Popular music pedagogy in music teacher education: A literature review.

This article reviews literature on the integration of popular music pedagogy into music teacher education, emphasizing its potential to create more inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments. Using culturally responsive pedagogies (CRPs) as a theoretical framework, the review highlights how incorporating popular music can bridge students' in-school and out-of-school musical experiences, enhance engagement, and promote lifelong musical involvement. It also addresses challenges such as the dominance of the western classical canon in collegiate music programs, resistance to curricular change, and the risk of replacing one musical hegemony with another. The findings suggest that reimagining music teacher education to include popular music pedagogy, grounded in CRPs, may better prepare future educators to acknowledge diverse musical identities and foster equity in music classrooms. Further research is recommended to explore effective implementation strategies and the broader cultural and social implications of popular music pedagogy in diverse educational contexts.