Narrating Change, Voicing Values, and Co-constructing Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education

Abstract

Abstract Researchers have suggested that higher education institutions need to be re-thought as ‘imagining universities’ that continually engage in re-imagining themselves, in order to be able to justify their own existence in a fast-changing world. It can be expected that music teacher education programs, as part of higher education, would benefit from envisioning their shared future from the same starting point. This chapter presents the second-stage inquiry of “Co-creating visions for intercultural music teacher education in Finland and Israel,” an ongoing collaborative research project between the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki and the Levinsky College of Education in Israel. The study is based on the constructionist pre-understanding that music teacher education programs ought to be developed by conversations and collective reflections, and that it is through these reflections that we narrate change. As an overall methodological framework, the study draws from Appreciative Inquiry (AI), emphasizing the positive as the basis from which to envision together what the future of intercultural music teacher education would look like. The data was collected through four workshop discussions, two at each site, totaling 24 participating teacher educators. The forward-looking themes of these second-stage discussions were developed from the groundwork of the first-stage focus group interview inquiry that mapped the present situation. This study suggests that there is an increasing need to create spaces where music teacher candidates and music teacher educators creatively face uncertainty rather than security, and where risk-taking can be encouraged and practiced safely. There is also a need to increase flexibility and openness, and to continue working more collaboratively within the institutions.

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