Personal experiences and professional strategies

Abstract

This article is based on empirical research carried out in Sweden during the years 2000 and 2004. The study concerns five music teachers who teach at upper secondary school and the main aim was to acquire an understanding of the teachers’ views of the core subject Music. A further aim was to describe the five teachers personal experiences of music in various social, educational and musical contexts, and how these experiences affect their teaching. The problem area concerns relations between life's different directions in a number of interacting temporal and contextual dimensions. For this reason the teachers’ narratives were analysed and contextualised on different levels of abstraction. The study indicates that there is a vital relationship between what the teachers have derived from their own musical experiences—e.g. pleasure and play, outlet for emotion—an what they want to pass on to their pupils.