Through the lens of Levinas: An ethnographically-informed case study of pupils’ practices of facing in music-making
type: CreativeWork
description: This study investigates how the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas might shape practice in music education. In a climate of accountability and performativity within wider educational policy-making, the drive for ever-increasing efficiency has overtaken notions of professional judgement and ethical practice. This study opens by introducing current strands of international meta-policy priorities in education, and explores moves to redress the emphasis on standardisation and accountability through the rediscovery of notions of responsibility in the work of Biesta drawing on Bauman (1993), who in turn finds a way forwards in Levinas’ ‘ethics as first philosophy’. Emmanuel Levinas is introduced as a major thinker of the twentieth century whose influence is increasing throughout social science disciplines and who, writing firstly as a teacher, provides valuable philosophical tools with which to investigate current practices in education. Over the past three decades competing paradigms for music education have tended to polarise rather than ground thinking in music education research. More recent notions of music-making as ethical encounter (Bowman, 2000) and as the practice of hospitality (Higgins, 2007) have taken forwards Small’s relationship-oriented conceptualisation of ‘musicking’ (1998), and these provide the starting point for this study’s search for an ethical underpinning for music education. Levinas’ first major work (1969) provides two key strands of thought – the polarities of totality and infinity, and the exhortation to ‘look into the face of the Other’. These tools open up explorations of how pupils encounter difference, the unfamiliar, and of how narrow conceptions of learning in the music classroom may be understood as an ethical problem. At the heart of this study is the report of ethnographically-informed fieldwork undertaken in a Scottish secondary school, following a group of 13-year-olds through an academic year of class music lessons. Participant observ…
abstract: This study investigates how the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas might shape practice in music education. In a climate of accountability and performativity within wider educational policy-making, the drive for ever-increasing efficiency has overtaken notions of professional judgement and ethical practice. This study opens by introducing current strands of international meta-policy priorities in education, and explores moves to redress the emphasis on standardisation and accountability through the rediscovery of notions of responsibility in the work of Biesta drawing on Bauman (1993), who in turn finds a way forwards in Levinas’ ‘ethics as first philosophy’. Emmanuel Levinas is introduced as a major thinker of the twentieth century whose influence is increasing throughout social science disciplines and who, writing firstly as a teacher, provides valuable philosophical tools with which to investigate current practices in education. Over the past three decades competing paradigms for music education have tended to polarise rather than ground thinking in music education research. More recent notions of music-making as ethical encounter (Bowman, 2000) and as the practice of hospitality (Higgins, 2007) have taken forwards Small’s relationship-oriented conceptualisation of ‘musicking’ (1998), and these provide the starting point for this study’s search for an ethical underpinning for music education. Levinas’ first major work (1969) provides two key strands of thought – the polarities of totality and infinity, and the exhortation to ‘look into the face of the Other’. These tools open up explorations of how pupils encounter difference, the unfamiliar, and of how narrow conceptions of learning in the music classroom may be understood as an ethical problem. At the heart of this study is the report of ethnographically-informed fieldwork undertaken in a Scottish secondary school, following a group of 13-year-olds through an academic year of class music lessons. Participant observ…
author: Jourdan, Kathryn Ruth
language: en
keywords: Research Subject Categories::SOCIAL SCIENCES::Social sciences::Education::Music education, Emmanuel Levinas, philosophy, music-making, ethnography
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/60c536d2-f964-4e89-abd2-c14395bf572e/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/d63bf387-02e0-4ce0-86df-bc1939384bd1/download
date published: 2015-10-06
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:08Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.80