Informal learning in action: the domains of music teaching and their pedagogic modes

Abstract

Green's informal learning pedagogy was adapted for a mixed-mode distance education of music teachers in Brazil. Designed as an 8-week module within the Open University of Brazil programme and implemented three times, this research involved 20 tutors and 73 student teachers, across a period of 2 years. Taking the form of a self-study-action-research-curriculum-development project, the investigation of my own praxis in search of a humanising and liberating music education led me to observe how my actions reflected on my student teachers’ practices. Data collection methods included an online questionnaire, interviews, documentation and participatory observation. From the data analysis, I developed a theoretical model that involved interpreting music teaching as the mobilisation of three domains: student teachers’ practical musicianship, their use of authority and their relationship with learners’ musical worlds. Nested in those domains, there were some pedagogic modes related to Freire's educational concepts. This research suggests that a potentially ‘liberating education’ can be lived when music teachers mobilise those three domains whilst teaching. Although that theoretical model emerged from practices based on informal learning in music, they may also be found in other teaching practices in music, and, therefore, applied in other music teaching contexts.

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