Challenging music teacher education in Norway: popular music and music teacher education

Abstract

While there are ongoing debates about popular music education’s legitimacy in some parts of the world (Ho, 2014; Mantie, 2013; Feichas, 2010), popular music repertoire has been a part of Nordic music education curricula over the last four or five decades (Dyndahl & Nielsen, 2014; Karlsen & Väkevä, 2012; Lembcke, 2010). Nevertheless, it seems that the full potential of popular music in Norwegian education has not been realized, among other things because of dominant traditions and discourses within music teacher education (Sætre, 2014). In this paper, I examine a common rationale for popular music in education, that of popular music being the students’ own music. Further, I argue that even if popular music has been well integrated into Nordic music education, it is still not an integral part of music teacher education in Norway. Looking for ways ahead I contend that popular music could challenge existing music teacher education in several ways: It could challenge dominant notions of repertoire and musicianship, structures of music teacher education, the role of the teacher/educator, as well as inherent perceptions of musical values and hierarchies in our institutions. Finally, I examine how popular music can contribute to a music teacher education for the future.