ABSTRACT In this study, we employ a participatory action research framework to investigate how preservice music teachers can take part in developing their own education. The main focus is on how two music teacher educators at two institutions in Norway work to create a space for student voice and participation. The study’s data are analysed and presented through a combination of self-study methodology and narrative analysis conducted by two of the authors, followed by reflections by the two other authors. In these analytical steps, we identify four teacher roles in the form of metaphors: ‘the impatient manager’, ‘the conflicted gatekeeper’, ‘the balancing artist’ and ‘the reluctant host’. These roles are further discussed in light of theoretical perspectives on student voice and participation. The results reveal challenges in the use of participatory action research and in making changes to music teacher education.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14613808.2023.2210159?needAccess=true&role=button

Who takes part in participation? Challenges to empowering student voice in music teacher education

In this article, three researchers and music teacher educators reflect upon the possibilities for and challenges of fostering preservice teachers’ critical and democratic capacities and agency in music teacher education in line with recent 21st-century skills-oriented policy reforms. Based on experiences from participatory action research with preservice music teachers in general teacher education at two Norwegian institutions, the authors problematise how critical reflection is defined in educational literature, in policy documents, and by students participating in the referred participatory action research. The authors further discuss the different understandings of critical reflection, considering concepts such as student-centredness, students as customers, student resistance, and student voice. Inspired by critical pedagogy, the authors suggest that the preservice teachers’ articulated reflections represent important steps in their progress toward becoming professional music teachers and that enduring the discomfort of loosening up the student-teacher dyad benefits the development of students’ agency and critical reflection.

Critical Reflection in Music Teacher Education: Contradictions and Dilemmas in Theory, Policy, and Practice

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to investigate one single case of four preservice music teachers’ (PMTs) in their teaching practicums, carried out as a part of a Norwegian general teacher education program. The main data sources were based on material from three focus group interviews and observations from the PMT’s teaching practicums implemented at two practice schools for a total of five weeks. Emirbayer and Mische’s triadic conception of agency provided the theoretical framework for the analysis, highlighting temporal orientations (past, present, and future) of the actions. The findings revealed how the temporal dimensions of agency gave nuanced understandings of the PMT’s experiences of being supported (or limited) to make decisions and take actions in music teaching settings, either by the school-based mentors or themselves. The study underlines the importance of increased focus and inclusion of agency within teaching practicum contexts to prepare PMTs for future challenges.

https://doi.org/10.1177/10570837221137075

“We Never Got to Try That Experience of Total Chaos”: Exploring Preservice Music Teachers’ Agency in Teaching Practicum

This article conceptualizes and discusses change in music teacher education. Results from the FUTURED research project provide the starting point for the article. The project explored various dimensions of change within the music education programs in Norwegian generalist teacher education. In this project, change was regarded as having a transformative capacity closely related to co-construction and complexity. Telling new stories about education, and thereby imagining different educational realities, may be seen as a possible trigger for change. In this article, therefore, the authors contrast the current situation against an imagined reality to create a heuristic framework for a critical discussion of change. Based on a meta-analysis of research findings, the authors propose a vision for a future music teacher education, which they then use to highlight and discuss several intersecting dimensions of educational change: values and traditions, demographics, educational practices, curricula, and society.

Music Teacher Education for the Future: Reflections on Change

Abstract This article investigates local curricular plans and job advertisements of institutions offering music in generalist teacher education (GTE) in Norway. The aim is to identify the values and ideologies represented locally in the music subject in terms of how content, learning outcomes, activities and assessment forms are prioritised and how working staff are recruited. By using elements from critical discourse analysis, we find that several ideological processes in the new five-year GTE programme lead to tensions in the music subject. We discuss such discursive tensions in the following five categories: 1) musical skills versus pedagogical skills, 2) activity orientation versus reflection orientation, 3) academic orientation versus artistic orientation, 4) research focus versus teaching focus and 5) future orientation versus tradition orientation. Despite the tendency of preserving traditions and values in the field of music, we find that the national guidelines for music in GTE are quite open and flexible in terms of changing the traditions and adjusting for the needs of the present and future. However, in 2020 when local plans were collected, we found only limited use of the potential the national guidelines offer for local adjustment and innovation. Job advertisements, on the other hand, show a tendency towards ideological mismatch between the institutional level, which lean mostly towards innovation for the future, and music staff, who lean mostly towards traditions.

Ideological processes and discursive tensions in Norwegian music teacher education

This article reports the results of a participatory action research study into Norwegian generalist music teacher education, that intended to develop spaces for preservice music teachers to foster agency and prepare for future teaching. We aimed to challenge the discursive practice of generalist music teacher education through participatory action research conducted from January to April 2020 at two central teacher education institutions in Norway. In this article, we present extracts from transcribed video recordings of the completed participatory action research that identify preservice music teachers’ positioning in interactions as a response to the challenges posed by action research events. Through our analysis, which draws on positioning theory from discourse psychology, we identify three primary positions taken up by preservice music teachers: (a) novices, (b) not yet independent, and (c) resource persons. The study identifies a need to interrupt traditional music teaching as a discursive practice that maintains power relations that obstruct preservice music teachers’ agency in their education. We conclude that more systematic long-term work is needed to change both educator and student habits and mind-sets.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1321103X221089838

The multiplicity of preservice music teachers’ positioning in a participatory action research project

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Book review: Advancing Music Education in Northern Europe

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The multiplicity of preservice music teachers’ positioning in a participatory action research project

Who takes part in participation? Challenges to empowering student voice in music teacher education

Critical Reflection in Music Teacher Education: Contradictions and Dilemmas in Theory, Policy, and Practice

Book review: Advancing Music Education in Northern Europe