Rachael Dwyer

Future prospects for music education: corroborating informal learning pedagogy

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Unpacking the habitus: Exploring a music teacher’s values, beliefs and practices

There is substantial evidence in the literature to support the claim that teachers’ values and beliefs have a powerful effect on their teaching practice, and that these shape students’ experiences of music learning. However, little attention has been paid to the forces by which these values and beliefs are shaped, and, more importantly, how more positive teacher dispositions may be cultivated and developed through teacher education. Drawing on methodological devices of narrative inquiry, and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as an interpretive tool, this article describes a case study of one music teacher’s values and beliefs and how these were shaped by personal experiences, and social and institutional forces. Specifically, the paper considers the ways in which this teacher’s values and beliefs were reshaped over the course of the research process.

Whisperings from the Corridors

This book is intended to illuminate the experiences of teachers working in higher education, the tensions they face working in an increasingly complex professional landscape. Higher teaching loads, increased expectations of research output, and changing social and economic structures that shape the way students view their tertiary education have a profound affect on university teachers’ work.

The assessment is the learning

Assessment is an important element of quality teaching and learning in higher education. It has received significant attention and become a focus in Australia in higher education. In particular, there has been an emphasis on providing guidelines and principles to develop effective assessment practice. Academics have a critical role to play to provide carefully designed assessment that contributes to providing quality educational experiences for students, ensuring they have coherent educational experiences.

Who cares? Tensions and conflicts from the field of teacher education

In Australia, teacher education is characterised by ever-increasing regulation, from teacher registration bodies, government policy directives, and university administration and procedures (Grossman and McDonald, 2008). Teacher educators’ responsibilities to these stakeholders, as well as to their students (pre-service teachers) and the mentor teachers and schools that act as hosts for field placements, create a complex working environment with, at times, conflicting interests.