The development of piano teachers’ knowledge: Three case studies from Brazil

This study investigates the range of knowledge that guided the practices of three piano teachers in the south of Brazil who had no undergraduate teacher training and who were in different stages of their professional life. The focus of the research was on the use of the teachers’ knowledge within their profession. The method consisted of case studies of three piano teachers in different stages in their careers, with 3, 19 and 43 years of teaching practice. Data were collected by a series of semi-structured interviews and non-participant observations and were analyzed on the basis of the concepts of Tardif and Huberman. A typology of mobilized knowledge was constructed, taking into account the specificity of the piano teaching profession and the concepts about teacher knowledge, which follows Tardif. Huberman served as a guide for reflecting on the different stages of the teachers’ professional careers. The results of the study showed that the number of years of teaching experience was fundamental to developing teaching principles and broadening the scopes of their careers as musicians. Analyses of the three cases show that the contextualized experience of being a piano teacher throughout the length of a career functions as an existential dimension for improving teachers’ knowledge, in agreement with the research literature. The pragmatic dimension within the construction of professional knowledge in music was found in the cases of the two more experienced teachers