About this ebook
Critical of technologically determinist assumptions underpinning current educational policy, Victoria Armstrong argues that this growing technicism has grave implications for the music classroom where composition is often synonymous with the music technology suite. The use of computers and associated compositional software in music education is frequently decontextualized from cultural and social relationships, thereby ignoring the fact that new technologies are used and developed within existing social spaces that are always already delineated along gender lines. Armstrong suggests these gender-technology relations have a profound effect on the ways adolescents compose music as well as how gendered identities in the technologized music classroom are constructed. Drawing together perspectives from the sociology of science and technology studies (STS) and the sociology of music, Armstrong examines the gendered processes and practices that contribute to how students learn about technology, the repertoire of teacher and student talk, its effect on student confidence and the issue of male control of technological knowledge. Even though girls and female teachers have technological knowledge and skill, the continuing material and symbolic associations of technology with men and masculinity contribute to the perception of women as less able and less interested in all things technological. In light of the fact that music technology is now central to many music-making practices across all sectors of education from primary, secondary through to higher education, this book provides a timely critical analysis that powerfully demonstrates why the relationship between gender and music technology should remain an important empirical consideration.
About the author
Dr Victoria Armstrong, St Mary's University, Twickenham, UK
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
