Title
Hmong youth arts culture: Music teaching and learning in community settings
Abstract
Pre-service music educators are dedicated to learning the art of classroom and
ensemble teaching, but they may be unaware of their ability to affect students’ thinking
and music making around critical issues outside school music settings. Although
numerous studies have identified a need to enhance music educators’ emphases in teacher
education or music teaching in general to be inclusive of critical and democratic practices
that forward students’ voices, little attention has been paid to how teachers help youth
express their ideas about societal issues outside the music classroom.
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the musical art forms and activities
in Hmong communities that will inform democratic education in teacher preparation
programs. Focusing on rap, spoken word poetry, and lyrical songs of ten Hmong youth
artists, three guiding questions will be explored: (a) In what kinds of musical activities do
youths participate? (b) For what purposes do Hmong youths create their arts? and (c)
How might what Hmong do in their community inform music teacher preparation?
Music educators who bring together various teaching and learning opportunities,
critical pedagogy, and democratic action will forward students’ voices and help them
become change agents for themselves, their schools, and communities. In this
ethnographic study, I found that given opportunities to create raps, spoken word poems,
and songs, Hmong youth become proactive citizens who advance the tenets of a free and
democratic society in their communities when they express their ideas centered on personal, group, social, and political issues that affect them. The results of this study
demonstrate that music teacher preparers will serve their pre-service music educators by forging a new, critical, and democratic practice that might be learned from community
musicians.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2013. Major: Music. Advisor: Dr. Akosua O. Addo. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 240 pages, appendices A-F.
Suggested Citation
Vu, Kinh Tien.
(2013).
Hmong youth arts culture: Music teaching and learning in community settings.
Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/154928.