A pedagogical tale from the piano studio: autoethnography in early childhood music education research

Abstract

Our inquiry centres on a hopeful tale about creative teaching and learning, trusting one's teaching intuition and processes, caring for children, and believing that children will respond to opportunities to learn music when they are invited with thoughtful care. Though the process of writing, both our young student and ourselves, we evoke the notion of autoethnography as pedagogy. By considering autoethnography as creative, didactic non-fiction, our essay sings out with a call for transformation in how we engage with children in teaching and learning piano – on how we engage in a ‘listening pedagogy’ to transform piano teaching and learning into a much more expressive, meaningful, playful and positive learning experience. Our inquiry also includes a discussion of early childhood music research and different forms of pedagogy, presented in a holistic way that invites new understandings of the relationships between early childhood music practitioners and young music learners.