Exploring Professional Knowledge in Music Education: A Narrative Study of Choral Music Educators in St. John's, NL

This thesis explores the professional knowledge of three choral music educators from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. My primary research purpose was to explain what constitutes the professional knowledge of each of the research participants as revealed through their life stories; to illustrate how such professional knowledge has been shaped by experiences throughout each of the participants’ lives; and to understand how the participants’ experiences of developing as educators within the specific social, cultural, and political contexts of Newfoundland and Labrador have shaped their professional knowledge. Through this inquiry, three choral music educators engaged in a process of teacher development, as they discovered for themselves, through a narrative process of self-exploration, the meaning that could be made of the relationships between their life experiences and their knowledge of music teaching and learning. Data-gathering included a series of four in-depth interviews, which consisted of open-ended questions that engaged the participants in reconstructing their life experiences and articulating their professional knowledge within the context of developing as choral music educators. Choral rehearsal observations provided another source of data. These observations enhanced my understanding of the participants’ teaching practice, and assisted in my understanding of the relationships between the personal and the professional that they expressed in initial interviews. Analysis of the data is represented through narratives of the participants’ life stories and a thematic discussion of their professional knowledge as revealed through those stories. Each participant’s narrative and professional knowledge are presented in individual chapters, followed by a chapter that explores the resonances (Conle, 1996) amongst the participants’ narratives and my own personal-professional narrative. I propose that we begin to reconceptualize professional development in order to acknowledge the complexity and personal nature of professional knowledge, and I assert that the exploration of life stories is a meaningful form of professional development for music educators.Ph