Hearing Others' Voices

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The changing demographics in our communities bring schools face-to-face with cultural and linguistic diversity. Educational theorists in the 21st century have set forth two basic beliefs about learning: 1)There is more than one way to come to know something and 2)Every student matters (Cochran-Smith, 2001). Hearing Others' Voices is a narrative report based on a year-long collective case study done in a high school choral classroom. The primary participants were five female immigrant students from, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana and Kazakhstan and their teacher, a young Anglo female in her 7th year of teaching. The author's interest in this area stems from more than twenty years as choral music educator in the Washington, DC Metro area. The author's intent was to examine individual immigrant students' perceptions of their previous and present experiences learning music. To capture the complexity of each individual case, data collection and presentation centered around narratives written from the individual participant's voice. This narrative approach was used to acknowledge the participants' continuity and history of experience and was grounded in multicultural research methodology.