Instrumental Music Educators' Lived Experiences of Music-Induced Hearing Loss: A Phenomenological Study.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Music-induced hearing loss is an irreversible condition with disabling consequences for musicians and music educators. Discussions about the phenomenon of music-induced hearing loss are surprisingly absent from music education research, revealing an implicit culture of silence surrounding music-related injuries particularly in regard to instrumental music educators. The dearth of extant research on this topic raises questions regarding the stigma of impairment and disability, the implicit expectation of normativity, and the existence of ableism within music education. This study challenges the medical model of disability, used predominantly throughout the extant research on hearing impairment within music education, by employing multiple perspectives within humanities-based disability studies.
This study seeks to answer the central research question: how does music-induced hearing loss affect the experience of being an instrumental music educator? This study presents survey and interview findings from 23 instrumental music educators from the elementary, middle, and secondary levels of public education in the state of Wisconsin. The interviews were analyzed using the research methodology of transcendental phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994). The findings of this study suggest that: (a) music-induced hearing loss is underrepresented in teacher education and music programs; (b) workplace accommodations, assistance, and compensation for hearing health-related medical expenses for music educators is lacking; (c) music educators often feel resigned to the possibility of developing a hearing impairment as an expected consequence of teaching instrumental music; (d) music educators choose not to use hearing protection while teaching because it negatively affects musical perception, classroom management, and verbal communication; and (e) the expectations of ablebodiedness in music education reinforces the stigma of hearing impairments among musicians and music educators.
Keywords: music-induced hearing loss, sound exposure, hearing protection, instrumental music educators, impairment, disability, stigma, transcendental phenomenology.