Gender Performativity through Musicking: Examples from a Norwegian Classroom Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is based on findings from the doctoral thesis Gender at Stake: A Study of Secondary School Pupils’ Musicking. The study explores how pupils stage and construct gender through the music they perform in the lower-secondary school music education in Norway. The observations and interviews of four music teaching practices in two urban lower-secondary schools that provided the qualitative data of the study are intended to highlight both the teachers’ and the pupils’ perspectives. Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity is combined with Christopher Small’s concept of musicking to examine how gender is at stake in the music classroom. The study reveals that pupils relate to the gender constructions that often figurate in popular music as almost predefined packages in relation to the forms and the genre definitions. This article therefore discusses how gender becomes interwoven into musical form and influences pupils’ aesthetic formation. The study makes a contribution to music education research, adding new nuances to existing findings related to the gendered meanings music education practices can construct among pupils and teachers. Keywords: Gender Performativity, Musicking, Aesthetic Formation, Informal Learning