Expert in music pedagogy Ruth Wright has been appointed Chair of Music Education in the Don Wright Faculty of Music starting August 1.
Wright is coming to The University of Western Ontario from the University of Wales Cardiff (UWIC). She completed her PhD (2003-06) at the Cardiff School of Education, UWIC while also a member of the lecturing staff.
She has also taught in secondary schools in Wales and as a studio piano teacher. She has acted as a consultant on music education for the Open University, worked on research into Welsh traditional music for the Welsh Curriculum Authority for the Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment Authority for Wales and advised on music education policy to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in England.
She is an active researcher in music education and serves on the editorial boards of several international music education journals. In 2007, Wright won a Meeting of Minds fellowship from the Economic & Social Research Council/Teaching & Learning Research Program to work with Pamela Burnard on a research funding bid concerning informal learning as music pedagogy and post compulsory music education.
Wright’s dissertation concerns the effects of political power, culture and classroom pedagogy upon pupils’ experiences of music in schools. She employed ethnographic methods that took account of the relationships between music in school and the music children experience and engage in their everyday lives.
Her research focused on children’s perceptions of the differences between school music and what they termed ‘real’ music; interaction between pupils and teachers and the power dynamic involved; pupils’ desire for increased consultation and autonomy in school music and the vital role of the teacher in recontextualising and reproducing music as school music.