Educator-Level Applications of the DMIS in Music Education

Overcoming deeply engrained issues related to Denial, Defense, and Minimization in music education will require many of the widespread systemic changes discussed in Chap. 4 . However, it will also require music teachers who are able and willing to implement these changes in practice. Within this chapter, I examine the ways in which Bennett’s DMIS model can serve as a tool to help to individual music educators recognize and overcome ethnocentric tendencies (in themselves and others), on their individual journeys towards higher levels of intercultural sensitivity. By considering common indicators of Denial, Defense, Minimization, Acceptance, Adaptation, and Integration, as well as strategies for growth, we can better understand the reasons why certain ethnocentric norms are reproduced in music classrooms and work to change them … one music educator at a time.