Student teachers’ music life histories: music in the primary school.

Abstract

Music education in South African classrooms is a marginalised area of the curriculum. Despite the many benefits of music education for primary school learners, music is regularly side-lined by generalist class teachers. This study seeks to understand the music life histories of student teachers and probes whether they incorporate their personal music histories into their music teaching. The study employed arts-based research and narrative inquiry, using glogs, lesson plans, body maps, and interviews to produce data. These data were represented in narratives highlighting the unique music life histories of the participants. Drawing on the concepts of Music in Identity and Identity in Music, alongside the Multidimensional Conceptualisation of Musicianship, allowed me to consider the developing music identities of the participants. The activation of Samuel’s force field model of teacher professional development allowed me to understand their developing teacher identities. The findings reveal that student teachers have diverse and deep musical experiences but feel disempowered to incorporate these into their teaching. They often feel the need to assume an identity that aligns with Western and Eurocentric notions of music education. Furthermore, they feel that in order to teach music effectively, they cannot be their authentic selves in the classroom, and rather need to assume the identity of “the other”. While the position of music in the South African primary school classroom is emphasised with its inclusion in the formal curriculum, teachers exercise their autonomy in rejecting music in their classroom and encouraging others to do the same. Where music is included in the classroom, teachers are performative agents of the curriculum and fail to bring any passion to their music teaching. Furthermore, Western and Eurocentric notions of music education are foregrounded, while local and indigenous music is marginalised. This thesis argues that adherence to the curriculum and the sense of performativity is killing the heart and soul of teaching. In order to counter this, teachers need to be empowered to bring their entire selves, including their personal histories, into the primary classroom. To achieve this, I argue that the metaphor of the organic professional is a useful construct. The organic professional is rooted in the curriculum but is not constrained by it. The organic professional feels empowered to draw on his or her unique history in the classroom, celebrate his or her individuality, and, under the right conditions, will thrive in the classroom.