Heidi Westerlund

Garage rock bands: a future model for developing musical expertise?

A commonly accepted assumption in music education based on the apprenticeship tradition is that teachers deliver their musical expertise using pedagogically relevant methods that will help them to have effective mastery and control over the process of learning. This article decentres the traditional notion of mastery and pedagogy. Rather, it is suggested that, in line with situated learning theories and research on expertise-based learning, garage rock bands and their informal ways of learning can exemplify how to develop knowledge-building communities and musical expertise in formal music education. However, this approach is not intended to question or replace the need for teachers.

Immigrant Students' Development of Musical Agency--Exploring Democracy in Music Education.

In this article, we argue that the musical schooling of immigrant students could be seen as forming a healthy test for any educational context in terms of how democracy is enacted. We engage in a discussion linking music education, agency, pluralism and democracy. In our theoretical reconstruction of multicultural music education we first make a review on how music education literature has approached the cultural and musical schooling of immigrant students. We then attend to sociological theories to discuss why development of musical agency may be of particular importance to first generation immigrant students and how agency-enhancing music education may be connected to the development of sound democratic practices in the 21st century schooling.

Universalism against contextual thinking in multicultural music education — Western colonialism or pluralism?

Hellenic-Cartesian-Kantian thinking is omnipresent in Western and European culture. This paradigm is culturally lived and experienced in music education as well. Could African thinking in its implicit cultural constructions recall for Westerners their long forgotten ontology? Could African music form a backdrop for the amnesis of Western music teachers and researchers? What are the concrete structures and practices which constitute knowing and understanding on the basis of sound? For Africans, music signifies social sharing and attendance in the most forceful ways. Is it possible for a Western music educator to gain the experience and insight of the modes of meaning which constitute traditional African music? Models which are based on the typical Western dichotomy between subject and object and between body and mind or which represent atomistic methodological individualism, should be abandoned when African music is included in education and research.

Travel agency of musical meanings? Discussion on music and context in Keith Swanwick's Interculturalism

Interpretation of musical works depends on meanings, which, on a pragmatist view, are necessarily tied with cultural habits and practices. This entails that a piece of music is always interpreted differently by people raised in different cultural contexts. A musical work is always a result of this process of interpretation. Strictly speaking, works of music are therefore different works in culturally different contexts even if they were presentations of the same notes. The following discussion of the conditions of cultural exchange in music illuminates some pragmatist viewpoints on the topic by using Keith Swanwicks ideas as a point of comparison. The discussion shows that a contextual starting point leads towards a more ‘child-centred’ education.

The legacy of music education methods in teacher education: The metanarrative of Dalcroze Eurhythmics as a case

The article examines the role and relevance of certain so-called music education methods used in current educational practice. As different pedagogical approaches and teaching methods aim at good and educative experiences, they suggest an ideal story of success and a direction of growth for the self of the music learner. In this article, these ideal stories are seen as embodying the normative metanarratives of music education. As an example, the article constructs a metanarrative of Dalcroze pedagogy. Jaques-Dalcroze’s texts are analysed as articulating a certain conception of the human being, alongside ideals as to how the competencies of human beings are developed through music and within music education. The article then discusses how methodological metanarratives as normative frames for representing success stories may be used in today’s teacher education in developing teachers’ cultural metacognition and in leading the profession towards a critical narratology, to enrich the reflective practice of future teachers.

The ethics of survival: Teaching the traditional arts to disadvantaged children in post-conflict Cambodia

Cambodia’s recent history of conflict and political instability has resulted in a recognized need to recover, regenerate, preserve and protect the nation’s cultural heritage. Many education programmes catering for disadvantaged youth have implemented traditional Khmer music and dance lessons, suggesting that these programmes share the responsibility of cultural regeneration, and view the survival of traditional art forms as dependent on their bequeathal to these young children. In this regard, the musical future of the country is, at least in part, dependent on the success of the vulnerable. However, these vulnerable students are living in a rapidly changing Cambodia, with higher levels of education, increasing international communications and influences, developing infrastructure, urbanization and fundamentally different ways of going about everyday life, work and leisure, to their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Through semi-structured individual interviews conducted with Cambodian staff and music, dance and theatre teachers from three music and dance programmes provided by non-governmental organizations catering for vulnerable and disadvantaged young people, we explore how the conflicting objectives of conservation and cosmopolitanism are negotiated and navigated in schools. This study explores themes of conservation, coexistence of multiple traditions and education in wider Cambodian society through performance. These themes are discussed in relation to the ethics of arts teaching, which—whilst intensified in the Cambodian context—are relevant beyond this particular case study.

Teaching as Improvisational Experience: Student Music Teachers' Reflections on Learning during an Intercultural Project.

This qualitative instrumental case study explores Finnish student music teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning as participants in an intercultural project in Cambodia. The Multicultural Music University project aimed at increasing master’s level music education students’ intercultural competencies by providing experiences of teaching and being taught abroad in traditional music and dance programs run by two Cambodian NGOs. The article suggests that beside the importance of learning new music and dance traditions, the student music teachers regarded the learning experiences gained through peer-teaching in an unfamiliar context as significant, as these experiences provoked them to step out from their pedagogical comfort zones and to engage in a deep reflection on the nature of teaching and the purpose of music education. Rather than perceiving their teaching as individual achievements the student teachers’ reflections proceeded towards an increasing emphasis put on the quality of joint interaction and the benefits gained from having to spontaneously create the structure of lessons in fast-changing situations. Based on the analysis of individual and focus group interviews and other research data, we discuss the concept of teaching as improvisation and its implications for teacher education.

Participatory assessment and the construction of professional identity in folk and popular music programs in Finnish and Australian music universities

Assessment in music is of considerable importance in the context of higher music education, with major projects focusing on assessment principles and practices in a number of locations, including the European community and Australia. This instrumental case study explores assessment practices in two higher music education contexts, namely within folk music education in Finland and popular music education in Australia. While each of these two instances have significant individual characteristics, they share a focus on understanding assessment as learning and the development of a professional identity through the active participation of the student community in the assessment processes. Drawing on current theories of communities of practice, the narratives of the leaders describing the practices in each context are analysed to draw attention to the intended learning value derived through the participatory assessment practices.

Performing disability in music teacher education: Moving beyond inclusion through expanded professionalism

Disability is a neglected field of diversity within music education scholarship and practices. The study reported in this article sought alternatives for the hierarchical practice-model and ableist discourses that have thus far pervaded music teacher education, through a reconceptualization of expertise. The focus is on a Finnish university special education course, where musicians with learning disabilities conducted workshops for student music teachers over three consecutive years. Student teachers’ written reflections (n = 23) were reflexively analyzed in order to examine how performing disability may disrupt, expand, and regenerate normative discourses and transform inclusive thinking in music teacher education. Performing disability is here seen to generate critical discursive learning, and create third spaces for pedagogical diversity and the co-construction of professional knowledge. It is thus argued that through teaching with, and by, rather than about, we in music education may move beyond normalizing understandings and practices of inclusion, towards an expanded notion of professionalism.

Learning on the Job: Designing Teaching-Led Research and Research-Led Teaching in a Music Education Doctoral Program

This chapter deals with the basic principles in developing doctoral studies in music education at the Sibelius Academy, Finland. Research is understood as a practice that demands not deep practice-based knowledge and understanding of the subject, music education. It also requires knowledge that is believed to develop most effectively through various ‘real-life’ research activities in which students can learn formally and informally. In order to further develop the research practice in which individual researchers conduct solo projects, the doctoral program is built around collaboration and collaborative research projects. In these projects teaching is mostly related to publishing, peer-review processes, and taking place within small research projects with the peers and senior researchers.