Webs of musical significance a study of student-teachers’ musical socialisation in Ireland and Sweden

A teacher’s approach to the teaching of music is greatly coloured by his/her own experience with music. When student-teachers embark on the journey of becoming educators, they already have a variety of previous individual experiences with music, and through participation in their society and culture, they hold assumptions based on social representations of music, musicality and music education within their society. A person’s relationship with music is often multi-faceted, based not only on previous educational experiences, but also on experiences with music within the family, school and wider community. In addition, the status and function of different types of music within these settings can powerfully affect an individual’s perspective on music. The key purpose of this study was to reveal the complexity of student-teachers’ relationships with music, and contribute to knowledge on three levels. On one level extend our understanding of how attitudes towards music and in particular opinions and beliefs about musicality and music education come to be held. On another level, reveal the attitudes held by student-teachers and so further inform the teaching undertaken in teacher education. A further purpose was to compare Irish and Swedish student-teachers’ experiences of music and music education and in doing so, investigate how different school systems and different cultural contexts influence the student-teachers’ opinions and beliefs. The subject of this study is two groups of intending non-specialist music teachers, one in Ireland and one in Sweden. In order to get a comprehensive understanding and description of the research area, their memories and opinions of music and music education have been collected in a three-part data collection. These three data sets consist of a minor background questionnaire, written accounts and interviews. The researcher, who is from Sweden, has approached the two contexts from an ethnographic perspective by living, researching and working in the two different geographical and cultural settings. The findings in the study reveal how student-teachers’ approaches to music and music education are formed in the interplay between their personal, educational and societal experiences with music and music education. These three components jointly shape the complex web which illustrates the musical socialisation of student-teachers