ABSTRACT
This chapter describes overarching themes that were salient across the three choir sites, highlighting students’ perspectives on learning experiences they considered, or did not consider, to be culturally responsive. Several themes emerged from students’ descriptions of instruction they considered culturally responsive: developing cultural competence while expanding cultural horizons, attending to cultural validity, and developing an ability to style shift. Across choir sites, teachers and students emphasized the critical importance of cultural validity to developing learning experiences students will receive as being culturally responsive. The culturally responsive practice of all three teachers focused primarily on having students learn and perform choral repertoire representing diverse cultural traditions, recreating these traditions in as culturally valid a manner as possible. Repertoire serves as a prominent vehicle for delivering the curriculum within choral classrooms, making teachers’ repertoire-related decisions a source of messages about musical value.
