CATHY BENEDICT
Cathy Benedict joined the Music Education faculty at Western University, Ontario Canada in July 2015. She has taught at New York University and served as Undergraduate Coordinator for Music Education at Florida International University. She has taught classes such as elementary pedagogy, Orff, curriculum design, music psychology, critical readings, and music and special needs students. Her scholarly interests lay in facilitating environments in which students take on the perspective of a justice-oriented citizen. To this end, her research focuses on the processes of education and the ways in which teachers and students interrogate taken-for-granted, normative practices. She has published in such journals as Philosophy of Music Education Review, Music Education Research, and Research Students in Music Education, and the Brazilian journal ABEM.
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They Have Been Taught to Teach: What the Hell am I Supposed to Do?
This paper will address the required music course that is taken by the College of Education students. The issue of self-efficacy (at its peak when the students take the class in final term) and the cultural dominance of the College of Education, forces not so much a tension, but rather a confrontation. By incorporating Gramsci’s conception of ‘common sense’ as the idea of engaging in uncritical and conformist ways, as well as Arendt’s belief in creating something in common, this paper will contend with the institutional inconsistencies that serve to enhance rather than interrogate the process of “practical knowledge building” (Beijaard, et al, 2004, p. 123).