NMH student music teachers in Lebanon. Professional placement for bachelor students on the music education programme at the NMH

Abstract

Ever since 2005 bachelor students on the music education programme at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) have been travelling to Lebanon to take part in a professional placement program. The placement in Lebanon is made up of three main components: teaching music to children and young people in the Palestinian refugee camp Rashidieh; concerts in Rashidieh and Lebanese schools; and culture seminars. We felt that the NMH could offer expertise and resources that would be attractive to the project and thus approach the project as an arena for professional teaching placement and cultural exchange as well as humanitarian aid. Meeting children and young people who are living as refugees under difficult circumstances makes an impression and causes engagement. Seeing how musical activity can help improve quality of life for children and adolescents also adds another dimension. Furthermore, these study trips corroborated our theory that this type of practice may be well suited to R&D activities at both master and senior research level. In this chapter, we will give an account of the role of the Lebanon placement project on the music education bachelor programme, how we prepare for the project and what the project entails, including a presentation of the idea behind the concept of “multi-function score”. Finally, we will present some of the results of an R&D project focusing on the students’ learning experiences from the placement. We will be concentrating on the teaching taking place at the BAS centre in Rashidieh. The teaching activity can be seen as a sub-project of the placement project