Children of all ages are receiving a pervasive education from popular culture (Burdick & Sandlin, 2010) and popular music is at the heart of it. The accessibility of popular music and popular music media is ever increasing with developments in new technology, and research shows that listening to popular music has become a main, if not the main, leisure activity of children in their daily lives (Campbell, 2010; Christenson & Roberts, 1998). Popular music’s power to inform the child’s view of society, world, and self, have made it a powerful public pedagogy (Giroux, 2001; Luke, 1994). As a result, popular music inclusion in school pedagogy, at the middle and high school level, has been a topic in educational discourse in a variety of disciplines (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2005; Woodsen, 2004; Morrell, 2002). However, little research has been done investigating young children and their interactions with popular music. This paper will discuss findings of two pilot studies conducted with second and fifth grade general music students in an elementary school in New York City, The study was designed to investigate how young children negotiate meaning through engagements with popular music and how such engagements might inform educators in regards to popular music and elementary classroom curriculum. Rooted in ideals of student-centered democratic pedagogy, the study included student-generated repertoire and presentations, and group discussions based around the emergent themes of the students in response to the song(s) heard. Findings suggest that (1) young children exhibit tools of critical thinking in generating thoughtful opinions and interpretations of the messages/meanings of popular music, (2) such interpretations are co-constructed in dialogue with their peers, and (3) facilitating such engagements calls for a radical paradigm shift in the traditional teacher-student dyad.
About the presenterJudy Lewis
Judy Lewis was trained as a classical pianist and made her debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at age 16. But after establishing herself in that genre for 20 years she made the decision to become an improvising jazz pianist. Since 1999 she has recorded 5 albums of original compositions and performed extensively at international jazz festivals and clubs in Europe, the Far East, the Middle East and North America. She has been active in the field of music education for the past 25 years in K-12 general music and curriculum design as well as at the university level teaching courses in jazz piano, improvisation, popular songwriting, and music marketing and promotion. Judy Lewis has also been an advocate for women in music and served as the international ambassador of the UK based ‘Women in Music’ organization from 2008-2009. She has presented papers at both New York State and national conferences and her work has been published in Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain and School Music News. She is currently working on her doctorate in music education at Teachers College, Columbia University on the topic of popular music pedagogy in the elementary music classroom.