The Silenced Discourse: Students with Intellectual Disabilities at the Academy of Music in Sweden

In this article, based on a larger research project, the ambition is to critically discuss the first collaboration between students with intellectual disabilities and the Academy of Music in Sweden. The article presents an analysis of video observations of lessons in rhythmics, related to an encounter between the students with intellectual disabilities and a group of student teachers. The theoretical and methodological framework emanates from post-structuralist and social constructionist theories. The results show that the silenced discourse, the unspoken, is constructed from the fact that the students with disabilities both are insufficiently skilled for the task as leaders in rhythmics, and less skilled than the student teachers. Finally, the silenced discourse is discussed, where assumptions of normality and issues of inclusion are addressed as well as a hegemonic discourse in the Swedish politics of education

Nordic Research in Music Education

ABSTRAC

Discourses on music in Swedish primary and preschool teacher education

This study investigates prevailing discourses on music in the field of creative arts in Swedish teacher education for primary school and preschool, following the programme based on the 1999 teacher education reform. The data were collected from 19 focus group interviews with teacher educators and student teachers from ten higher education institutions that offer such teacher education programmes. Theories related to language as action and the consequences of linguistic actions were taken as central to the study. To identify and discuss the discursive formations, analytical tools inspired by discourse psychology and discourse theory were used in the analysis. The analysis demonstrated that an academic discourse focusing on theory, reflection, and textual production has pushed aside skills-based practice. A second discourse, characterized by subjectivity and relativism vis-á-vis the concept of quality, was also found in the material. Finally, a therapeutic discourse was articulated and legitimized based on the idea that student teachers should be emotionally balanced. The constructions may be regarded as strategies that legitimize the creative arts, which no longer have a clear identity in this teacher education context. The discourse on technical skills in music, which previously occupied a hegemonic position in the discursive field, has fallen apart, allowing other discourses to take root

Terapi, upplysning, kamp och likhet till varje pris - undervisningsideologier och diskurser hos lärare och lärarstuderande i musik

This study is the second part of a larger work with the purpose to distinguish, describe and discuss the discourses around music education in school. The first part focused on how adolescents in secondary school talk abot music education, and the second part is concerned with teaching ideologies and discources among teachers and teacher education students. An overarching purpose of the two studies is to find out if there is any coherence between the adolescents' and the teachers'/teacher students' discources

Från guidad visning till shopping och förströdd tillägnelse: moderniserade villkor för ungdomars musikaliska lärande.

Abstract In the Swedish compulsory school system there is a trend towards increased student influence. School ideologists have for at least ten years strongly emphasised this issue. This tendency is in line with a more general direction in Western societies, which in many aspects has moved toward individualisation. Based on these developments, the main reason for undertaking the presents study was to contribute to the discussion about different aspects of learning, which have as their starting point the issue of how adolescents experience musical learning. The study moves in and between the two fields of musical learning in school and in leisure time, and the data consists of seven group conversations carried out with eighth and ninth graders in secondary school. The analysis is undertaken in three steps, each one of which represents a gradually increasing level of abstraction. The theory is grounded on two different areas which have some common aspects, namely theories of modernity and philosophy of music education. The results show that value related issues such as preference and interpretation in the greatest possible extent should be left to the students, and the teacher should instead provide help to students by giving them tools for expression, such as training skills and providing a suitable milieu for musicing. Adolescents give expression to an apprehension that an important task of the school subject music is to expose musical genres and activities, whereupon the students can then choose what suits them. This way of acquiring music does not correspond to the way in which students assimilate music in everyday contexts and highlights a contradiction between how they legitimise musical learning in school and in leisure time. In their leisure time, students acquire preferences for music in an unsystematic and random manner. Their discussions strongly emphasise a search for music “to call their own”. Furthermore, the study shows that learning often occurs in situations where it is not intentional, for example when music listening is a background activity, but still an analysis of musical parameters takes place in an unconscious matter. Some of the adolescents consider ability to collaborate as the most important knowledge that comes out of music education in school. This attitude can be seen as a move from content to form. Two main discourses were identified: the discourse music and the discourse the school subject music. The discourse music is wide and embraces music in leisure time as well as in school. It consists of listening and musicing. The discourse the school subject music is narrow and legitimised only through its position as a school subject. The study also shows that musical learning has a therapeutical dimension and can be considered as a means to strengthen the self. This function seems to be an important end in musical activities. Finally, modern aesthetical values were applied to a post modern context, which implies that the aesthetics of modernity is still alive, and occupying a new body. Music educators in schools ought to consider the above outlined modernised conditions for musical learning, and thereby reflect upon the implications they might bring for music education

Musikklassrummet i blickfånget : Vardagskultur, identitet, styrning och kunskapsbildning

The point of departure of this study is an interest in discussing how the aesthetics of the market and the music culture of the pupils are expressed in music teaching in Swedish schools, and how these factors are transformed or whether any ideological dilemma arises when we strive to put the music culture of the pupils into practice in the everyday music teaching. In four previous projects with different foci, we have studied aesthetic activities in the school environment. Those studies were a source of inspiration for and a backdrop to this study. The theoretical framework consists of poststructuralist and social constructionist theory as well as theories of late modernity, while our methodological point of departure is a combination of continental and Anglo-Saxon approaches to discourse analysis, modified to suit our purposes. The empirical material consists of video recordings of classroom activities in secondary school settings in Sweden, and the data has been thoroughly analysed using analytical tools developed in accordance with our methodological approaches. Some important analytical concepts used here are identity, dominance, governance and knowledge formation. Our findings indicate that: - There are three different strategies for incorporating market aesthetics and the music culture of the pupils into everyday music teaching: learning about, reflecting on and putting into practice. - The only ideological dilemma occurred when the pupils´music culture was put into practice in everyday music teaching .The problem was that one of the teachers had what might be considered as an over-determined identity. He found it difficult to establish a balance between the need of the pupils for freedom of expression and the teachers’ opinions regarding what was appropriate in the school environment. - Music making activities in small groups was unsuccessful because the pupils were not yet good enough at the skills needed for composing music and playing together unsupervised. - Schools are "task-oriented" in a way that is counterproductive to creativity in music making. - Six different strategies of governance in the classrooms could be identified: through charisma and competence, through delegating responsibility, through making mantras of instructions and examination strategies, through creating solidarity or polarization, through disciplining the body and organisation of time and space and through ignoring problematic situations. - Popular music was presented as a canon similar to the canon of art music that is predominant in the teaching of music history at school.Marknadsestetik och vardagskultur i klassrummet: Ett ideologiskt dilemma? Identitet, dominans och kunskapsbildning i grundskolans musikundervisnin