Imagining Ourselves as Teachers: the development of teacher identity in music teacher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT We all have very clear images of what teachers look like. After all, we have experienced teachers formally and informally for most of our lives. In addition to the many teachers that we hold in our memories from our schooling, we have accumulated a vast number of fictional teachers—teachers portrayed in art, in film, in theatre, and many other areas of popular culture [Weber & Mitchell (1995) ‘That's Funny, You Don't Look Like a Teacher’ (London, Falmer Press)]. Working from within qualitative frameworks, teacher educators are helping teachers to uncover their images of teaching as a way of understanding their practice, and explicitly seeking a link between image and practice. The application of this body of research to the study of music education has been generally overlooked. As with other teacher education candidates, music education students come to formal teacher education with a wealth of personal practical knowledge about teachers and teaching built up over the many years of study in school and studio. Traditionally, however, music education courses, particularly methods courses, have not considered the prior knowledge of students as a significant component of course content. Instead, courses have concentrated on building new competencies, skills, or formal knowledge about teaching. Such curriculum models neglect the central place of the individual in teacher education. This paper will explore the rich treasury of knowledge that music education students hold implicitly in the form of ‘images’ about teachers and teaching, and their impact on the practice of teacher education in music. I will describe a variety of means of uncovering and analysing personal images as a component of formal study in music education; and, explore some of the teacher images that emerged in a continuing study into the role of ‘image’ as a component of constructing professional knowledge in music teaching.