Realizing Diversity, An Equity Framework for Music Education

Questions abound about diversity in music education. How can we engage with diverse populations, repertoire, and identities while upholding integrity and achieving equity? What are cultural appropriation, othering, tokenizing, and essentializing? How can we avoid bias in our teaching and repertoire selection? How do we create a more socially just music education?

These are critical questions with accessible answers. But if we are to become better music educators, we must reflect on these questions, our own identities, and our relationships with the music and people of the world.

Realizing Diversity by Karen Howard is a groundbreaking and practical resource for crafting diverse and anti-bias music education in classrooms, ensembles, and studios at all levels—from preschool to university and community settings.

At the book’s core is an Anti-Bias Framework intended to help music educators gain confidence and comfort in designing music curricula that are just, equitable, and make participants feel safe and welcome. Structured around the four social justice domains of identity, diversity, justice, and action, this framework explores topics of anti-racism, gender and sexual identity, power and privilege, disabilities, economic realities, empathy, and critical consciousness.

Dr. Howard also includes discussion of educational movements in United States history, the challenging “world music” label and related authenticity, the hyper-prevalence of Western Eurocentric music, inclusive repertoire selection, as well as appendices with critical practices for educators and a sample curriculum.

An indispensable book for pre-service, beginning, and veteran music teachers of toddlers through adults, Realizing Diversity considers the many separate but deeply interrelated questions related to creating a more socially just music education.

Karen Howard is a frequent presenter working with teachers and presenting research related to creating a more socially just world of music education. She is Associate Professor of Music at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to children’s music, sociology of education, research methods, ethnomusicology, and matters of diversity.