Traversing the chiasm of lived teaching and learning experience embodied practicum in music teacher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT. - Earlier studies have valued the practicum as one of the most important parts of music teacher education, and not least because it has been so widely appreciated by students. In order to develop high quality music teacher education, we have to understand what happens in practicum contexts. It is in meetings between student teachers, practicum supervisors, students, steering documents, culture and music that student teachers learn how to teach music in adequate ways. This article tries to understand such meetings and learning situations through the phenomenological perspective of Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s concept of “chiasm”. As expressed by the Greek letter “χ” (chi), “chiasm” means a crisscrossing of the perceiving and the perceived self and the other, and between language and meaning. Chiasm also signifies an inter-twining, an intersection, reversibility, or the process of the flowing of phenomena into one another. In this sense, chiasm can symbolically represent the practicum as an intertwining of theory and practice. Like chiasm, the practicum within music teacher education can be thought of as an endless journey, and the meeting place between a student teacher’s self with the world of different and unique music teaching and learning experiences, unpredictable turns, challenges and wonders. This article attempts to communicate a glimpse of such a journey, as expressed through five music teacher students’ stories. These stories were collected during individual and group interviews in a Norwegian- Swedish research project focusing on the educational quality of music teacher education. Hopefully the analysis of these stories will contribute to the understanding of how individuals and groups embody knowledge of their music teaching and learning life-worlds. - Keywords: music teacher education, practicum, educational quality, chiasm, flesh