Abstract
AbstractThe issues of multiculturalism and interculturalism are part of the daily discourse and painful history of South Africa. As such, South African music teacher educators have a unique contribution to make to the international discourse on diversity in music education. This chapter draws on Activity Theory to conceptually position the practices of music teacher education in South Africa, and to place the practices in a wider socio-political environment. Interviews were conducted with four music teacher educators in this interpretative descriptive study, in order to understand their conceptions of multicultural and intercultural music teacher education. Three common practices that are critically framed by the teachers are identified: immersion, interaction and documentation. These practices are then considered in the broader contexts of the structure of the university and the fragmentation of society. The chapter argues on the basis of this analysis that the historically accumulating structural tensions inherent in music teacher education in South Africa should lead to transformation of the activity, but only if music teachers themselves become cognisant of the contradictions inherent in the current practices and collaboratively and creatively expand beyond them.
Highlights
Diversity is a national hallmark that most South Africans are proud of
These three approaches are perhaps not different from those advocated by European or North American scholars (e.g. Campbell 2002), but differences could include that South Africans are not typically trying to learn about the music of other nations apart from that of the Western Art canon since we have enough musical variety within our borders, and that there is the stated aim of increasing social cohesion on a national level through such interactions
The music teacher educators aim, firstly, to help students see the “problematic consequences of thinking that culture is static” (Participant 3), and, secondly, to focus students’ attention on little cultures rather than big cultures. This critical work of undoing assumptions about culture that are widespread in South African society stands in tension with the need to equip students with practical skills that they can employ in schools; repertoires of music and repertoires of teaching that the students can draw from when they stand before a class
Summary
Diversity is a national hallmark that most South Africans are proud of. The appellation “Rainbow Nation” was apparently coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and has until recently been widely used to describe the country (Buqa 2015). This chapter explores how a group of expert music teacher educators in South Africa think about cultural diversity in their classrooms and in the future classrooms of the music teachers they are preparing. The aim of this chapter is to conceptually position the practices that are commonly used in music teacher education in South Africa, both in the ways that the music teacher educators themselves describe them and within the country’s broader socio-political environment. The chapter will provide conceptualization of current intercultural music teacher education practices and attempt to locate such practices within two main streams of current socio-political activity in the country. 86) with four music teacher educators, each from a different cultural-linguistic group and each teaching at a different university, in order to discuss and explore their conceptions of multicultural and intercultural music teacher education and the practical ways that they prepare future music educators. Teacher educators are experts in the topic under investigation, they were each provided with early drafts of the chapter and given the opportunity to comment (Thorne 2016, p. 174); in this way the chapter is to some extent a co-construction filtered by my own understanding of the work of the music teacher educators and the socio-political milieu
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