Dennis Frayne
May 2022
Educational Leadership

TEACHER INQUIRY AS TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING:
THE WORK OF AN ADOLESCENT MUSIC EDUCATION STUDY GROUP

Abstract

With an initial focus on adolescent music education and within a framework of critical feminism, emancipatory education, inquiry as stance, and theory of change, a study group of teachers asked, thought about, and discussed questions of social justice, social justice pedagogies, and transformative learning. The study group often expanded the scope of questioning, critique, and solutions to include not just music education but all education. In addition to specific recommendations, from the data I composed a screenplay with running commentary which strove to give voice and context to the content and meaning of the study group participants’ words. I then developed a theory of change for education that challenges and upends longstanding beliefs, norms, and objectives that are rooted in exclusionary goals, practices, and tactics. My theory of change replaces exclusion with inclusion as the primary desired outcome for education. To accomplish this, my theory of change for education asserts that all foundational exclusionary practices, policies, and procedures that underpin and define our education system today must end. A new model for education must be inclusive from the ground up; inclusivity must be a structural component of the new model. The current system cannot be reformed because it was designed and built to be exclusive; so instead of trying to fix a system which exists to serve opposing goals, a new paradigm must emerge and develop side by side with the old one and ultimately take its place. This theory of change for education shifts desired outcomes away from corporatist, statist, and nationalist goals expressed as student achievement and competitiveness, and toward human goals of inclusion, service to, and respect and honor of all students. It identifies teachers, in collaboration with students, as the people who should design, develop, implement, and oversee all of education in all its forms. As teachers develop positive and meaningful relationships with students, learn alongside students, collaborate amongst themselves and with their students, and end the vast array of exclusionary practices that define education today, the desired outcomes of the new education framework might be achieved, and education might become a practice of freedom.