Tessa Maclean, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow

Concordia University

Biography

Tessa MacLean is a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. Alongside David Waddington, she is currently working on several projects that centre on issues in contemporary Canadian civic education, including K-12 teachers’ academic freedom, classroom polarization, and the proliferation of toxic masculinity in Quebec schools. Formerly a music educator in Ontario, Tessa’s research interests lie at the intersection of music and democratic education. She completed her Ph.D. at McGill University where she investigated the relationship between teachers’ authority and democratic education in the context of secondary school wind ensembles. Her dissertation, Democratic pedagogical authority in large music ensembles: A participatory philosophical inquiry, was awarded the Canada Graduate Scholarship to Honour Nelson Mandela—an award that celebrates Mandela’s pursuit of peace, democracy, justice and freedom through education. Tessa’s research is deeply interdisciplinary and she is committed to pursuing projects that bring normative ethics and philosophies of democratic education into dialogue with the practical issues faced by teachers.

Education

• 2025: Ph.D. Education, McGill University
• 2017: M.A. Musicology, McGill University
• 2009: B.Ed., University of Ottawa (summa cum laude)
• 2008: B.Mus. University of Ottawa (summa cum laude, highest honours standing)

Publications & Presentations

MacLean, T. (2025). Democratic pedagogical authority in large music ensembles: A participatory philosophical inquiry [Doctoral dissertation, McGill University].

Waddington, D. I., Maxwell, B., MacLean, T., McDonough, K., & Tavassoli, N. (2024). How free are classroom teachers? Understanding teacher academic freedom in the United States and Canada. Teachers and Teaching, 1–22. 

MacLean, T. & McDonough, K. (June, 2023). Considering democratic educational authority in the band room: A normative case study approach [paper presentation]. International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education Annual Symposium, Oslo, Norway.

MacLean, T. (2023). Considering the epistemic in democratic music ensemble pedagogy. Philosophy of Music Education Review 31(1), 25-42.

MacLean, T. & McDonough, K. (2022, April 22). Educational authority for democracy?: The limits and potentialities of conductors’ educational role [paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. 

MacLean, T. (2019). Cultivating civic friendship in the New Horizons Band program. Canadian Winds 18(1), 21-25.

Pyrcz, G., MacLean, T., & Hopkins, M. (2017). Demanding epistemic democracy and indirect civic pedagogy: The performance oriented music ensemble. Philosophical Inquiry in Education 24(3), 237-251.

MacLean, T.  (2016). Preserving utopia: Musical style in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Literature/Film Quarterly 44(2), 120-131.

MacLean, T. (2016, April). “‘Family time’ with the Schumanns: Bourgeois constructions in Liederalbum für die Jugend, Op. 79.” Presentation as part of a panel entitled Mediating Family through Music: An Investigation of Musical Domesticity in the 19th and 20th Centuries, at the annual general meeting of the American Musicological Society, New York State-St. Lawrence Chapter.