Engaging Practitioners as Inquirers : Co-constructing Visions for Music Teacher Education in Nepal

This chapter explores how co-constructing visions might engage teachers as inquirers in a ‘majority world’ context by reflecting on a series of 16 Appreciative Inquiry workshops involving over 50 musician-teachers in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal in 2016. It extends the concept of teachers’ visions (Hammerness, Teach Educ Q 31(Fall):33–43, 2004) through socio-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai’s notions of the imagination (Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996) and the social and cultural capacity to aspire (Culture and public action. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004). The chapter reflects on the processes that took place when co-constructing visions, including the ways co-constructing visions may have been the fuel for action, and analyzes the implications of the resulting co-constructed visions. The findings highlight the importance of developing and supporting collaborative learning for the development of both preservice and inservice music teacher education

The Discomfort of Intercultural Learning in Music Teacher Education

Recognizing and ethically engaging with the inherent diversity of music education contexts demands a continuous interrogation of the norms and values underpinning policy and practice in music teacher education. In doing so, teachers and students in higher education are challenged to question why and how students are socialized into particular music education systems, traditions, or perspectives and to consider alternatives. In this chapter, we explore such reflexive processes, employing a theoretical reading analysis through Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, and doxa. The data consists of group reflections and interviews with student-teachers that the authors conducted as part of an intercultural arts education project between Finnish masters students and two Cambodian NGOs. Based on our analysis, we argue that stepping outside of one’s cultural, musical, and pedagogical comfort zone is a necessary component of constructing and (re)negotiating teacher visions in music teacher education. However, this renegotiation may be discomforting for student-teachers, unsettling deep-seated visions of what good music education is and ought to be – the taken-for-granted doxa of music teaching and learning. Therefore, for music-teacher education to become transformative and reflexive, there is a need for such educational experiences that engage with processes that are related to the art of living with difference.Full Tex