Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice worldwide. The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that will inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from across the globe, the handbook will be of interest to anyone who wishes to better understand what social justice is and why its pursuit in and through music education matters.

In this book author Cathy Benedict challenges and reframes traditional ways of addressing many of the topics we have come to think of as social justice. Offering practical suggestions for helping both teachers and students think philosophically (and thus critically) about the world around them, each chapter engages with important themes through music making and learning as it presents scenarios, examples of dialogue with students, unit ideas and lesson plans geared toward elementary students (ages 6-14). Taken-for-granted subjects often considered beyond the understanding of elementary students such as friendship, racism, poverty, religion, and class are addressed and interrogated in such a way that honours the voice and critical thinking of the elementary student. Suggestions are given that help both teachers and students to pause, reflect and redirect dialogue with questions that uncover bias, misinformation and misunderstandings that too often stand in the way of coming to know and embracing difference. Guiding questions, which anchor many curricular mandates, are used throughout in order to scaffold critical and reflective thinking beginning in the earliest grades of elementary music education. Where does social justice reside? Whose voice is being heard and whose is being silenced? How do we come to think of and construct poverty? How is it that musics become used the way they are used? What happens to songs initially intended for socially driven purposes when their significance is undermined? These questions and more are explored encouraging music teachers to embrace a path toward socially just engagements at the elementary and middle school levels.

Music education has historically had a tense relationship with social justice. One the one hand, educators concerned with music practices have long preoccupied themselves with ideas of open participation and the potentially transformative capacity that musical interaction fosters. On the other hand, they have often done so while promoting and privileging a particular set of musical practices, traditions, and forms of musical knowledge, which has in turn alienated and even excluded many children from music education opportunities. Teaching multicultural practices, for example, has historically provided potentially useful pathways for music practices that are widely thought to be socially just. However, curricula often map alien musical values onto other musics and in so doing negate the social value of these practices, grounding them in a politics of difference wherein "recognition of our difference" limits the push that might take students from tolerance to respect and to renewed understanding and interaction. The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education provides a comprehensive overview and scholarly analyses of the major themes and issues relating to social justice in musical and educational practice and scholastic inquiry worldwide. The first section of the handbook conceptualizes social justice while framing its pursuit within broader social, historical, cultural, and political contexts and concerns. Authors in the succeeding sections of the handbook fill out what social justice entails for music teaching and learning in the home, school, university, and wider community as they grapple with issues of inclusivity and diversity, alienation, intolerance, racism, ableism, and elitism, or relating to urban and incarcerated youth, immigrant and refugee children, and, more generally, cycles of injustice that might be perpetuated by music pedagogy. The concluding section of the handbook offers specific and groundbreaking practical examples of social justice in action through a variety of educational and social projects and pedagogical practices that might inspire and guide those wishing to confront and attempt to ameliorate musical or other inequity and injustice. Consisting of 42 chapters by authors from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Finland, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States, the handbook will be of interest to a wide audience, ranging from undergraduate and graduate music education majors and faculty in music and other disciplines and fields to parents and other interested members of the public wishing to better understand what is social justice and why and how its pursuit in and through music education matters.