Musikklassrummet i blickfånget : Vardagskultur, identitet, styrning och kunskapsbildning

Abstract

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