From inherited practices to imagined possibilities: teacher educator agency in American Orff-Schulwerk teacher education
Embargo Date
2027-09-08
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Orff Schulwerk teacher educators (TEs) occupy a unique position of influence in American music education, with over 100 TEs teaching nearly 1,400 teachers across 43 locations in 30 states during summer 2024. Unlike music teacher educators in higher education, most Orff Schulwerk TEs are practicing music educators who serve as TEs part-time under the auspices of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association (AOSA). The purpose of this study was to explore how four TEs navigated the dynamic between tradition and innovation in their AOSA Teacher Education courses. Specifically, I examined how these TEs perceived and used their agency to serve as arbiters of tradition or instigators of change, and how their enactment of agency aligned or conflicted with AOSA’s institutional aims. I grounded both the study design and analysis in the overarching theoretical framework of ecological teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2015). Priestley et al. conceptualized agency as emerging from the interplay between individual capacities and environmental affordances across three temporal dimensions: iterational (drawing from past experiences), practical-evaluative (responding to present circumstances), and projective (working toward future possibilities). For example, the same AOSA curriculum guidelines might constrain one TE’s sense of agency while enabling another’s, depending on how each TE interprets these guidelines. Gay’s (2018) six characteristics of culturally responsive teaching—validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory—and Wenger’s (1999) communities of practice theory further informed the analysis.
I used a qualitative case study to examine teacher educator agency within AOSA’s organizational context. The bounded case encompassed individual TEs and the institutional structures within which they operated, allowing for investigation of how personal capacities and environmental conditions interacted across contexts. Data collection included AOSA curriculum materials, semi-structured interviews with four purposefully selected TEs representing varied cultural perspectives and contexts, focus group discussions with the four TEs, and participant reflections spanning five months. This method enabled me to examine both individual experiences and group insights.
Three key findings emerged from this analysis: (1) The TEs in this study artfully integrated tradition and innovation in their own classrooms to foster culturally responsive teaching practices, (2) persistent cultural barriers impeded organization-wide cultural responsiveness, and (3) structured professional dialogue among TEs demonstrated transformative potential. The TEs in this study actively employed their agency to enact culturally responsive teaching practices rather than serving as either arbiters of tradition or instigators of change. Through the integration of traditional Orff Schulwerk principles with innovative adaptive strategies, these TEs illustrated how cultural responsiveness enhanced rather than compromised a pedagogical tradition. However, despite organizational policy advancements toward inclusion, implicit social hierarchies within AOSA constrained TE agency and the system-wide implementation of culturally responsive teaching. This constraint took the form of credential gatekeeping, racial bias, and inequitable power structures. The focus group experience emerged as a powerful catalyst for agency development, providing a space where TEs could interrogate systemic concerns, challenge long-standing assumptions, and envision collaborative approaches to institutional change.
Based on these findings, I developed a framework integrating teacher agency and culturally responsive teaching, revealing how the temporal dimensions of agency—iterational, practical-evaluative, and projective—aligned with specific qualities of cultural responsiveness in this study. Through this integration, I proposed that culturally responsive teacher education requires educators to simultaneously draw upon past experiences, respond to present needs, and work toward inclusive futures. These findings revealed implications for professional learning communities as accelerators of teacher educator agency and point to organizational structures that support both individual and collective transformation in music education.
Description
2025
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International