Author(s)
Noura ALI & Nigel A. MARSHALL
Abstract
This study examines how the legitimacy of music education is understood, justified, and negotiated by parents in Kuwait, a context in which music occupies a contested position shaped by religious debate, cultural identity, social reputation, and institutional policy. Although parents play a crucial role in their children’s educational pathways, existing research has largely measured levels of parental support or opposition rather than analysing how parents themselves construct and account for their attitudes. Addressing this gap, the study treats parental attitudes not as fixed opinions but as socially situated positions produced through language. It asks how parents explain, justify, and negotiate their views which cultural, religious, and social discourses shape those views and what identity positions parents construct or perform when discussing music education and music teaching as a professional pathway.
Semi-structured interviews were carried out with parents, all of whom had children who had made the decision to study music education at the College of Basic Education (CBE) in Kuwait, with the intention of becoming music teachers. Data from the interviews were transcribed and analysed using Critical Discursive Psychology. The analysis highlighted how parents do not hold fixed positions of acceptance or rejection. Instead, they negotiate the legitimacy of music conditionally, distinguishing between forms and functions of music and granting support when music can be framed as purposeful, educational, emotionally beneficial, or institutionally regulated, while expressing caution toward forms seen as purely entertainment-oriented or morally questionable. Through their talk, parents constructed three recurring identity positions: the Morally Responsible Gatekeeper, the Culturally Aligned Guardian, and the Institutionally Guided Parent, moving between them to justify support, to signal caution, and manage tensions between religious commitment and parental support, private enjoyment and public image, and cultural heritage and modernity.
Keywords: Negotiating, music education in Kuwait, parental discourses, cultural identity