Revealing Whiteness in Preservice Music Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Educational institutions and teacher education preparation programs tend to reflect White Eurocentric beliefs and values. Additionally, White preservice teachers may have little understanding of their own cultural backgrounds, as they are largely unexamined in a structure of White norms. In this paper, I draw upon elements of critical whiteness studies as a framework to further analyze data from a prior, larger study about an immersion field experience to reveal the ways in which whiteness was largely unacknowledged but always lurking in the background of the experience—in participants’ discourses about their experiences and interactions with students of color in the music classrooms. This deepened understanding of whiteness embedded in the experience was imperative for considering how to better facilitate field experiences for White preservice music teachers and how to better prepare them to work successfully with students of color.