as a signifier of what is important knowledge to which all should have access – typically western art music and staff notation – rather than the conceptual underpinnings of music. A further distinction lies in the importance attached to pedagogy. For the social realists, pedagogy is important as the means by which the concepts are brought to life. However, for Hirsch and the neo-traditionalists, pedagogy is the means by which a curriculum and knowledge is ‘delivered’. Knowledge, they argue, is most effectively taught in ‘a highly organised, sequential way starting with the ‘basics’’ (Young 2023, 152). As Young notes (154), there are both epistemological and pedagogical problems with Hirsch’s work: epistemologically, that it conceives of knowledge as fixed and inert rather than dynamic and contingent; pedagogically, an assumption that teaching is a simply a matter of transmission of a body of knowledge from teacher to learner.

Social constructivism and musical knowledge

The social realist paradigm of knowledge is frequently positioned in opposition to the social constructivist and postmodern epistemological frameworks that emerged from the so-called new sociology of education (NSOE) in the 1970s. The NSOE challenged the notion of objective knowledge that has an existence separate from the ‘knower’, arguing instead that knowledge is historically and culturally contingent and expresses the values and interests of dominant social groups. As Whitty (2010) notes, one of the recurring themes in the NSOE is the claim that schools privilege middle-class culture and strongly framed (Bernstein 2000) forms of knowledge which distinguish school knowledge from everyday knowledge. Bernstein argues that middle-class children are better placed then working-class children to recognise and negotiate these different forms of knowledge and that working-class children’s inability to do so as effectively results in their alienation from formal education and ultimate ‘failure’. It is on this basis that postmodern and constructivist views of knowledge similarly reach for social justice justifications typically relating to inclusion, equality, relevance, the importance of pupil agency and ‘voice’ (see e.g. Spruce 2015) and, especially, breaking down barriers between school knowledge and everyday knowledge. In music education, social constructivism manifests in curricula that seek to engage young people – at least as a starting point – with music they know. It also involves bringing into the curriculum a wide range of musical traditions, to support the development of diverse musical skills reflected in those traditions and, importantly, to make strong connections between young people’s musical lives outside of school and their music education encounters in school. Such approaches have sought to address the social justice issue of young people’s alienation from music in school, and particularly the formal music curriculum. In England, the ‘Musical Futures’ project based on the research of Lucy Green (2008) into informal learning in music education is based on such a paradigm of social justice.

Epistemologically, at the heart of the constructivist position is a belief that knowledge is a form of meaning-making which offers a way of understanding one’s world. Knowledge is thus fundamentally a social activity founded on a person’s active engagement with, and immersion in, their world. As Webster (2011; cited in Shively 2015, 129) notes, knowledge does not have an existence which is separate from the learner as ‘abstract entities’ that are then ‘absorbed’ by them; rather it is ‘constructed anew through action’, building on, adapting and revisiting previous knowledge and experience. This then leads to new meaning-making and an enriching of understanding.

Social constructivist approaches to music education do not reject the importance of ‘musical theory’ but rather believe that, as Philpott (2022, 5) says, ‘the reason why we engage with music in the first place is primordially wrapped in complex webs that are social, personal, cultural, political and so on. In short, we can ‘know’ music without any recourse to theory or concepts: this is the material reality for most people in the world … ’. Pedagogically, the question is not whether musical literacy/theory/notation is taught but rather when and how. It is about the order of things!

A brief coda

Although as previously noted, social realism is sometimes posited as being in binary opposition to progressive, constructive positions, both McPhail (2023) and Moore (2013) argue that such a view often represents a misunderstanding of the social realist position. Moore (2013) argues that the perception of a binary and oppositional relationship between social realism and social constructivism is based on a misunderstanding of social realism as being synonymous with either a positivist approach to knowledge that ‘detaches knowledge from its social context by grounding it in unmediated sense-data organized by propositional logic’ or traditionalist epistemologies that conceive of knowledge as ‘a body of received wisdom inherited from the past defined by ineffable, eternal qualities and beyond question’ (Moore 2013, 337). Social realists do not deny that knowledge is socially constructed. Where they part company with social constructivists is their belief that ‘powerful’ knowledge is developed within specialist contexts and communities.

McPhail also contends that neo-traditionalists focus on curriculum content, which tends to result in a conflation of content with concepts. He argues that for social realists, content is mainly important in terms of the extent to which it serves to carry the concepts. The concepts are musical abstractions which exist separately from their instantiations in, for example, particular musical works or practices, but that an understanding of them opens doors to young people’s understanding of the epistemic structures of music. The conceptual distinctions that Moore and McPhail make between the social realist position and that of neo-traditionalism and positivism is important in order that the misappropriation of social realism in support of the latter positions might be recognised and, perhaps, challenged.

Conceptualising social justice

In this section I examine the tensions and convergences across and within two of the major paradigms of social justice. I draw on these paradigms as lenses to interrogate some of the epistemic debates in music education as outlined above as well as differing perceptions of the relationship between music education and social justice.

A recurring theme in the scholarly writings around social justice is that, in its day-to-day usage, the term is typically characterised by multiple meanings, weak framing and contestation (Bonnycastle 2011; Spruce 2017). For some, social justice is primarily about ameliorating the barriers to success experienced by individuals or groups. For others, it concerns the fair (re)distribution of resources. Other conceptions of social justice adopt a more radical perspective, arguing that social justice can be achieved only through reconfiguring the structures of society. However, as Newman (2019, 2) notes, ‘So great is the diversity of views that it has been suggested the term has become meaningless, or that it can mean anything people want it to mean’.

The lack of a clear conceptual framing for social justice has potentially significant negative consequences. Firstly, as noted, it can lead to the term being appropriated simply as a marketing device or by hegemonic ideologies promoting paradigms of music education that marginalise voices that articulate alternative narratives and modes of music education (Spruce 2017). Secondly, despite many music teachers’ undoubted emotional and moral commitment to mitigating the often-myriad disadvantages and barriers to accessing and participating in music education experienced by the young people they work with, the lack of a clearly theorised account of social justice to draw on can mean that they lack the discursive tools that might enable them to articulate and justify the socially-just basis of their professional decisions, and to counter appropriations of the term which run counter to their beliefs. Finally, there are differing perceptions amongst music teachers about what the barriers are to young people accessing and engaging with music education and consequently the pedagogies and curricula that are most likely to address the barriers they have identified. As Keddie notes, when writing about teachers in general:

Although most teachers … would agree that it is important to remove the barriers or obstacles that prevent some students from participating on par with their more privileged peers, there is far less agreement about what these obstacles might be and how they might be overcome. … This lack of agreement brings to light the moral imperatives shaping equity work in schools – i.e. how teachers’ views about what might constitute the social good shape the ways they approach student difference and disadvantage. (Keddie 2012, 264).

Harking back to the two allegiances around knowledge and social justice noted in the Report, these provide manifestations of different views about what constitutes the ‘social good’ in music education and the ‘moral imperatives’ that shape music teachers work.

Social justice and teachers’ ‘music education trajectories’

For music educators, their beliefs about what constitutes the ‘social good’, and the ‘moral imperatives’ that drive their work, are often strongly related to their epistemological and ontological beliefs about music and music education, including, as noted earlier, beliefs about the ‘musical knowledge’ to which all pupils should have access. These epistemological and ontological beliefs are likely to be informed to a significant extent by music teachers’ life experiences including their own music education (e.g. Dwyer 2016; Philpott and Spruce 2022). As the Report notes, music teachers’ experience of music education (defined in the Report as their ‘music education trajectories’) was:

… seen as a high-level theme, which influenced others, including musical allegiances and the acceptance or rejection of the kind of music education they had experienced. It also includes the music education system that facilitates or hinders musical pathways, based on what opportunities are or were available. (McQueen 2020, 132)

Teachers and music educators more broadly may have only a tacit awareness of how their epistemological and pedagogical beliefs underpin their conceptions of social justice and how both are grounded in these music education trajectories. Through theorising and conceptualising different paradigms of social justice music teachers can become more aware of how their trajectories impact on their epistemological and social justice beliefs thus enabling them to adopt an agentic and critical disposition towards the moral imperatives and notions of social good that underpin their practice and approaches to social justice. However, as Westerlund notes, this is perhaps contingent on a capacity to ‘break the boundaries of one’s own educational background’ and to ask the question ‘What has been meaningful musical learning for me and why, and how does it influence me as a teacher of others?’ and ‘How is my students’ musical life different from mine?’ (Westerlund 2012, 17).

Theorising social justice

The theoretical and philosophical discourses around social justice over the last twenty-five years have been dominated to a significant degree by the perceived consonances and dissonances across and within two broad conceptions of social justice. Firstly, social justice as (re)distributive social justice – most notably articulated in the works of John Rawls (e.g. Rawls 1971) – and secondly, Nancy Fraser’s (1998) status model, which frames social justice as a matter of recognition, respect and participatory parity.

Rawls’s theory of distributive social justice

Rawls’s paradigm is concerned primarily with how the material and non-material resources available to society are differentially distributed across various social groups. His model is underpinned by two principles. The first concerns the basic rights that should be available to all irrespective of social, cultural, economic, ethnic or religious background, for example, freedom of speech, exercise of conscience, religious freedom and equal treatment under the law. These basic rights, Rawls contends, are universal and absolute entitlements irrespective of a person’s social background or economic resources. They are also not commodifiable. That is to say, they can neither be traded nor granted and withdrawn. The second principle has two parts. The first relates to equality of opportunity to attain the influential offices of authority that regulate society. The second part relates to the commonly understood notion of ‘distribution’ in the ‘fair’ distribution of society’s resources both material (such as food, clothing, housing, money) and non-material (for instance, health care and education). Rawls does not suggest that all should receive an equal share of resources. Rather he invokes the ‘Difference Principle’, which proposes that unequal distribution can be justified but only if it benefits the least advantaged members of society.

As McCarthy (2015) observes, the distributive dimension of social justice is a long-term concern for music education. It manifests in a range of ways not least in the imperative to advocate for music education as a basic entitlement for all young people (Rawls’s first principle). Music education is also highly resource dependent. Curriculum music education in schools in many countries typically has expectations (often reinforced by statute) that young people have opportunities to develop as composers and performers (e.g. Department for Education 2013 National Curriculum). These expectations have significant resource implications involving not only access to the hardware of music education, such as instruments and digital technologies and to teachers that are confident in teaching music, but also for music to be allocated adequate curriculum time. Inequities between state and independent schools and between different social economic groups can be ameliorated according to Rawls’s second principle through efforts to differentially direct material resources in particular towards young people from the most economically disadvantaged groups (Rawls’s ‘difference principle’). In England, charitable organisations involved with music education play important roles in such amelioration. These include The London Music Fund and Restore the Music which fund the provision of musical instruments for young people unable to afford them. Similarly, the charity MusicMasters supports the professional development of expert instrumentalists who work in schools in some of the most deprived areas of the country.

These organisations, whilst seeking to ameliorate the impact of young people’s experiences of distributive injustice, are not always well placed to address the structural causes of such injustices. These structural causes can be economic but also result directly from policy. In England, for example, a policy shift away from the arts towards an emphasis on ‘core’ subjects (English, Maths and Science etc.) in the school curriculum, enforced through inspection and high stakes accountability measures, has resulted in significant distributive injustices for many young people educated in state schools. The requirement to focus on core subjects has resulted, firstly, in many state schools reducing curriculum time for music in its statutory phase (5-14 years old) (Incorporate Society of Musicians and University of Sussex 2019) and, secondly – and consequently – an ongoing decline in the number of pupils in state schools taking public examinations in music at the ages of 16 and 18 (Fisk 2023; Whittaker and Fautley 2021), success in which is important in securing places on university and conservatoire music courses. The fact that such policies impact disproportionally negatively on the music education opportunities of young people who attend state schools, especially those from the economically most deprived communities (e.g. Bath et al. 2020), results in significant distributive injustices for those young people.

Critiques of Rawls’s model of social justice

Rawls’s work is seminal in the development of thinking around social justice and in the development of social justice policy. It continues to be influential, at least implicitly in the discourses of music education. However, it has been subject to significant critique. Some of these critiques relate to his conception and definition of distributive justice (e.g. Dworkin 1977) while others derive from a libertarian perspective that rejects what it sees as a manipulation of the natural workings of society. Hayek (1960, 14), for example, describes distributive justice as a ‘mirage of social justice’, which seeks to ‘impress upon society a deliberately chosen pattern of distribution, whether it be an order of equality or of inequality’.

The most sustained critique of Rawls’s work, however, relates to what is perceived as distributive justice’s insufficiency or partiality in articulating a comprehensive paradigm of social justice. At the macro-level, it is criticised, firstly, for its emphasis on socio-economic and material resources, ignoring social and cultural dimensions, and thereby resulting in the ‘homogenizing of difference by adopting an understanding of human need that is universalistic and materialistic’ (Bonnycastle 2011, 277), and, secondly, for being primarily ameliorative and failing to address ‘the fundamental problems of hierarchies of power wealth and other privileges’ (Gerwitz 2006, 72), therefore being ‘inattentive to historical legacies and backgrounds’ (Bonnycastle 2011, 275). Both McCarthy (2015) and Spruce (2017), writing from the perspective of music education, note how the distributive social justice dimension, as applied to music education, gives insufficient weight to those aspects of social justice concerned with the lack of respect and recognition afforded to the musical lives and music making of marginalised groups who lack access to economic resources and cultural capital.

Anderson (1999, 287) is particularly critical of distributive social justice paradigms for being ‘ … too narrowly focused on the distribution of divisible, privately appropriated goods, such as income and resources … ’. Anderson contends that a sufficient paradigm of social justice needs not only to address the ‘cosmic injustices’ (288) resulting from the differentiated access to resources as a consequence of the serendipities of birth, but also the lack of respect and recognition afforded to certain groups. She argues for ‘democratic equality’.

In seeking the construction of a community of equals, democratic equality integrates principles of distribution with the expressive demands of equal respect. (Anderson 1999, 298)

For Anderson, a model of social justice is insufficient if it seeks simply to ameliorate the social injustices resulting from the serendipity of birth rather than addressing structural, cultural and historical injustices and the issues of respect and recognition that proceed from these.

Distributive justice and English music education

The general critiques of the distributive model of social justice can be detected in education and the policy surrounding it. In England, for example, ‘the homogenizing of difference and universalizing of need’ noted by Bonnycastle (2011, 277) above, is evident in the increasing tendency towards the homogenising and reification of both curricula and pedagogical approaches. These approaches are enforced via policy through inspection and high stakes accountability measures or mandated across schools by multi-academy trusts. Reification makes curricula and pedagogy ripe for commodification and ‘distribution’ legitimised through one of the central tenets of distributive social justice, that of equality of opportunity. The English Model Music Curriculum (Department for Education 2021) reaches for this justification as a form of legitimation. However, as Rodríguez-Revelo (2017) notes, such homogenisation and reification often result in pedagogies and curricula that are unable to take account of the particularities of individual schools and often lack the flexibility to be responsive to the experiences and life histories of young people. They thus fail to realise the promised benefits to young people’s education.

Hirsch’s (2006) previously noted influential ideas around ‘core knowledge’ and ‘cultural literacy’, alongside Matthew Arnold’s (1869/1993, xx) oft and almost always partially quoted view of important knowledge as ‘the best which has been thought and said’, reified both the forms of curriculum based around ‘powerful knowledge’ and the deficit discourses around working-class culture and economically deprived communities that sometimes accompany them. These discourses, Spruce (2015) and Vaugeois (2009) have pointed out, can cast music teachers ontologically as missionaries or salvationists whose role is to fix broken communities through inducting young people into a particular set of musical values, skills and repertoires, often those of Western classical music; such discourses are, as Baker (2021) has noted, particularly prevalent amongst Sistema-influenced organisations. Arguably, one consequence of salvationist approaches to music education is that the agency over musical choices and preferences enjoyed by middle-class children is not similarly afforded to working-class children where induction into classical music is seen as addressing a fundamental deficit in their cultural lives that can only be addressed through ‘equipping’ them with ‘cultural capital [as] a means through which we may morally and spiritually uplift them (as they clearly need to be elevated)’ (Beadle 2020, 13). Finally, the reification and commodification of knowledge, when promoted as ‘powerful knowledge’, can allow it to be posited as a replacement for the material goods for living. However, as Young says, the idea that ‘powerful knowledge’ can compensate for structural inequality ‘conveniently elides cultural capital with economic capital, as if possession of formal knowledge can somehow convert, magically, into possession of economic capital’ (Young 2023, 155).

Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional model of social justice

It is in the work of Nancy Fraser that a more fully rounded paradigm of social justice finds voice. Fraser’s model extends the conception of social justice to include not only basic rights and the equitable distribution of resources, but also socio-cultural and political dimensions (see e.g. Fraser 2000; 2005; 2008). Although her earliest writing is now almost thirty years old, her ideas remain central to the discourses and debates of social justice, and continue to engage contemporary scholars (e.g. Celentano and Carantini 2020).

In her earlier work, Fraser (1995) posits a two-dimensional paradigm of social justice which adds a social-cultural dimension to Rawls’s distributive, socio-economic one. Central to the socio-cultural dimension lie issues of respect, recognition and status, and the injustices that result from ‘misrecognition’. Her later work (Fraser 2005) introduces a third dimension – the ‘political’ – to produce a three-dimensional model of social justice. The political dimension holds that injustices arise ‘when some individuals or groups are not accorded equal voice in decision-making about justice claims’ (Keddie 2012, 264–265). In other words, as Spruce (2015) notes, the voices of those most detrimentally affected by injustice are not included in making decisions about how such injustices might be addressed.

For Fraser, one of the primary aims of social justice is the achievement of ‘participatory parity’ through addressing the demeaning and debilitating impact of ‘misrecognition’ and ‘status subordination’.

To be misrecognised … is not simply to be thought ill of, looked down upon or devalued in others’ attitudes beliefs or representations. It is rather to be denied the status of full partner [status subordination] in social participation [participatory parity] in social interaction as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute one as comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem. [my italics]. (Fraser 2008, 135)

In Fraser’s view, a principal aim of social justice is to enable all to participate as equals through the equitable distribution of resources, cultural respect and recognition, and equal access to the processes of political decision-making. Underpinning this is the ‘all affected principle’.

This principle holds that all those affected by a given social structure or institution have moral standing as subjects of justice in relation to it. On this view, what turns people into fellow subjects of justice is not geographical proximity, but their co-imbrication in a common structural or institutional framework which sets the groundwork that governs their interaction, thereby shaping their respective life possibilities in patterns of advantage or disadvantage. (Fraser 2008, 285).

The point Fraser makes in both of these quotations is that social justice or injustice is context dependent and located within the particular structures of that context. She develops this in her exploration and critique of the politics of social identity.

Fraser and the politics of social identity

Fraser’s work does not seek to replace the redistributive dimension of social justice; rather her critique concerns its sufficiency as a comprehensive paradigm of social justice. Indeed, a significant part of her work is directed towards ensuring that the redistributive dimension maintains its place in the discourses and practical workings-out of social justice and is not displaced by an overemphasis on what she identifies as an identity model of social justice.

This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities, instead of one that promotes reification and separatism [my italics]. (Fraser 2000, 109)

One of Fraser’s most significant contribution lies in her challenge to conceptions of recognition based primarily upon an ‘identity model’, and the way in which such a model results in reification and separatism. Fraser argues that an ‘identity politics’ approach to recognition involves mapping a Hegelian model of individual identity – in which ‘one becomes an individual subject only by virtue of recognising and being recognized by another subject’ (Fraser 2000, 109) – onto group-identity and group recognition. A consequence of this mapping is that marginalised groups are understood as acting in an individualistic way to create and project a unified, positive image that contests the ‘dominant culture’s demeaning picture of this group’, and to which all members of the group subscribe. This ‘self-affirming culture’ results in ‘recognition: an undistorted relation to oneself’ (109).

Fraser acknowledges that whilst the identity model of misrecognition provides useful insights into the ‘psychological impact’ of group marginalisation and disrespect, it is ‘theoretically and politically problematic’ (2000, 110). Firstly, it has the potential to place redistribution at the periphery of the discourses of social justice (displacement), and secondly it promotes a reified conception of group-identity. In terms of the displacement of the redistributive dimension, an identity politics conception of misrecognition tends to frame it as ‘free flowing’ discourses abstracted from any ‘institutional matrix’ and thus obscuring distributive injustices that may be inherent in the institutional structures. For, as Fraser notes, it is institutionalised patterns of cultural values that ‘casts some actors as less than full members of society and prevents them from participating as peers’ (Fraser 2008, 135–136).

Such institutional matrixes exist at the macro-level of legal frameworks and policies, at the meso-level of institutional policies and practices, or at the micro-level of individual organisations, such as schools or departments within schools. For example, within schools, distributive injustice might occur where resources are unequally distributed towards young people involved in a particular favoured form of music making to the disadvantage of others, resulting in the latter experiencing barriers to parity of participation. Alternatively, certain musical practices – particularly classical music – might only be open to those young people – mainly middle-class children – who have sufficient financial resources to be able to afford instruments and sustained tuition (Bull 2014). However, as Bull goes onto say, financial constraints are a relatively minor factor in decisions not to, for example, learn a classical musical instrument. Consequently, if working-class young people’s lack of engagement with classical music is a matter of social justice, then it is not likely to be addressed through a primarily distributive approach.

A second consequence of an identity politics conception of misrecognition is a reification of group-identity. Where this happens, ‘The overall effect is to impose a single, drastically simplified group-identity which denies the complexity of people’s lives, the multiplicity of their identifications and the cross-pulls of their various affiliations’ (2008, 112). Individual members of the group can then feel pressured into conforming to this narrowly framed and reified form of identity. Additionally, internal critiques of its power structures are discouraged whilst external critiques are characterised as symptomatic of a failure to grasp the authentic particularities of the group. Consequently, as Fraser (2000, 112) notes, the identity model can ‘serve as a vehicle for misrecognition’ through marginalising dissenting voices within groups and denying them parity of participation as well as shielding from view ‘the power of dominant factions’ and reinforcing ‘intragroup domination’ (2000, 112). As Spruce (2015) has noted in relation to pupil voice in music education, the sanctioned voices are often only those that articulate the legitimated text (Spruce 2015, 29). Finally, Fraser points out how, paradoxically, having begun by adopting the Hegelian premise that identity is constructed dialogically in relation to ‘the other’, the identity model ends up adopting a monological position where identity is entirely constructed from within the group, eschewing any external perspective.

Keddie (2012), writing from the perspective of social justice in the school setting, describes how reification, essentialism and monologism resulting from an identity model of recognition can lead to a lack of critique of non-dominant cultures and forms of knowledge. She argues that an ‘unproblematic exaltation of the minority other’ (272) has the potential, firstly to close down debates and discussions around what is ‘good and bad’ knowledge in ‘other’ cultures and, secondly, to an assumption that only those who are members of the group can speak with authority and legitimacy about such cultural knowledge. The result of this monologism, as noted earlier, can be the marginalising of voices within groups that do not articulate the group’s hegemonic discourses.

Bradley (2015) drawing on, amongst others, the work of Ladson-Billings (1995) and Schippers (2009) notes how, in music education, an identity model of misrecognition even when (or especially when!) promoting the importance of cultural diversity and musical hybridity can result in an essentialising of musical cultures ‘through identifiers such as African American, Asian American, or the grouping of all Spanish speakers under the rubric ‘Hispanic’’ (2015, 16). Echoing Fraser and Keddie, Bradley argues that an imagined ‘unitary consciousness’’ results in an essentialising process, the construction of which replaces the more complex reality of group identities and result in a ‘notion of music traditions as static rather than dynamic’ (2015, 16). Reification of music traditions and cultures, she notes, denies the reality of how musical traditions change organically and in response to changing social demands. Such a critique might be levelled at the highly influential praxial philosophy of music education (e.g. Elliott 1995) which argues that music education should be rooted in the musical values, processes, practices, and purposes of specific musical traditions and taught within the ‘established conventions’ (Allsup 2016, 25) of those traditions. Praxial approaches are posited as challenging the hegemonic universalising of classical music’s aestheticism by locating musical learning in the praxis of its provenance. However, as Westerlund (2012, 14) notes, its ‘socio-cultural and situational meanings’ change during its journey into the classroom.

Bernstein’s (2000) notion of ‘discursive gaps’ and ‘pedagogic device;’ is perhaps useful here. Bernstein draws on the concept of the ‘pedagogic device’ to describe the transformation and structuring of knowledge in order to make it open to ‘pedagogic communication’ (Singh 2002, 571). This journey is punctuated by ‘discursive gaps’ as it moves from one level to another, for example from its original provenance into teaching resources, examination syllabi and into schools. The discursive gaps that open up as knowledge moves into schools provide opportunities for agentic action by teachers to mould knowledge in a form that is appropriate for the contexts of their schools and the children they teach. However, in music education, which is often resource driven, the discursive gaps around the production of resources can result in the ossification, essentialising and reification of knowledge, particularly where the knowledge is of musical styles and traditions with which teachers might be unfamiliar. A small number of essentialised musical characteristics (for instance, Chinese traditional music’s pentatonicism) then become the primary pedagogical object of attention, thus reinforcing the notion of musical meaning and knowledge as inherent within the sonic working out of its musical materials rather than as historically, culturally and socially contingent.

Reconciling tensions: pedagogies for social justice

In the introduction I wrote that one of the aims of the article is to attempt to reconcile some of the tensions around knowledge and social justice that were revealed both in the report and in the further exploration of issues that emerge from it. I have sought to do this as the article progressed. However, in this final section, I wish to focus further on the tensions revealed in the Report through the lens of pedagogical relationships. I define pedagogical relationships as the dynamic relationship between knowledge, the learner, the teacher and the context within which those relationships are enacted. I will consider these pedagogical relationships from three related perspectives.

• – The relationship between ‘formal’ and ‘everyday’ knowledge.

• – Monological and dialogical pedagogies.

• – The pedagogies of participatory parity

The relationship between ‘formal’ and ‘everyday’ knowledge

I noted earlier how one of the main tensions noted in the report was between the belief that the knowledge focus in schools should be, firstly, on the structured, epistemic knowledge that can be obtained only in formal educational contexts and which, conceptually, has an existence apart from the knower (exemplified in the social realist position and Bernstein’s notion of vertical knowledge versus horizontal knowledge), and, secondly, on constructivist positions that conceive of knowledge as entwined with the knower’s world and experiences, and their sense-making of that world.

Gail Edwards (2014), adopting a critical realist positioning and drawing on a particular form of standpoint theory, offers a potential way to reconcile these two positions. Whilst acknowledging that there is knowledge that exists separate from the knower (the social realist position), she rejects the dichotomising and binary framing of formal and everyday knowledge, arguing that although objective reality exists, it is mediated ‘through a socially constructed medium that is prone to partiality and error’ (171). In other words, knowledge is never engaged with abstractly but is always mediated by the experiences and knowledge that the knower/learner brings to their engagement with new knowledge. As she notes, ‘despite the ambitions of any prescribed curriculum or syllabus, epistemological form will vary according to the learner’s social location or standpoint’ (172), so a background of tacit understanding is essential for rendering knowledge intelligible. This way of conceptualising knowledge has significant implications for music education. Young people of all ages typically bring to their school music lessons experiences of music drawn from their everyday lives. This might be simply as consumers of music but will often also include actively making music either in activities organised by the school as part of the extra or enriched informal curriculum or in their lives outside of school, for example church or theatre groups or their own informal music making with peers. Many of these experiences will have significant meaning for them and play an important role in the construction and expression of their musical and wider identities. It does not mean that formal musical education should be restricted to these experiences or simply become an affirmation of them. For, as Edwards suggests, these everyday experiences might be partial and prone to error and the understanding gained from them tacit rather than explicit. Rather the argument is that cognisance of and acknowledgement by teachers of the importance of the musical knowledge and experiences that young people bring to their music lessons is both a matter of social justice, in that it demonstrates respect for this form of knowledge, but, more pragmatically, pedagogical competence because these experiences provide a foundation for building new experiences and knowledge. Edwards’ critical realist approach does, however, challenge conceptions of knowledge as fixed and inert since knowledge is always, to an extent, filtered through and mediated by personal experiences and the learner’s world.

Returning to the central issue of the Report – music literacy – Philpott (2015, 192) argues that the making of musical meaning is ‘a foundational musical literacy’ that underpins ‘wider conceptions of musical literacies’, wider conceptions that are noted in the Report. In arguing the case for music as functioning like language (which, he emphasises, is different to music being a language), and drawing on semiotics, Philpott argues for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between signifiers and signified. He critiques what he describes as the ‘deterministic, causal semiotics after Saussure’ (194), which adopts a simple signifier-signified semiotic relationship. Drawing on the work of Nattiez (1987), Philpott argues for a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between signifier and signified, arguing that this is not a straightforward, unidirectional relationship but rather one that is mediated by individual meaning-making that is socially, culturally, and historically grounded. Like Edwards, the implication here is that knowledge and meaning are mediated by the learner/knower and their worlds. One implication of Edwards’ and particularly Philpott’s work for issues raised in the Report, not least musical literacy, is to challenge simplistic notions of musical meaning as simply needing to be excavated through the analysis of its codification in notation. Rather, ‘being musically literate is bound up with a dynamic and hermeneutical (interpretative) relationship between music and the child’ (Philpott 2015, 197).

Dialogical pedagogies for social justice

I noted earlier how the reification and essentialising of a group’s identity through an ‘identity politics’ approach to social justice can result in monologist narratives that marginalise those voices that do not conform to the promoted group-identity and result in a reified and essentialised form of musical knowledge. Spruce (2021) has noted how conceptions of knowledge that see knowledge as primarily objective and residing beyond the knower can result in mono-directional pedagogies from the teacher to the learner. This provides little space for the voice of the learner to be heard and the tacit or formal knowledge they bring from outside of school being accommodated, recognised, and respected within the epistemological frameworks of the music classroom. As noted earlier, recognition and respect are central to Fraser’s notion of participatory parity as the foundation of a comprehensive paradigm of social justice. For Spruce (2015; 2021), drawing particularly on the work of Bakhtin (1956) and Wegerif (2011), dialogical pedagogies involve the facilitation of ongoing ‘conversations’ between the learner, the teacher and musical knowledge (broadly conceived) through which musical understanding and musical meaning are developed and transformed. Dialogical pedagogies are underpinned by a dynamic conception of knowledge that does not reject the existence of knowledge beyond the knower but rather conceives of such knowledge as being in a dynamic relationship (conversation) with its social, cultural and historical contexts as well as with those who engage with it as learners and teachers, including what they bring to the educational and musical encounters of the classroom. From a pedagogical perspective, approaches to teaching grounded in dialogism create dialogical spaces in the classroom where:

The teacher opens dialogues or conversations with students … delights in questions, resists in foreclosing options, engages the many, relates knowledge to the lived experiences of the teacher and student … demands the best of teacher and student in transcending the status quo … a respect for tradition tempered with ambition for change. (Jorgensen 2003; 130 cited in Spruce 2021, 111)

Conclusion: participatory parity

Central to Fraser’s conception of social justice and to many school music teachers’ conception of ‘good’ music education is the notion of ‘participatory parity’. Within music education, participatory parity is enjoyed where all young voices, whether verbal or musical, have a say in the decisions that are made about their music education and the forms that it takes, and not just those that speak the ‘legitimated text’ (Spruce 2015). It is also where the knowledge that young people bring to the classroom is recognised by the teacher and used to inform both the epistemological and pedagogical decisions that are taken. Participatory parity is, however, more than just accommodating the music perspectives that young people bring to the music classroom. Returning for a final time to the work of Nancy Fraser (2000) in considering how participatory parity and social justice might be brought about in music education, her distinction between ‘Affirmative’ and ‘Transformative’ remedies might prove useful. Affirmative remedies accommodate musical diversity without disrupting hegemonic structures. Transformative remedies, on the other hand, look to how music and music education structures – musicological, institutional and political – create and sustain social injustice. In a music education world where barriers to music education still exist for many children, particularly those from economically deprived sections of society, such transformative remedies may well be needed.

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Gary Spruce

Gary Spruce was a secondary school music teacher and head of department for sixteen years before joining The Open University as subject leader to develop their new Music PGCE course. He was also subject leader for Birmingham City University’s PGCE music course from 2019 to 2021. From 2007 to 2012 he was co-editor of the British Journal of Music Education. He has written and published widely on music education, particularly around the areas of secondary music education, teacher professional development and the relationship between music education and social justice. He has presented papers at national and international conferences. He is a co-editor of the recently published book Creative Projects in Classroom Music Education: Fifty Years of Sound and Silence and the forthcoming Instrumental Music Teaching: Perspectives and Challenges, published by Trinity College London Press. He is a practising musician with a particular interest in music theatre.