Offering a reframing of her PhD research, Elizabeth MacGregor’s 2025 publication asserts musical vulnerability as the antithesis of neoliberal ideals in the contemporary music classroom. Acknowledging the widening rift between critical scholarship and practice in music education, specifically awareness of the potential harm music education can cause that has not yet translated into policy reform, the author calls for greater scrutiny of this tension and offers a response. She proposes application of ‘pedagogies of vulnerability’ (p. 24) to support a framework that enables awareness of these tensions and, in the author’s words, ‘foster a praxis of care within music education contexts’ (p. 23). MacGregor invokes a response from within the field of music education that works towards relational, compassionate, and collaborative approaches to teaching and learning, drawing from contemporary scholarship of praxial and care-related educative approaches. Detailed and meticulous, and written in a style that is clear and easy to engage with, this publication will enrich the field for both emerging and seasoned scholars.
Mobilising ethnography as the main methodological approach, the author focuses on two main areas of exploration – 12 UK-based music teachers’ reflections on their own experiences of music education, and one specific locale in the east of England, with ethnographic observations of a year 8 class and their music teacher. MacGregor is therefore able to dig deep into the experiences of classroom music making from the perspectives of the music teacher and four pupils, working together on a practical performance activity. With experience as a classroom music teacher in the UK, MacGregor’s starting point for exploration is a poignant reflection on her own practice.
Contextualised against a twenty-first-century backdrop of the UK’s neoliberal political agenda, MacGregor sets out recent and contemporary policy, practically and immediately impactful to music teaching staff in the UK. Contrasting international perspectives (specifically the US and Latin American countries), the introductory matter illuminates the tensions around a blanket positivistic understanding of the benefits of music education, currently rife within contemporary scholarship.
The importance of phenomenological underpinning of the research is introduced in chapter two, with philosophical explorations of vulnerability studies. MacGregor shares fascinating insights focusing on feminist theorist Judith Butler’s conceptualisation of linguistic vulnerability. The author explores how vulnerability can be misconceptualised as a weak, feminine need, and viewed by some as the opposite of individual and collective autonomy. MacGregor proposes that vulnerability can be reframed and seen as a positive attribute that not only binds all of humanity but also enables reciprocal and caring relationships. The author theorises both the semantic and somatic properties of musical vulnerability, exploring the positive and negative facets of each.
Chapter three expands on the concept of situational musical vulnerability, as connected to both institutional and pedagogical abuses, values, and methods. These are explored in different music education settings, classroom teaching, one-to-one peripatetic teaching and educational outreach programmes. MacGregor challenges traditional and accepted pedagogical values that do not necessarily support learning across a broad range of needs, for example, linked to gender diversity, neurodiversity, disability, cultural differences, etc. She posits that ‘music education policy and pedagogy frequently [subscribe] to a neoliberal agenda of invulnerability’ (p. 75), highlighting the necessity of alternative approaches to enable an experience of positive musical vulnerability that encompasses ethical, care-related, critical, dialogic, reflective and reflexive pedagogies. The author explores how an educator/practitioner imposing their own musical preferences onto students/participants can reinforce the dichotomy of musical taste and set up a ‘debilitating sense of negative susceptibility […] when the listener perceives that they have lost control over their own identity construction’ (p. 50). This connects closely to cultural democracy, a notion integral to participatory music making.
Within chapter four, MacGregor explores practical examples of identity construction through musical vulnerability based on the notion that music is an inherently relational practice. Examples from practice include democratic learning, utilising informal processes, and reflecting pupil autonomy and choice. As such, the connection between musical receptivity and positive feedback (both from teachers and audience members) is highlighted by the author, when ‘well-chosen words powerfully reinforce relationships or affirm identities (Butler, 2011)’ (p. 90). I would suggest that trauma-informed practices are missing from these explorations, with the necessity to adapt and apply strategies to support the varied and complex needs of pupils, particularly with the backdrop to the research of the Covid-19 pandemic.
An issue that could be discussed with greater criticality is that of the teachers’ perceptions of the inherent musicality of their pupils. This is presented as an assumption that pupils are either musical or non-musical, setting the precedent for an unhelpful binary that could use greater scrutiny. The importance of encouragement and praise, alongside risk and reward in support of pupils’ autonomy, is explored, with the inference that ‘pupils’ experiences of musical vulnerability [are] intimately connected with interpersonal relationships (Bowman, 2009)’ (p. 117). How then are those relationships impacted if pupils understand that they are not viewed as equals within their music lessons?
Within chapter five, the author discusses how the music teacher’s own experiences impact the choices made in the classroom and how they want to interact with the pupils. It would be interesting to know how these formative experiences shaped the music teachers’ practices, such as choices around pedagogic strategies, relational engagement with pupils, and what music to introduce for listening, composing, and performing tasks. Educators’ mistakes are acknowledged, but it is not clear if and how these are approached, posing the question, how, in a traditionally hierarchical space, can teachers make positive decisions to make amends and rebuild trust?
Chapter six contextualises the site of research in the east of England against the UK national averages for state secondary education, including numbers of pupils accessing Special Educational Needs and Disabilities support, those eligible for Free School Meals and pupils with English as an Additional Language. MacGregor focuses on exposing the musical vulnerabilities of both the music teacher and the pupils. She highlights the inherent values and pedagogic choices of the teacher, demonstrating a lack of cohesion between the teacher’s expectations and pupils’ engagement. Explorations of potentially unhelpful hierarchical structures are exacerbated by the teacher’s assumptions around knowledge as a binary construct with right or wrong ways of knowing, understanding, and doing.
The impacts of Covid-19 are possibly under-emphasised in this section. It would be interesting to explore the contextual implications more fully, looking at the teacher’s ability to self-regulate as a factor implicated in pupils’ individual and collective regulation, behaviour, attitude, etc. Unhelpful values are highlighted, such as favouring the ‘musical’ pupils who engage in extra-curricular music making in school, not giving as much attention to those perceived to have no musical skill. Highlighted also is the self-perpetuating cycle of the dominance of white Western culture within music education in the UK.
Chapter seven’s ethnographic explorations draw attention to one pupil’s ‘apparent lack of musical ability’ (p. 173) based on missing cues, being distracted, and finding creative collaboration with his group challenging. This assertion undermines the notion that human beings are inherently musical, asking the reader to question what therefore is the challenge for a classroom music teacher if their values and beliefs support this understanding of implicit musicality? It would have been interesting to know how the pupils considered their musical identity based on their teacher’s comments and reflecting from the perspective of thinking about their teacher’s interaction with the group.
In the concluding chapter, MacGregor challenges the assumption that ‘all music, in all contexts, and for all pupils, is unequivocally and indisputably good’ (p. 194), asserting instead that music making can hold both positive and negative potentiality when viewed through the lens of musical vulnerability. The author contextualises the research against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, with all the global shifts across politics, education, the arts and the impacts on individual and collective vulnerability. The assertion is that a pedagogy of vulnerability can redress the imbalance in neoliberal expectation and actual lived experiences of music teachers and pupils, where hierarchical structures and emphasis on notions of Western understandings of musicality remain prevalent.
Underscoring values of compassionate care and participatory praxis, a pedagogy of vulnerability enables collaborative and co-creative processes between teachers and pupils, positively reinforcing individuals’ musical self-identities, social identities and sense of space. It would be interesting within this final chapter to challenge the dominant hegemony of music education and suggest that pedagogic approaches adopted within participatory and socially engaged practices could support adaptation within existing structures, enabling the application of pedagogies of vulnerability within formalised music-making contexts.
This publication gives a unique and contemporary perspective on a distinctive facet of music education, critiquing the often-overemphasised benefits of music education. Musical Vulnerabilities provides a differing view of how music education could be envisioned and practised, supporting music teachers in addressing potentially unhelpful hierarchies and traditions. MacGregor’s work will undoubtedly be useful for those coming into the field of UK-based music education as trainees and newly qualified teachers, as well as for more seasoned and experienced classroom teachers and scholars in the UK and elsewhere.
