The role of theoretical models in secondary music teacher training preparing for creative music making

Abstract

In the French speaking part of Switzerland, improvising or composing has been included in school curriculum since 2010, but these activities remain challenging for student teachers. Appropriate teaching tools and teacher training is needed (Giglio, 2013, 2015). In secondary music teacher education, students enter the course with a large range of musical skills and professional identities (Ballentyne, Kerchner & Aróstegui, 2015; Pellegrino, 2019). Nevertheless, teaching composing or improvisation in schools is still considered to be a challenging activity (Langley, 2018; Winters, 2012). As teacher trainers, we were interested in investigating the link between students’ identities as musicians, especially in terms of musical creativity, and the development of their pedagogical skills. During a one-year training course, the perceived pertinence of theoretical contributions such as the identity facet model (Chatelain & Moor, 2022) or models to describe and to evaluate the creative process in music (Giacco & Coquillon, 2017; Mastracci, 2012) has been examined. For this contribution, the analysis of two questionnaires (n=9 and 13) and two interview sessions with five students who volunteered out of a group of seventeen, will be presented. Qualitative analysis of both data sources collected during the second semester shows how students’ conception of musical creativity evolved. Interestingly, the link between student teachers’ identities as musicians and the creative activities done in the classroom seems rather weak. In conclusion, this study encourages us to reinforce the theoretical input and to take into account students’ perceptions of their identities as creative musicians in teacher training.