VICTORIA ARMSTRONG
Victoria Armstrong is Senior Lecturer and Director of Education and Social Science at St. Mary’s University, London. Her work has been presented in the UK, Europe and the US, including a recent keynote at the Grieg Academy of Music in Norway. In 2015 she held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Örebro University, Sweden. She is the author of Technology and the Gendering of Music Education and is currently working on a second monograph, Women’s Musical Lives based on the ethnographies of female professional classical musicians exploring the gendered dimensions of their working lives. She serves on the editorial board of Music Education Research.
|
Neoliberalism and Social Justice in Tension:
Third Sector Involvement in Music Education Provision in the UK
Third Sector Involvement in Music Education Provision in the UK
In recent decades the involvement of third sector organisations in the provision of music education has been a significant feature of the UK educational landscape. Drawing on data from a case study of one music charity providing string instrumental tuition in two multi-ethnic, inner-city London schools, this paper identifies a number of tensions between its stated aim – to increase diversity in elite institutions and ensembles – and the neoliberal education practices it draws on to achieve this. I aim to address the question ‘Is it possible to reconcile the aims of social justice in music education while simultaneously embracing the practices of neoliberal education?’