In mid-2023, the gu zheng, a traditional Chinese zither, was a featured musical instrument in the major Australian concert event associated with the national broadcaster ABC’s popular annual Classic 100 listener’s poll. The concert involved the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and a range of soloists performing well-known items from the Western classical canon and some other music. The poll’s theme was ‘Your Favourite Instrument’, and for the concert, Mindy Meng Wang played ‘Fishermen singing in the sunset (渔舟唱晚)’ by Gong Yi. Among the distinguished classical soloists on the same programme were two high-profile Australian musicians of Chinese ancestry, Andrea Lam (piano) and Emily Sun (violin).
For us, the appearance of the gu zheng raised questions about the prevalence of East Asian music in Australian public cultural life, and Lam’s and Sun’s accomplishments caused us to wonder about the aspects of the involvement of Australians of East Asian heritage in music education in this country.Footnote 1 Of course, as Michelle Duffy contends, this kind of performance event ‘can be criticised for the model of multiculturalism it seems to serve’ (Duffy, Reference DUFFY2003, p. 105). (Duffy refers to Ghassan Hage’s notion of a ‘white nation fantasy’ in which Anglo Australians ‘enact their capacity to manage’ their nation’s cultural diversity [Hage quoted in Duffy, Reference DUFFY2003, p. 106]). We wondered whether East Asian musical instruments are taught in Australian schools and whether students of East Asian heritage, including those who planned to pursue a music teaching career, predominantly pursued mastery of Western classical music, particularly in a national cultural climate where diversity is encouraged. In broad terms, such questions and thoughts lie at the heart of the research on which this article is based. In the article, we are concerned with what Aline Scott-Maxwell terms ‘direct engagement’, that is, ‘relatively unmediated encounters’ with East Asian music instruments, forms and styles (Scott-Maxwell, Reference SCOTT-MAXWELL2011, p. 78; see also: 83–87).
What follows is a case study involving East Asian-Australian preservice and early career music teachers in Sydney, New South Wales and the extent to which they are likely to teach aspects of East Asian music – music of their ethnic heritage – in their classrooms (and by implication, in their schools’ co-curricular offerings). The study is positioned against a background of national multiculturalism and approaches to cultural inclusivity in Australian society, as well as the long-standing notion of ‘Asia literacy’ in Australian education, and, since 2014, the national cross-curriculum priority (C-CP) of ‘Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia’ (Guo, Reference GUO2021), which appeared even earlier as a priority at the state level in New South Wales (Southwell, Reference SOUTHWELL2013).
To be clear, we do not believe that individuals represent their group, that is, that Australian teachers of East Asian heritage should feel compelled to study and teach East Asian music, nor that they would necessarily be the most qualified to do so (see Leong & Woods, Reference LEONG and WOODS2017, p. 379). It may be the case that a teacher of another (that is, non-East Asian) cultural background develops an enthusiasm for teaching aspects of East Asian music and becomes proficient at doing so. (One such case is a Canadian music educator whose work is mentioned later in the article.) To adapt Melissa Cain’s cautionary note to apply to teachers: ‘ethnic and familial culture may not, in fact, be relevant to [teachers’] sense of self at all’, and teachers may not necessarily align themselves with any ethnic identity the majority culture chooses to attribute to them (Cain, Reference CAIN2015, p. 72).
As already indicated, it was our sense that East Asian music has a precarious place in Australian national cultural life, even given the fact that East Asian people are one of Australia’s largest and oldest immigrant minority groups. According to the 2021 census, 17.6% of the Australian population claim Asian heritage (which includes East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia) (Liu et al., Reference LIU, YU and WRIGHT2024, p. 7). Almost one-third of this group are of Chinese ancestry (some 5.5% of the population [Hsu, Reference HSU2023, p. 5]); fewer than one percent are of South KoreanFootnote 2 and Japanese ancestryFootnote 3 .
Despite decades of commentary on so-termed Asia literacy – and as will be seen, concomitant attempts by music educationists to engender music teacher engagement with culturally diverse music – East Asian forms appear to be almost entirely absent from Australian schools. We were curious to see what preservice and early career music teachers of East Asian ancestry had to say on this subject. Moreover, we also wished to identify the challenges involved in exposing Australian students of all cultural backgrounds to East Asian music forms and styles and believed music teachers of East Asian heritage might have something relevant to say about this matter. We reach somewhat disheartening conclusions but have also been encouraged by an idea encountered in the literature to ponder a potential way forward.
These questions guided the study on which the article is based:
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1) To what extent and in what ways do Australian preservice and early career music teachers of East Asian heritage identify with their ancestral culture?
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2) What is the scope of their knowledge and experience of East Asian music?
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3) What are their attitudes towards incorporating the music of their cultural heritage in their lessons?
In the remainder of the article, before proceeding to discuss other details of the study and its findings, we briefly touch on multiculturalism and music education in Australia and go on to consider literature on teachers’ ethnic heritage and its bearing on their subject specialism. Then we discuss literature on the place of ‘Asian music’ within Australian education. Following the discussion of our study’s findings, we briefly report on follow-up reflections of four of the study participants. Rather than define ‘East Asian music’, we wanted to see how the participants interpreted the term or understood the notion of their heritage music. That is, whether to them, it meant mainly traditional or classical music, or whether it included folk and popular forms too.
Literature review
Multiculturalism in Australian music education
‘Australia today is one of the most cosmopolitan societies in the world’, Nita Temmerman wrote in the mid-1980s (Temmerman, Reference TEMMERMAN1985, p. 56). She went on to discuss how a national policy of cultural assimilation and ‘Anglo conformity’ in relation to immigrant groups – including in education – gave way, in the 1970s, to one of multiculturalism (Temmerman, Reference TEMMERMAN1985, p. 56). While this change of policy was reflected in the school music curriculum (Temmerman provides examples from the state of Queensland), at the time of writing, she identified a considerable ‘gap between intent and reality’ (Temmerman, Reference TEMMERMAN1985, p. 57). This would become a repeated refrain over the coming decades. In 1991 Frank Murphy reported that in the ‘field of music and multicultural education, Australia has been long on theory, but short in practice, at least at the secondary level’ (Murphy, Reference MURPHY1991, p. 390). Twenty years later, Dawn Joseph and Jane Southcott found ‘[s]ome classrooms have incorporated non-Western musics into their curricula, although teachers have often been poorly prepared in preservice teacher education to undertake this’ (Joseph & Southcott, Reference JOSEPH and SOUTHCOTT2009, p. 459).
Writing thirty years after Temmerman, Melissa Cain observed that ‘[d]espite the face of Australian society developing interculturally, educational structures which relate to European traditions are still firmly entrenched’ (Cain, Reference CAIN2015, p. 75). Cain found that teachers ‘display interest in providing their students with exposure to a broad array of musics and yet there appears to be an invisible boundary they will not cross’ (Cain, Reference CAIN2015, p. 83). In a separate study which included Australian participants, and which sought to establish ‘exemplars of diverse practice’, Cain and Jennifer Walden ‘found it more difficult than expected to identify teachers who include diverse musics in their repertoire’ (Cain & Walden, Reference CAIN and WALDEN2019, p. 15). In large part, Cain attributes this situation, in Queensland at least, to ‘a deficiency in tertiary training and professional development experience with regard to cultural diversity in music education’ (Cain, Reference CAIN2015, p. 82).
It appears then, that with isolated exceptions musical content in Australian schools has never really become very culturally diverse. That is, the multicultural or diverse cultural vision of Australian policymakers and some academics has never translated into reality in the music education sphere. Cain concludes that music educators generally ‘do not wish to be seen to threaten the position of Australia’s own musical culture’ (Cain, Reference CAIN2015, p. 83). This prompts us to ponder the nature of the dominant model of multiculturalism that is at work within Australian music education, as alluded to at the opening, a point to which we return towards the end of the article.
Ethnic heritage and music teaching
What is ethnic identity? According to Jean Phinney, ‘the process of ethnic identity formation appears to involve an exploration of one’s ethnicity (e.g., its history and traditions) that leads to a secure sense of oneself as a member of a minority group’ (Phinney, Reference PHINNEY1992, p. 160). Ethnic identity is generally of significance among immigrants to a country other than that of their birth or ancestry. It is important to note that one’s ethnic identification can change, but their ethnicity or ethnic heritage remains a permanent characteristic.
To date, almost no research has been undertaken on the relationship between music teachers’ ethnic heritage and their motivation (or lack thereof) to teach their heritage music, especially in a multicultural societal context such as in Australia. While this was not the focus of his research, Josiah Lau’s recent Sydney Conservatorium of Music honours level study includes three participants who are of East Asian descent. In different ways, each expressed keenness to expose primary school students to the music of their (the participants’) heritage culture (Lau, Reference LAU2022, p. 28).
In an article that briefly explores the topic, Filipino American music educator Pauline Latorre asks, ‘why embrace our own ethnicity when it comes to teaching music?’ (Latorre, Reference LATORRE2021, p. 35). She answers the question by stating that ‘our ethnicity is part of who we are’. In a sense, Latorre argues for the prevention of the ‘loss of self and culture’ among music teachers (Latorre, Reference LATORRE2021, p. 35). For her, teaching her heritage songs in class,
was a journey in learning more about myself and the land of my parents. As I shared this part of myself with my students, I realized I had created a safe space where they could also share their diverse backgrounds and that we were creating shared memories and connections to each other. It was powerful. (Latorre, Reference LATORRE2021, p. 36)
Latorre’s ideas are helpful in our context, as well as being related to the substantial and growing literature on the matching of teachers’ and students’ ethnicity more broadly, although this is not our specific focus in this article.
Writing about Australian music classrooms, Jiao Tuxworth and Rachel Dwyer also raise points relevant to this study. They cast light on the fact that ‘there are significant differences between the identities of students and teachers in Australian schools’ (Tuxworth & Dwyer, Reference TUXWORTH and DWYER2023, p. 48) and that although ‘the population of students is increasingly diverse, the composition of teachers remains hegemonic, made up of the ethnic “mainstream”’ (Tuxworth & Dwyer, Reference TUXWORTH and DWYER2023, p. 50). Further, they note: ‘The experiences of culturally diverse teachers are not well documented in the research literature, and this is an area that warrants further investigation’ (Tuxworth & Dwyer, Reference TUXWORTH and DWYER2023, p. 56).
Christopher Cayari’s (Reference CAYARI2021) article, ‘The Education of Asian American Music Professionals: Exploration and Development of Ethnic Identity’, investigated ways ‘the educational, musical and cultural experiences of nine Asian Americans who pursued careers in various musical professions influenced the development of their racial and ethnic identities’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 8). It touches on several ideas that are relevant to this study. Cayari cites a case in the literature where a Korean American teacher assisted one of her Korean American students to ‘develop a deeper connection to her parents’ culture through [the teacher’s] knowledge of the folk song, Arirang, which the student had ‘experienced in a choral setting’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 11). As the author reflects, the ‘melding of Western European techniques and Asian music provides a thought-provoking context to consider how ethnic identity might be formed through music learning activities’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 11). Like Latorre, one of the participants in Cayari’s study, a Filipino American high school choir and orchestra teacher named Ariadne, eventually ‘committed to teaching her students Asian music [in this case] through conducting Filipino folk songs with her choirs’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 20). In his conclusion, Cayari proposes that music educators cultivate what he terms ‘Asian spaces’, while not ‘perpetuating stereotypes that pressure students into playing certain instruments because of their ethnicity’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 22). We will return to this notion later to discuss its potential for Australian music education.
Related to Cayari’s study is Korean American music teacher Clara Yoon’s recent article investigating the othering of Asian teachers within a multicultural education setting (Yoon, Reference YOON2022). Yoon notes that during the coronavirus pandemic, ‘Asians have modulated from ‘model minorities’ back to ‘yellow peril’, and the stigma against Asians and Asian Americans has become an epidemic itself’ (Yoon, Reference YOON2022, p. 63). Yoon thinks through how best to empower and cultivate support for Asian teachers, including how to ‘address [their] multiplicities of cultures and identities’ (Yoon, Reference YOON2022, p. 74). Yoon also notes the inadequacy of representation of Asian music forms within multicultural education offerings in the United States and that the ‘perpetuation of othering and covering of Asians and Asian Americans [in society and schooling] demand[s] strong countervailing actions as well as continuous commitment from all allies’ (Yoon, Reference YOON2022, p. 72).
Nhu-Hien Luong-Phan and Mary McMahon found that among the challenges Asian or other non-native English-speaking language teachers faced in teaching in Australia were ‘discrimination, racism, prejudice, marginality, language barriers and inadequate assistance for demanding and multiple transitions’ (Luong-Phan & McMahon, Reference LUONG-PHAN and MCMAHON2014, p. 58). It is possible that music teachers of East Asian heritage fear similar challenges if they were to attempt to teach their heritage music. Teo, for example describes a situation where a music teacher colleague of East Asian heritage working at a Brisbane school, related to him: ‘It just ticks me off that no matter [what] we do, we’re always going to be seen as people who don’t belong here’ (Teo, Reference TEO2022, p. 91). She expressed this frustration following a classroom incident where ‘one of the boys kept asking at the top of his voice if I was from Choi-nahh while I was trying to deliver content’ (Teo, Reference TEO2022, p. 91). It would certainly be difficult to teach music from East Asia in such an environment. One participant in Lau’s study mentioned above encountered a similar situation – where students kept asking, ‘‘Are you Chinese? Are you Japanese? Are you Korean?’ and in response, she (bravely) decided to expose them to music of her East Asian heritage (Lau, Reference LAU2022: 30–31).
East Asian heritage language teaching
Literature on the teaching and learning of East Asian heritage languages in Australian schools is also helpful in shedding light on issues we raise. In a study titled ‘Chinese Self, Australian Other’, Han and Ji (Reference HAN and JI2021) concentrated on ‘Chinese language teacher identity entering into Western educational contexts’, an area they found to be under-researched. As Han and Ji note, Australia is ‘a country of diverse cultural backgrounds’, hence it ‘has witnessed the complexity of teacher identity interaction and transformation’ (Han & Ji, Reference HAN and JI2021, p. 4). Shen and Jiang (Reference SHEN and JIANG2021) investigated correlations between ethnic identification among Australian students of Chinese heritage and how proficient they were in their heritage language. Their work focused on ‘awakening the Chinese diaspora to heritage language maintenance’ (Shen & Jiang, Reference SHEN and JIANG2021, p. 6). This prompted us to wonder whether the Chinese diaspora could be awakened to maintain its heritage music. Of course, we are aware that although language and music share some similarities, the two modes of communication shape identity in different ways.
Kwee (Reference KWEE2023) examined links between the sense of cultural awareness and professional identity among Chinese heritage language teachers working in New South Wales and Victoria. She notes that Chinese immigrant heritage language teachers derive satisfaction from being able to connect first- and second-generation Chinese students with their cultural roots (Kwee, Reference KWEE2023, p. 344). Again, we wondered whether music teachers of East Asian heritage could achieve similar results by connecting East Asian heritage students with their heritage music.
Although it was developed with reference to immigrant teachers, specifically, those who received their training overseas before immigrating to Australia, Yip’s (Reference YIP2021) ‘sense of belonging theory of professional adaptation’ is helpful for comprehending how teachers of East Asian (or other) heritage may perceive the impact of their heritage culture on their teaching. Yip’s theory holds the potential for understanding how a music teacher’s ethnic heritage or ancestry may contribute to their overall professional identity. As she writes: ‘A weak professional identity, a sense of vulnerability and an ethnocentric intercultural perspective diminish immigrant teachers’ sense of belonging and inhibit professional adaptation’ (Yip, Reference YIP2021, p. 194).
Asian music in Australian education
As long ago as 1968, the Australian composer Anne Boyd wrote: ‘Considering Australia’s central geographical position in Southeast Asia, it would seem that Australia’s destined role is to provide a natural meeting place for Eastern and Western culture’ (Boyd, Reference BOYD1968, p. 41). Boyd envisaged the wide and rapid ‘acceptance of a new didactic in music education’, which led her to commend ‘the introduction of Asian music into the classroom’ (Boyd, Reference BOYD1970, p. 28). In fact, Asian music appeared in the music curriculum for the first time that year when ‘Indonesian music’ was offered ‘as an elective thesis topic for sixth-form [Year 12] music students in N.S.W. Secondary Schools’ (Boyd, Reference BOYD1968, p. 43). By then Asian music had already been part of the university curriculum for a handful of years in several states (Boyd, Reference BOYD1968: 42–43).
Boyd’s serialised article on Asian music in Australian music education that appeared in the Australian Journal of Music Education (Boyd, Reference BOYD1968, Reference BOYD1969, Reference BOYD1970) was no doubt linked to Asia literacy and the Asia studies movement in Australian education that dates from 1970 (Hill & Thomas, Reference HILL and THOMAS1998) and to multiculturalist thinking that was emerging at the time. This movement gained renewed impetus in the 1990s when it became ‘blatantly clear that Australia’s economic future overwhelmingly lay within the Asia-Pacific region and it was somewhat simplistically argued that the promotion of Asian languages and culture within schools would yield attractive economic dividends for Australia’ (Hill & Thomas, Reference HILL and THOMAS1998: 55–56). It can now be seen that Boyd’s enthusiastic promotion of Asian musical culture made no significant inroads in classroom content diversification.
Two decades later, the ethnomusicologist Margaret Kartomi wrote that Australia’s
‘curricula have tended to exclude Asian and other non-Western music. The curricula need to be looked at afresh […] to correct the balance, and our attitudes critically examined. Attitudes of cultural superiority clam up the mind and inhibit creative changes in the arts, including those which tend to accompany social change’. (Kartomi, Reference KARTOMI1989, p. 36)
From the perspective of primary and secondary education, Rosalynd Smith and Gregory Hurword found music teachers ‘particularly reluctant to come to grips with Asia in their discipline’, and they proposed a model for the training of both music specialist and general classroom teachers in this area (Smith & Hurword, Reference SMITH, HURWORD and Leong1992, p. 165). They aimed to assist in ‘plac[ing] Australia in an Asian context, with the goal of making our population “Asia-literate”’ (Smith & Hurword, Reference SMITH, HURWORD and Leong1992, p. 164) and argued for the inclusion of music in such programmes on the grounds that ‘through music (and the other arts) people express their view of the world’ (Smith & Hurword, Reference SMITH, HURWORD and Leong1992, p. 165).
The case study
Methodology
This article forms part of a larger multi-case research project undertaken by the first author on aspects of music, education and Australians of East Asian heritage (Wang, Reference WANG2025). Being based on semi-structured interviews, the study is qualitative in its design. It was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committees (HREC) of the University of Sydney. This case study includes a phenomenological component to the extent that the participants’ feelings and perceptions about their East Asian cultural identity in relation to their future profession were explored. We were especially interested to hear their thoughts about the place of the music of their heritage culture in New South Wales schools and whether they would consider teaching aspects of that music and why or why not.
The participants were selected through a purposive sampling process involving self-identification: they responded to a request posted on university Facebook and Instagram sites seeking volunteers of East Asian heritage willing to be interviewed about aspects of their training and future career in music teaching. Table 1 displays profiles of the fifteen participants who responded and agreed to be interviewed. Of these, six were preservice music teachers and nine were early career music teachers. Thirteen were female, and two were male. The heritage countries of the participants were mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The participants had either graduated from or were still studying at one of two universities in Sydney: 14 were from the University of Sydney and one was from University of New South Wales. Nine participants were born in Australia, two were born in mainland China, two in South Korea, one in Hong Kong and one in Taiwan. Most of the interviewees were either born in Australia or immigrated to Australia as a young child.
Details of The Study’s Participants
Data collection and analysis
First author Wang conducted the interviews between June 2021 and July 2022. In September 2022, she followed up with an email asking the participants whether they wished to contribute any further (written) reflections on the topic. The follow-up email asked: How do I [now] feel about being a preservice or early career music teacher of East Asian heritage preparing for (or) teaching in an NSW (or other Australian) school? Four participants responded to this opportunity. All interviews were conducted over the Zoom platform and lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. With the participants’ consent, they were audio recorded and transcribed in full using Otter.ai software. Second author Webb listened back to the original interviews and where necessary emended the transcripts. To validate the data, through email, all participants were given the opportunity to edit and confirm their interview transcript. Data were systematically coded, organised, integrated and interpreted, first by each author independently, then collaboratively, that is, in dialogue.
Findings
We now turn to the study’s findings in the order of the three key research questions listed above. The background, experiences and views of the participants varied quite widely. From the interview (and later email) responses, we were able to gain a sense of the extent of their emotional investment in their heritage culture and music. As will be seen, responses relating to the third question, regarding the incorporation of their heritage music in their classroom teaching were the most detailed and perhaps telling.
Participants’ identification with their heritage culture (Question 1)
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• The nature and extent of the participants’ identification with their heritage culture varied, according to their own criteria.
From the data collected in the interviews, we categorised the extent to which each participant identified with their cultural heritage as follows: (1) Don’t really identify, or barely at all (three participants); (2) Identify to some extent (seven participants); or (3) Strongly identify (five participants). We based this categorisation on themes in the data that emerged in response to specific interview questions, including: i) stated or implied significance (or lack thereof) of place of birth and childhood residence, ii) stated extent of competence in ancestral language and frequency of usage and speaking contexts, iii) stated knowledge of geography and history of ancestral country and of its music, iv) stated observance of cultural festivals, v) East Asian language school attendance when young, vi) visits to ancestral country, vii) stated ethnic makeup of friendship group, viii) stated presentation of self to others. Examples of how these themes shaped our categorisation of each participant can be seen in the data excerpts that follow.Footnote 4
Don’t really identify
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P1: Even though I grew up [in Korea] and spent most of my early childhood [there], I don’t speak Korean with my parents anymore. In terms of how I identify, I don’t tend to talk a lot about my Korean background at all. Especially because I don’t have many Korean friends. In terms of my East Asian background, I guess it’s not how I present myself to others.
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P10: I’m from China. I don’t know much about China. To be honest, I think mostly because I was born here [in Australia], and raised here, I don’t know all that much about China or the history. I don’t know that much about the music either, I don’t know that much. I speak a dialect of Cantonese [that] not many people understand. I mean, I don’t really understand that much Chinese either.
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P11: My family comes from China. I don’t know, like, what region. I’m Cantonese but I don’t know how to speak Cantonese […] so, there’s like a language barrier there. In terms of communication with my grandparents and stuff it’s not as easy – my parents [are] always […] having to, like, translate for us and stuff. It’s a little bit disconnected’. Also, ‘I did go to Chinese school when I was little. But then I forgot all that.
Identify to some extent
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P5: My parents are from Guangzhou. We celebrated a lot of the Chinese holidays and stuff. I grew up speaking Cantonese. […] But I learned English at school, so English is my better language’.
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P9: My family is from China, Guangzhou, so we identify with that region. We don’t speak Mandarin to one another, we speak Cantonese – that is the main language of our family. And we have a few relatives that also came over [to Australia] from Hong Kong – Guangzhou, that area. That’s where we identify.
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P4: My parents are from China. My mother is from Shanghai. My father is from Jiangsu. And he went to Shanghai to study at the University which is where they met. I definitely identify as Chinese Australian because I was born here.
Strongly identify
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P3: I’m half Chinese, half Japanese. However, I still consider myself as more like a Chinese, because I spent more time in Shanghai. My [spoken] Chinese is way better than my Japanese as well. Even so, every time it’s difficult to describe myself, but I will just say I’m more Chinese.
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P8: We identify as residents from Hong Kong [which] was returned to China in 1997. Because of that, I feel like we don’t really make that connection with mainland China, but we definitely do with Hong Kong.
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P7: My parents were born in China. My dad is from Hainan and my mum is from Jiangsu, but she grew up in Guangzhou. Both speak Mandarin and Cantonese, that’s why I can speak both languages as well. […] We now speak Mandarin at home actually and very rarely speak Cantonese, unless we speak to our, like, Guangzhou relatives […]. But I speak English to my brother. He can also speak both Cantonese and Mandarin.
As these quotes indicate, to the degree that they disclosed their feelings, the extent to which participants identified with their heritage culture varied somewhat. As would be expected, language capability is a strong indicator of the extent of heritage culture identification. From the interview excerpts, it might be surmised that there is some blurring between the categories. Where a participant was ambivalent, it appeared to us that they didn’t really identify; where they mentioned language competence and some other feature such as festival celebration, even if hesitantly, we considered that they identified to some extent; where they made more definite statements, we determined that they strongly identified.
Participants’ knowledge and experience of their heritage culture music (Question 2)
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• Most participants admitted they knew nothing or very little about East Asian music and most – but not all – said they were keen to learn more.
As with the previous finding, the participants’ responses to questions about familiarity with their heritage musical culture fell into three broad categories. Seven stated that they had no knowledge or experience, seven noted that they had very little knowledge and one – an outlier – revealed that she had been immersed in aspects of Chinese music as a child. The following interview excerpts are indicative of the three positions:
No knowledge or experience
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P1: The answer is absolutely no. Because I just have never had a lot of exposure to Korean music, even when I was living in Korea. And I don’t try and present myself as an expert on Korean music. The fact is that I don’t know a lot about Korean music. I don’t try and paint myself as someone who knows a lot about Asian music.
Very little knowledge or experience
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P5: I honestly don’t know that much about it [my heritage musical culture]. Informally, I’ve heard my parents sing songs from it. My grandpa gives me, like, the dizi, the Chinese flute. I tried to play it, but that’s the extent of my experience with Chinese instruments. I know some songs; I can’t really sing [them] because my language ability is probably the major inhibiting factor. Also, I have listened to some […] Hong Kong pop songs. That’s mainly the extent of my experience with Chinese music.
Substantial firsthand experience
One participant, P3, had begun learning the Chinese pipa [lute] as a child and was then selected to train at a special school in a form of Chinese opera. When she was in Year 7, she and her family moved to Australia, hence her training in Chinese opera ended. She recalled that some years later, when she was at university in Australia, she joined a Chinese music ensemble, and certain emotions and memories began to well up within her:
I started to realise my, like, natural connection with my own roots culture […] the music kind of like, reminded me of my childhood. And like, Shanghai or those like, little lanes [where] you grew up. And sometimes I also feel that difference between […] Chinese music and Western music. Western music has more structure – it’s like writing a poem – however, Chinese music is more like a spirit. Like, you need to imagine. And if you do not have that cultural background, you cannot do it, because the picture will not enter your mind.
When the participants were asked whether they planned to increase their knowledge of their heritage music, most responded that they had definite plans to do so – sometime in the future. However, one participant, P1, admitted:
To be honest, I’ve never planned on taking that step. I’ve always pursued Western music, Western art forms. That’s been my upbringing and throughout my entire music training and career, that’s been my focus. It is a little bit overwhelming; it’s intimidating to try and familiarise myself in this whole other art form. The reason would be, I don’t know where to start, and I don’t know where I can [get] that kind of assistance, where to seek out that kind of resource.
Participants’ intention to teach their heritage culture’s music (Question 3)
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• To varying extents, the participants themselves were hesitant about teaching the music of their heritage culture, for both personal and practical reasons.
Participants were asked a series of sub-questions related to this broader research question, including whether they thought East Asian music should be taught in schools, in what ways, and if so, who would benefit. Twelve responded that they believed it should ‘definitely’ be taught (P2 and P 8) and that it was ‘really important’ (P4 and P14) and would be ‘really, really beneficial’ (P6). Most of the twelve based their views on a cultural diversity argument, that is, that students should be exposed to music other than the Western music on which the curriculum is founded. Several justified their view according to a ‘culturally responsive’ argument, whereby if a proportion of students at a given school were of East Asian heritage, then its music programme should include their heritage music (and if not, it need not be taught). Here it is worth mentioning Heidi Westerlund’s and Sidsel Karlsen’s point. ‘In contrast to the idea that cultural recognition is something inherently good and helpful’, they write, ‘students may equally feel that their background is something that should not be revealed, and that school is a place where student or parent backgrounds are not always relevant’ (Westerlund & Karlsen, Reference WESTERLUND, KARLSEN and Benedict2015, p. 376). Westerlund and Karlsen cite the case of ‘a Beijing-born student in a Helsinki classroom who refused to be categorised as “Chinese,” choosing instead to pursue a self-defined cosmopolitan identity’ (p. 376). The other three participants were less committed to the idea of teaching East Asian music in schools; one said she did not know enough about the music to hold an opinion on the matter.
Participants were also asked whether they had ever taught any aspect of their heritage culture’s music at a school, during their preservice study or afterwards. Here are three representative responses to that question, all of which pertain to primary school, which suggests a reluctance to trial such content at a higher level:
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P1: No, I have found with a lot of my [school] placements [that] I wasn’t able to decide the topics that were taught. […] I did have the option of including non-Western music-based content in my lessons. I used a lot of African examples, especially during my primary school [placement] and [Australian] Indigenous lullabies and things like that, but not East Asian music.
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P2: Yes, I did. There are three school placements [during our degree]. The first one was in primary school, and they were doing something about Korean music, and, like, on recorder, rather than singing it. I thought, I’ll give them a Korean piece for them to play on recorder. […] That was the only time I integrated my [heritage] culture into the classroom. […] They wanted me to sing the Korean lyrics. So, we were not just playing recorder, but actually learning the lyrics and the history of this song. I explained to them about all the cultural meaning behind the music.
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P3: I did, once, in [a] primary school [placement]. As I said, [it was] Anglo dominant in that school. […] I brought my pipa there, and I did some, like, comparisons between Chinese music and Western music. For example, pipa and guitar, piano and accordion, gu zheng and violin and erhu. I demonstrated on my instrument. Also, I found one online resource. There’s a video clip [of] Chinese music instruments fighting with the Western music instruments, so [I took an] excerpt from that to show them all different things. Also, for example, erhu that imitates the horse race. They were interested in [it]. But that was the only time I implemented this into the classroom, and that was basically just a workshop. But they didn’t know anything about Chinese instruments.
The participants were then asked whether they would be likely to teach aspects of the music of their heritage culture. Most expressed some interest in teaching this music, or an intention to do so once they were working full-time in a school. At the same time, among them they articulated an extensive range of deterring factors or blockers, which we interpreted as reasons they would be unlikely to do so. Four participants declared that they would certainly teach it or were already doing so (which is interesting considering the previous finding where fourteen participants admitted they knew little or nothing about East Asian music). Eight participants answered that they might possibly teach it – although at some unspecified time in the future – and three answered that they were unlikely to teach it.
Table 2 lists reasons the participants provided regarding their reticence to teach East Asian music. These we have categorised as either external or internal factors. External factors tended to be of a practical nature and included the school, its teachers, students and culture, the syllabus, teaching-learning resources, tools (such as musical instruments), the nature of the music itself and so on. Internal factors were generally more personal, based on feelings, perceptions and capabilities and included where to best allocate time and energy (as an early career teacher, for example), personal knowledge and skills, confidence, experience and interest, desire to ‘fit in’ and so on.
Reasons For Reticence to Teach East Asian Music Forms and Styles
Here it is worth listing the ideas offered by nine of the participants regarding how to introduce school students to East Asian music forms and styles: by involving expert East Asian music culture bearers; through East Asian popular music; under the syllabus topic of non-Western music; through music that they as a teacher found appealing; through traditional instruments and forming an ensemble, or by using East Asian drums in the classroom; and through singing folk tunes in Chinese languages.
Discussion
The review of literature above indicates that there is much work to be done if culturally diverse music is to become more prevalent in Australian school music education. Joseph and Southcott (Reference JOSEPH and SOUTHCOTT2009), Cain (Reference CAIN2015), and Smith and Hurword (Reference SMITH, HURWORD and Leong1992) are right to identify tertiary-level teacher preparation as a crucial point at which best practice approaches to culturally diversifying the music curriculum need to be modelled. Concerning the place of East Asian music in such a process, one might expect that the state and national ‘Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia’ C-CP of the last decade might have led to the raising, even to a modest level, of the music’s profile in schools. However, as Aaron Teo argues in a recent article,
at a national level there is no clear data or understanding about the conversations that may or may not be occurring between school leaders and educators about how best to implement this C-CP, nor is there any clarity on what students learn about this C-CP through their education, and its potential subsequent impacts. (Teo, Reference TEO and Vesperman2023a, p. 132)
Moreover, he writes, ‘there is an absence of nuanced information around the descriptor ‘Asia’ or ‘Asian’ in the Australian Curriculum documents as well as a dearth of guidance in the curriculum elaborations about how and where to include Asian content as a C-CP’ (Teo, Reference TEO and Vesperman2023a, p. 133). So, it is difficult to see how the C-CP can have led to the meaningful inclusion of East Asian music.
It is clear from the participants’ interview responses that growing up away from their country of origin has impacted their sense of identification with their heritage culture, including its music. It can also be seen that East Asian music has had little place in their musical education, either informally or formally. Most telling perhaps is the reticence they display towards incorporating East Asian music forms into their own teaching practice. Of course, teachers of other cultural backgrounds may be equally reluctant to teach East Asian music forms or, indeed, forms representative of other Australian immigrant minority groups.
It appears from the literature and from our data, as seen above, that music teachers are generally (and genuinely) convinced of the importance of broadening their programmes culturally, yet major barriers remain regarding the implementation of such an ideal. These relate to complex matters and attitudes surrounding race in Australia, a notion raised earlier in the article. As Teo points out, quoting Ghassan Hage and Ien Ang respectively, ‘“Australian racism generally is far less overt and direct, and far less easy to delineate” […]. We [Asian Australians] often struggle to “prove any ‘hard’ racism here while still feeling objectified, subjected to scrutiny, othered”’ (Teo, Reference TEO2023b, p. 454). Such points provide context for the various blockers our study’s participants raised regarding the introduction of East Asian musics in schools.
This leads us to suggest that music teachers of East Asian heritage and their allies might consider promoting Cayari’s notion of ‘Asian spaces’ in music education as a possible means to increase the presence of East Asian music in Australian schools. ‘Having a designated musical space for a minority community has potential advantages’, writes Cayari, ‘such as providing a safe space to be one’s self […], explore varied aspects of one’s identity […], find a place of belonging […], and feel empowered to pursue the music and history of their marginalised community’ (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 21). Of course, this would need to be done ‘without perpetuating stereotypes that pressure students into playing certain instruments because of their ethnicity’, for example (Cayari, Reference CAYARI2021, p. 21). What comprises an Asian space would need to be carefully worked out in community, since, as Teo cautions, it ‘simultaneously functions as a space of marginalisation and safety’, so, ‘[a]pproached wrongly, it could even reify a sense of not belonging for the East Asian teachers in question’ (Teo, Reference TEO2024, pers. comm.). But, Teo continues, with ‘a nudge in the right direction, these spaces can also be agentively oriented towards advocacy’ (Teo, Reference TEO2024, pers. comm.). Asian spaces could be devised then, that cater for teachers and students, and involve advocacy for the inclusion of East Asian musics, for example, and the devising of high-quality resources to be shared.
Beyond government policy and modelling at the tertiary level, the presence of diverse musics in a school’s curriculum relies upon teacher attitudes and attributes as well as a degree of school engagement with the idea (Cain & Walden, Reference CAIN and WALDEN2019, p. 6). Although atypical, the career trajectory of Canadian music educationist Jennifer Walden is instructive in this respect. As a young teacher, Walden taught in Taiwan, where she developed an interest in Chinese music and dance and became committed to learning from local experts. Over the next three decades Walden taught in eight different countries successively, and her experience demonstrates ‘how Chinese music is perceived, executed and enjoyed in many different educational settings’. Her commitment to this cultural expression ‘prevailed not only through my own knowledge and ability’, she writes, ‘but through genuine student enjoyment of the instruments, rhythms, costumes and movement, all vibrant and rich in Chinese history and culture’ (Walden, Reference WALDEN2019, p. 62). Through self-motivation and collaboration with community experts, Walden broadened her musical interests and honed her knowledge of teaching aspects of Chinese musical culture. We cite Walden as an example merely to re-emphasise that we believe that the cultural diversification of the music curriculum can be undertaken by teachers of any cultural background, if it is undertaken judiciously and respectfully, and in consultation and partnership with culture-bearer experts from the local community (see Webb & Bracknell, Reference WEBB and BRACKNELL2021).
Epilogue: follow-up communication
To bring this article to a close, we mention the further reflections of several of our study’s participants. More than a year after first author Wang began the interviews, she contacted the participants by email with some guiding questions, including, ‘Does my East Asian heritage make any difference to my thinking about what music I might/might not teach?’ Four participants (P5, P12, P13, P15) responded to her email. One (P13) wrote,
My East Asian heritage has a subtle influence on the music I decide to teach. I am more aware of the importance of including music created by peoples of non-Caucasian backgrounds.
Another (P5) explained:
I don’t feel any differently about being of East Asian heritage – I’m glad that [the] students […] I teach can see that I’m from a different cultural background (or same as them), and that I can relate to them, or offer some information about my culture that would be interesting to them.
A third (P12) stated:
[O]ne thing I am certain [of] is that my heritage and ethnicity does not make a difference when deciding the sort of music style and genres I teach for I think all music is important to learn and be exposed to.
There is a degree of nuance between these three positions: the first two participants are aware of their minority status and see it as advantageous in the context of a multicultural student population. The third one sees her cultural heritage as irrelevant since she plans to teach diverse musics regardless of her own background; ‘being in a multicultural country, incorporating cultural diversity is a must’, she wrote. Even so, it is possible that being of East Asian heritage, that is, belonging to an immigrant minority group, makes her more aware of cultural differences among students.
All four respondents noted the ‘rising popularity’ (P13) – the increasing ‘normalisation’ (P5) – of Japanese and Korean music forms, especially Animé soundtracks, video game music and K-pop and J-rock. All report that they ‘incorporate’ these forms ‘into students’ musical experiences’ (P13). For those interested in elevating the place of East Asian music in Australian schools, this is heartening.
Finally, we hope and expect to witness the increasing diversification, in cultural heritage terms, of the music teaching workforce. We also believe this will have implications for the musical diversification of classroom musical content; at least our data as discussed in this article appears to indicate as much. And it is worth concluding with a (positive) reflection from one of the four respondents to Wang’s follow-up email, who wrote: ‘I like that Asian representation [among music teachers] is becoming more mainstream, and that students can look up to their teachers and see someone like them’ (P5).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the study participants. We also wish to thank Associate Professor Christina Ho (UTS, Sydney) for her interest and support and Aaron Teo (The University of Queensland) for his considered responses to our questions.
Funding statement
This research was funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
Ke Wang holds a PhD in Music Education from the University of Sydney. She received her master’s degree from the China Conservatory of Music. Her research focuses on inclusive and culturally diverse music education in and outside China, intercultural music learning, transmission of traditional music, and issues related to music, ethnicity, and identity. Her publications can be found in the International Journal of Music Education, British Journal of Music Education, and elsewhere. Besides being published in refereed journals, Dr Wang’s Chinese translation of North and Hargreaves’ 2008 volume, The Social and Applied Psychology of Music, was released in 2020.
Michael Webb is an ethnomusicologist and music educationist. Between 2006 and 2021, he lectured at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney, rising to the level of Associate Professor. His research has been published in major ethnomusiology and music education journals.
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