Creative music making in secondary schools: bringing out teacher identity facets

Abstract

Abstract: Future Swiss secondary school music teachers start out in the teacher training program with many and varied professional and prior training experiences. If one of the objectives of the training year is to develop their identity as professional teachers of music education, one of the main challenges is reconciling and bringing out different identity facets as artist-musicians, musical experts, reflective practitioners, and educators. Despite the presence of creative music making in the curriculum since 2010, it is not traditionally anchored in common classroom teaching practice in Swiss secondary school music education. Improvising or composing remain challenging activities for most student teachers as appropriate teaching tools and teacher training are needed (Giglio, 2013, 2015). Based on previous research around music teacher identity (Ballantyne, Kerchner & Aróstegui, 2012 ; Chatelain & Moor, 2022; Chua, 2018; Joliat, Terrien & Güsewell, 2017; Pellegrino, 2019; Regnard, 2010) and creative music making (Langley, 2018; Winters, 2012), we make the hypothesis that student teachers’ reluctance to approach creative music making tasks is linked to self-perceptions of professional identity, thus skills and preparedness. This research uses the dynamic concept of identity facets (Chatelain & Moor, 2022) instead of role identity (Bouij, 1998; Draves, 2014) in order to identify identity facets evoked by preservice teachers when reflecting on creative music making tasks and to analyze how self-perceptions evolve during the one-year teacher training course. In a group of 17 students aged from about 24 to 52, declarative data is collected via two written certifying projects, two questionnaires submitted to the whole group and two interview sessions with 5 students half-way through and at the end of the year. Qualitative content analysis is conducted on responses and verbatim concerning creative music making tasks and student teachers’ mobilized identity facets. First results reveal varying student teacher reluctance faced with creative music making in relation to mobilized identity facets, and self-perception evolution relating to identity facets mobilized for these tasks over the training year were revealed. Further outcomes of this project are firstly the development of targeted support during training by identifying obstacles to student teachers’ creative music making practice, and secondly, providing tools for developing and mobilizing identity facets that could increase preparedness and foster creative music making classroom practice. Results could contribute to a paradigm shift in Swiss secondary school music education, particularly in teacher training, where creative music making tasks could be demystified and promoted.