Expanding the Narrative

College of The arts

Associate Professor Dr. Josh Palkki is a queer musician who received his teacher training in a conservative state where he “learned very clearly what it meant to be a ‘professional educator,’ which meant to seem as white, straight, and cisgender as possible.” When he started teaching in two urban schools in San José, Dr. Palkki saw no way for his queer and “professional teacher” identities to co-exist. This caused him to keep his students emotionally at arm’s length and made him a less effective teacher than he otherwise could have been. This internal conflict drew Dr. Palkki to his research about LGBTQA identities in music education.

In his first study as a doctoral student, Dr. Palkki explored the experiences of two gay male music teachers and how they navigated disclosure of their sexuality at school. As he reviewed literature for the study, Dr. Palkki noticed there was almost nothing in the music education research literature about the experiences of transgender people. In 2015, he co-presented at the National Conference of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) with colleague Paul Caldwell about creating safe spaces for LGBTQA singers. This was the first session at an ACDA National Conference about queer issues. As part of this session, the team presented data from a large-scale national survey of 1,123 LGBTQA singers reflecting on their middle and high school choral experiences. Data from this survey revealed trans singers face more difficulty than do their lesbian, gay, and bisexual peers. Also, a surprisingly large percentage of the sample (approximately 12%) identified as trans.

Dr. Palkki’s results led him to wonder what trans youth in school choral programs were experiencing. With the support of his dissertation advisor, he undertook a narrative case study of three trans high school choral students exploring how they navigated their gender identity in choral spaces. After two more ACDA National Conference presentations in 2017 and 2019, Dr. Palkki’s colleague, Dr. Matthew Garrett (Case Western Reserve University), asked if he would co-write a book with him about how music teachers could navigate their relationships with trans and gender-expansive students. In addition to the three participants in his dissertation study, Dr. Garrett and Dr. Palkki spent two years interviewing about 25 additional trans and gender-expansive musicians. Their narratives form the foundation of their book, Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive Students in Music Education, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. This project would not have been possible without CSULB research assistant Dennis Feinland (an alum of the music education program), who provided invaluable support. Dr. Palkki has also provided book chapters on LGBTQA topics for the Routledge Companion of Jazz and Gender (Routledge), Oxford Handbook of Feminism in Music Education (Oxford), Oxford Handbook of Gender and Queer Studies in Music Education (Oxford), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Music and Art (Bloomsbury).

Dr. Palkki states that “though discussions about gender and sexuality are not comfortable for everyone, they are important especially in the current socio-political climate. As more public figures ‘come out’ as identifying outside of the gender binary, certain states are enacting blatantly anti-LGBTQA legislation—driven by what New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo calls a ‘moral panic’ about the trans and gender-expansive community. It has always been my hope that my work could make the lives of PreK-12 music students from historically marginalized communities better. My current line of research is exploring the experiences of Asian and Asian American music teachers. I firmly believe that music education can be a part of creating a more equitable and just world. I hope that my work is a small part of that change.”