Learning Communities and Music Education: Music Teacher Training as Political Action

Several music educators engaged in music teacher training observe that practical matters cause student teachers feel lack of confidence about “how a lesson actually happens: sitting arrangements, organization and distribution of instruments, controlling noise level and behavior ” (Hennessy, 2000, p.194). Others have become alert that the confidence of future music teachers can be enhanced if their training provides authentic musical experiences (e. g., Conway, & Finney, 2003; Lapidaki, in press). At the same time, music teacher educators have been slow to recognize the potential of music training to emerge “through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other ” (Freire, 1993, p. 53). Aims This paper aims to examine music teacher training as socially and politically defined action which can boost trainee music teachers ’ confidence by providing them with musical experiences that are forms of both their personal and the school children’s “narratives ” and participation in an ongoing process to democratise music education’