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MayDay Group Institute: June 10 - 14, 2002:
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
"Re-forming Music Teacher Education: Recent Trends and New Directions for Foundations"


Institutional Belonging, Pedagogic Discourse,
and the Music Teacher Education Experience
Hildegard Froehlich
University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

The Institution and Its Requirements

The involvement in and with a particular institution makes us do things in ways that affirm the institutional reality of which we are a part. The institutional setting thus brings with it expectations for behaving in a particular manner. Such behavior leads to class of customs which, according to Soeffner (1997), turn into ritual. This fact often is unrecognized by those who engage in the customs even though it is at the core of how professional identity is being developed. Soeffner (1997) states that customs shape "the cult of everyday life" (p x) as "subjective meaning attached to ritual leads to objective meaning as an involuntary side effect of ritual behavior" (p 72).

Seen from an interactionist perspective, rituals are composites of gestures that solidify alliances and strengthen one's sense of belonging. We engage in behavior that establishes and asserts our place in a particular reference or social group. As different institutions have their own ways of affirming their respective realities, human beings have to learn to construct their identities through the gestures accepted in different social settings. At times, such identity construction progresses smoothly across different social settings and groups; many times it does not. Whichever case it may be, as teacher trainers we are obligated to know how our students react to the different realities of which they are, by necessity, a part.


The Institutional Worlds of the Music Education Student

As music educators, we are involved in at least two different realities of "doing things:" The world of music and the world of education. More specifically: Throughout their training, music education students are expected to function in schools of music as well as colleges of education. Clearly, both of these institutions differ in the way they "do things." Both communities, that of musicians and that of educators, have their own expectations of what is important, and both communities have different means to signify those expectations. The signifiers are the "rites and rituals" that shape each world as a community of practice, a term defined by the English National Board for Nursing (2000) as a site "where skills are acquired, rehearsed, and given value" (Abstract, no page; italics are mine).

In A Place to Play, Roberts (1991) refers to the schools of music of which music education students generally are a part, as the symbolic community of musicians. Similarly, there is a symbolic community of educators/educationists. When we ask music education students to be members of both communities during their training, they experience two different pedagogic discourses with different, albeit agreed-upon, behavioral expectations and practices (Bernstein, 2000). As different discourses shape consciousness differently, I agree with Bernstein who says that "if we want to understand how pedagogic processes shape consciousness differentially, I do not see how this can be done without some means of analyzing the forms of communication which bring this about" (2000, p 4).

Although it generally is assumed that the successful music education student easily shifts from one type of discourse to the other, it has been my observation that this is not the case. Rather, moving from one context to the other occurs with difficulty and hesitancy. More often than not, the "rites and rituals" of the music community tend to overpower those defining the symbolic community of educationists.


"Rites and Rituals" Governing Teacher Education and Music Programs

It is neither common nor popular to refer to such everyday curricular expectations as term papers, exams, juried auditions, ensemble participation, student teaching, or practicing one's instrument, as either a ritual or a rite of passage. Sociologically, however, any of these activities are institutionally sanctioned because they follow accepted and normative rules of behavior that are agreed upon by a community of like-minded people. Behavior, thus, becomes habitual. However, as Connerton suggested in 1989:

Habits are more than technical abilities. [They] are affective dispositions: A predisposition formed through the frequent repetition of a number of specific acts is an intimate and fundamental part of ourselves [and has] power because [the acts] are so intimately a part of ourselves. (pp 93-94)

Because repetition "automatically implies continuity with the past" and because "all rites are repetitive" (Connerton, 1989, p 45), it is easy to see why so many of the behaviors we typically associate with schooling become ritual-like. That is, we engage in them without thinking about their purpose or function outside of the context in which they occur.

A Comparison of Rites and Rituals in Schools of Music and Colleges of Education: A List in Progress (1)

In searching the literature on the relationship of ritual to context to learning in institutional settings, I examined writings on the development of social identity and skill development as well as organizational culture and institutional structures. In doing so, theoretical constructs emerged that confirmed the observations listed in Figure 1. The examples are drawn from my knowledge of the daily routines in both institutional settings as I have experienced them in Germany more than 30 years ago and in the U.S. for the past 29 years. They serve to illustrate my claim that music education students are inevitably confronted with experiences of role ambiguity, if not conflict, when they are required to function equally in the two worlds of music and education. Each contextual setting is created by "shared past experiences of doing similar or related tasks together" (Light & Butterworth, 1993, p 31), and each context demands from the student familiarity with those tasks as well as compliance in carrying them out.

To strengthen the professional training of music education students, I believe it to be essential that curricular reformers find ways by which to create a unified instructional reality for the students during their time of training. In that regard I am in agreement with the work of our colleague, the late Steve Paul. While he looked for such experiences in early field work, accompanied by experience-based courses and self-examination as future teachers, I believe that the unifying gesture comes from an objective derived from the professional work itself. More importantly, the objective must be shared throughout the training years of the music education student by all college instructors, be they the musicologists, theorists, educationists, music educators, studio teachers, or ensemble directors. I thus consider the success of curriculum reform to lie more in a change of mindset in and attitude of those who teach the courses than in the course content and structures themselves. To illustrate this point, I want to single out the act of practicing, both in the context of music and in preparation of becoming a teacher. (2)

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Practicing as Insider Gesture

Practicing one's instrument in the solitude of the practice room is an activity familiar to and shared by musicians everywhere as an integral and accepted reality of their training and work. It is an expected and necessary behavior. Its equivalent in colleges of education might be that education majors spend their non-class time in the library, volunteer as teacher aids, engage in community services, or dedicate themselves to other people-related activities that require skills in leadership. The difference between the two expectations lies in the degree to which the act of practicing itself (a) is considered integral to the success of all music study, and (b) is a defining professional characteristic, not just an activity in preparation of what lies ahead.

Practicing as a symbolic gesture is a means to solidify relationships for the purpose of developing social identity. It is a ritual similar to the way we use language, make choices in how we dress, what TV shows we watch, or what we buy and how and what we eat: We affirm and signify belonging. Like other gestures, therefore, practicing can be both a normative and a valued behavior. On the one hand, it strengthens group membership; on the other hand, it can become a meaningful activity in its own right when individuals value and accept it as important to their own development.

Whether practicing is a normative or valued activity (or both) depends upon the individual's attitude toward the group and the purpose of being a member in it. It is determined by the degree to which the activity helps define as well as stabilize one's sense of belonging, one's sense of social identity.


Developing Social Identity

Along with other authors before them, Pratt, Rock, and Kaufmann (2001a, 2001b) differentiate between two types of identities: A social/internalized identity and a collective/external identity. Because individuals strive to make sense of any given task, they find ways to make sense of those tasks in the larger context of who they want to be (social identity) or who they are expected to be (collective identity). When applied to understanding the contexts of both music practice and teaching practice, it seems safe to say that music practice, an activity begun early in one's life, is likely to be more powerful in the development of one's social as well as collective identity than engaging in teaching as a volunteer or intern. This would even be the case if we began teaching internships earlier in the college student's career because music practice already is a familiar gesture to most music education students long before they enter college.

Next to being a normative as well as valued activity, practicing also is situated in past traditions and conventions. As such, it connects to the past and solidifies it in ways that Connerton (1989) has labeled incorporating and inscribing practice. He found these terms useful when pursuing the question of what constituted professional practice in general.

"The memorization of culturally specific postures" is an example of incorporating practice (p 73). It relies on knowledge of "how things are done" and, as such, solidifies traditions. Such observable events as, for example, time spent in the practice room, demeanor while practicing, a student's attitude toward adhering to rules and protocol of practicing, and a student teacher learning to call roll, fall under this type of practice.

Inscribing practice runs parallel to incorporating practice as the behaviors we practice also reinforce the laws, rules, and accepted doctrines from which we derive our codes of behavior. Applied to music practice: The very process of working on particular repertoire immerses us in the canon of musical works that define our body of knowledge. By doing so, we also get steeped more deeply in the traditions of the particular community of musicians who have embraced this body of knowledge either as norm for the group or as value for the individual. In addition to improving one's performance skills, therefore, practicing one's instrument is a ritual for affirming both, one's identity as a particular type of musician and the normative nature of the body of literature the community of musicians proclaims to value. Neither, obviously, affirms one's role as a teacher.

Unlike music practice, practicing to teach is not a solitary act in the practice room but an act within the confines of the actual setting of the school that determines the way in which "we do things in this situation" (Isaac, 1993, p. 94). There may be "sacred norms" that unite teachers across schools and cultural settings (Rossman, Corbett, & Firestone, 1988), but there also are norms idiosyncratic to a particular school. As such, each school has its own normative culture, and inscribing practice can only occur within that very culture.

This is why student teaching experiences, no matter how long or in how many different school settings they may occur, cannot have the same impact as any first-year teaching experience. It is for this reason, also, that "practice teaching" during one's course of study is unlikely to have inscribing power. Finally, it is for this reason that music education students will always find it easier to "go practice" their instrument than to seek opportunities to practice teaching. Practicing one's instrument always has inscribing power, no matter where it occurs!

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Finding a Common Core for Practicing in Training and Music Education Practice

The core issue for reforming how students practice their craft of music teaching lies in finding an approach toward practicing that holds true for both institutional realities the music education student faces. This, according to Abbott (1988), is best accomplished by analyzing the tasks required in the workplace and by bringing the results of that analysis into the training environment of which the student is a part.

Interested in developing a theory of what constitutes expert labor and professional knowledge, Abbott grounds his thinking in the nature of expert work itself rather than in a system of knowledge that "formalizes the skills on which this work proceeds" (p.52). He argues, I believe rightly, that a system of knowledge developed in the academy is abstract rather than in use and therefore leads to a disconnect between the knowledge system used in training and the professional knowledge gained as an expert" (ibid). Professional knowledge is being separated from its use and either "disregarded altogether or relegated to a minor role, on the argument that knowledge in practice deforms knowledge in the abstract" (ibid.).

Abbott suggested to look at professional work as consisting of the three-fold task of (1) diagnosing a problem, (2) drawing inferences about possible causes for the problem, and (3) indicating treatment. While it may be more common in some fields to refer to observation, diagnosis, and treatment, Abbott's sequence seems very applicable to what music teachers do: They hear a mistake by labeling it, try to find out what caused the mistake to happen, and then make suggestions for how to correct the mistake and, thereby, improve the performance. This principle is applicable to both, one's own performance practice and practicing to teach. It therefore should be at the center of all activities and courses a student takes in preparation of becoming a music educator.

Diagnosis and treatment are, according to Abbott, "mediating acts" because they are not under the control of the professional. Only the making of inferences, i.e., choosing the correct treatment from several options, is under the control of the professional. For example, the patient comes to the doctor with a headache. This is a given to which the doctor responds (she mediates). To find a treatment, the doctor suggests one of many possibilities because she is familiar with a number of different causes for experiencing headaches. Again, because she is not in control of the causes themselves, she is a mediator. But, the doctor IS in control of which of the causes to select for treatment. From all the possible causes for headaches, the doctor selects the one that most likely has caused the particular patient's problem. This means that the act of choosing the right treatment out of several options is the truly professional act.

In music, it is the student who has trouble singing or playing in tune. This is what the professional hears and has to react to. Then the teacher has a variety of choices of what may correct the problem. Of all the possible causes for being out of tune (e.g., poor breath support, inappropriate pitch range for the age of the student, out-of-tune instrument, poor hand position, etc.), the music teacher must select the one choice that most likely can remedy the problem. This act leads to treatment.


Practicing to Diagnose

Along with the improvement of one's own performance skills through the three-step process described above, goes the ability to detect errors or weaknesses in the musical performance of others. Both skills must be practiced at the same time by integrating the latter into the former. Therefore, the practice routine itself would have to contain a component in which performance models of varying qualities, standards, and in different ensemble settings are being analyzed for the presence of actual mistakes, interpretive choices, or depth of udnerstanding. As one's own technical and musical skills and insights improve, pupil performance models need to be presented that similarly increase in complexity, variety, and depth.

Finally, the repertoire one practices in the studio would need to have a certain degree of overlap with the musical repertoire commonly found in the school music repertoire. End-of-the-semester juries should include the performance of parts relevant to the literature music directors might actually conduct later in their career. Music theory, aural skill classes, and music history courses would need to serve the purpose of making critical judgments about musical choice making and error detection. Field observations and teaching internships would need to be dedicated to very specific projects of identifying performance strengths and weaknesses in students of all ages.

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Practicing to Make Inferences

Not all diagnosed problems in music performance require lengthy inferences to lead to treatment. Simply pointing to a mistake can cause its correction. This can happen especially when one works with more advanced students who already have become familiar with the skill of self-correcting and have developed an ear for insightful interpretations. Often, however, it is one thing to diagnose "out-of-tuneness" or differences in interpretation and another to know the reasons behind either. This knowledge requires an understanding of the circumstances that can lead to "out-of-tuneness" or interpretive choices.

To stay with the more concrete example of being out-of-tune: We all know that there is a qualitative difference in pointing out a wrong note and finding the reasons behind the wrong note. Thus, to correct the singing of a first-grader is likely to require a different approach toward "treatment" than that of an advanced college student. As stated above, the skill of making inferences lies in selecting from the repertoire of choices the right one for the situation. Therefore, both situations, the first grade class and the advanced college choir, require the same analytic, i.e., professional skill; one expertise is not less than the other.

Abbott (1988, p 51) suggests that "routinization" of the diagnosis-inference-treatment process indicates lack of professional thinking. If we accept his premise, then learning to make inferences should be at the heart of all courses required in a music education curriculum. When, during instrumental practice, music students simply repeat a passage (or an entire piece) in the hope of it becoming better by sheer quantity of replication, they indicate a lack in the skill of inference making. It is a skill that must be taught&emdash;overtly and repeatedly, possibly even tested in jury settings.

Similarly, what commonly is labeled "student-" or "practice teaching" too often is used to routinize teaching gestures as they occur sequentially throughout a lesson. Not enough time is spent on making the intern understand the specific lesson or rehearsal segments as the deliberate response to identified causes of pupil behavior. For example, warm-up exercises are not simply lesson "openers." They are planned in preparation of the pieces to be rehearsed and require from the intern careful diagnostic, i.e., listening, skills so that possible performance problems in the exercises can be addressed in anticipation of the pieces to come. The playing of scales, even though often considered a routinized exercise, should demand from the intern to listen for intonation problems and watch for fingering, embouchure, or posture problems, which then are addressed by giving specific instructions of how to correct the problems. Again, as it is in the practicing of one's instrument, the professional skill of music teaching rests in choosing from several music instructional possibilities the best fitting answer for the situation at hand. It is this skill that the music education intern should focus on during the entirety of the student teaching experience. It is by far the most difficult skill that music educators have to learn; it also is what sets them apart from other teachers.


Practicing to Prescribe Treatment

Although, according to Abbott (1988), prescribing treatment follows inference making, it sometimes occurs, through trial and error, as part of inference making itself. When done deliberately and with the knowledge that such "trial and error" is risk-free, trying out solutions to problems is an acceptable form of prescribing treatment.

The weakest form of prescribing treatment is to tell a student "to go and practice" or to tell an ensemble "to play it again." Both statements are void of any inference because the instructor either did not make a diagnosis or chose not to share it with the pupils. Abbott also alludes to the fact that "certain clients [are] more attractive to professionals" due to "their ability on the one hand to prediagnose their problems and on the other hand to understand their treatment in relatively professional terms" (p 47).

Applied to music and teaching, this would explain why we know so little about how to teach our students to practice--be it their instrument or instructional skills. As teachers, we rely on the students' ability to analyze their own performance problems and self-correct. Those who can, therefore, are "ahead of the game" because they already have learned the range of possible solutions to performance or instructional problems. Students who do not have this knowledge, find it much harder to correct mistakes or adjust to a particular performance style, even if they they hear the mistakes or realize that an adjustment is necessary. For this reason, perhaps, students who appear to have less of a handle on how to practice than the stronger ones, tend to be labeled weak. In other words, while the lack of practicing is often blamed for poorer performance, the actual cause may lie in not knowing the solutions to the problems one hears. That, however, is a skill that can and should be taught and practiced.

Practicing to prescribe treatment requires knowledge of the first two steps in the sequence. Thus, music education students need to learn from early on to label what they hear and see; to explain verbally the possible causes for why they hear or see what they do; and to develop the appropriate vocabulary and technique by which improvements to heard sounds and corrections to observed behaviors can occur.

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Consequences for Music Teacher Training

To have both incorporating and inscribing power, practicing to make diagnoses and draw inferences about the best possible solutions to a given problem must be done deliberately and purposefully by both the music and the teaching professionals in teacher training institutions. While I know that many college professors already do so by individual choice, I am quite certain that the practice has not yet become institutional tradition. This can happen only if the objective outlined above were shared and followed by all communities of professionals with whom music education students interact during their course work and their internship experience in school settings. In that case, a set of unifying rather than dividing gestures of professional conduct would shape a music education student's training years and carry over into the professional years to come.

In conclusion, to professionalize music teacher training, two things must happen: (1) We need to understand clearly the function, purpose, and place of any one "rite of passage" (or ritual) that defines the canon of course requirements in light of future work expectations. (2) We must cease to assume that there is a direct transfer between one's own role and accomplishments as a musician and one's effectiveness as a music teacher in the rehearsal hall or the classroom. Instead, this transfer has to be taught;as I illustrated in the case of practicing, one of the most often exercised but least understood activities that define both musicians and teachers, albeit in very different ways.

If we placed the acquisition of professional knowledge as defined by Abbott at the center of all music teacher training programs, the focus of all instruction would be our desire to teach the students to identify performance problems in one's pupils, know a range of possible solutions to those problems, and select from that range of possibilities the solution that best meets the need of any one of the pupils. Only if the teacher trainers, both in music and education, are fully in compliance with this objective, can we expect to provide a truly professional training. And, only if the students can demonstrate the skills imbedded in these objectives, can we say that we have trained them well and effectively.


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References

Abbott, A. (1988). The System of Professions. An Essay on the Division of Labor. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity. Theory, Research, Critique. Rev. ed. Lanham. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting (2000). Abstract: Clinical judgment and nurse education: Nursing identities and communities of practice. Research Highlights, July.

Issac, RG (1993). Organizational culture. Some new perspectives. In R.T. Golembiewski, ed., Handbook of Organizational Behavior (pp. 91-110). New YorkÉHong Kong: Marcel Dekker.

Light, P, & Butterworth, G, eds. (1993). Context and Cognition. Ways of Learning and Knowing. Hillsdale, NJ, Hove and Lodnon: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Pratt, MG, Rock, KW, & Kaufmann, J. (2001a). Making sense of socialization: How multiple social identities shape members' experiences of work. Academy of Management Proceedings, MOC A1-6.

Pratt, MG, Rock, KW, & Kaufmann, J. (2001b). Making Sense of Work: The Role of Identity Menus in Socialization. Working paper. www.si.umich.edu/ICOS/pratt.pdf

Roberts, BA (1991). A Place to Play. The Social World of University Schools of Music. St. John's, Newfoundland: Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Rossman, GB, Corbett, H.D, & Firestone, W.A (1988). Change and Effectiveness in Schools. Albany, NY: State University of New York.

Soeffner, H-G. (1997). The Order of Rituals. The Interpretation of Everyday Life. Trl. By Mara Luckmann. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.


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Notes

1. The term schools of music and colleges of education are used to denote the two different institutional settings common to music teacher training programs in the U.S. They are not indicative of a particulaar administrative structure, such as department, division, or other types of units within the academy.

2. What follows has been developed in more depth in my chapter for Harald Jorgensen's Festschrift, in press. The chapter is titled: Thoughts on Schools of Music and Colleges of Education as Places of "Rites and Rituals": Consequences for Research on Practicing.

Schools of Music:	Colleges of Education:
Acquisition of knowledge and practice coincide	Acquisition of knowledge and practice are separated
Focus is on mastery of discipline as defined by collective traditions and acquired experience	Focus is on professional knowledge derived from research first, and then substantiated by acquired experience
Prerequisite skill development is expected prior to entry into professional training	Skill development considered peripheral to early phase of knowledge acquisition
Involvement in formal music practice is familiar gesture (insider routine)	Teaching experience is unfamiliar gesture (relies on instinct and past conceptualization)
Closed community (auditions determine eligibility based upon experiences prior to university)	Open community (admission based upon experiences within university)
Learning is both rule- and product-driven (practice as standard routine to get ready for the performance and prepare for juries)	Learning first is concept-driven (learning by conceptualizing the process), then product-driven (through student teaching)
The Craft
The subject matter (Music performance is the motivator)	Interacting with the students (The teacher is the motivator)
Skill development (practice) leads to acceptance of canon of works (repertoire as shared gesture among the world of musicians)	Skill development (practice during student teaching) leads to acceptance of school routine (as shared gesture among school teachers)
Practicing the instrument is predictable routine and depends upon the nature of the repertoire (under control by the studio teacher/student)	Practicing teaching is an open-ended process and determined by constantly changing circumstances created by the pupils and the school environment (not under control by mentoring teacher/student teacher)
Cultural elitism is accepted standard; egalitarianism is relegated to elementary level of instruction; secondary-level music primarily for the talented	Cultural egalitarianism is accepted standard; elitist activities mostly extra-curricular
The preferred model:
The master-apprentice approach	The discovery model
The studio teacher/faculty member often becomes significant other (engaged involvement)	The faculty member is objective dispenser of knowledge in large classroom settings (detached involvement)
Ensemble participation gives sense of "know-how" and determines insider status and worth as musician	Exposure to theories of instructional processes delays sense of "know-how" and sense of insider status and worth as an educator
Ensemble participation tends to encourage student role of follower	Class requirements tend to encourage student role of leader
Learning through performance instills a participatory sense of learning	Learning through on-looking instills a sense of being a bystander
The institutional climate:
Think of yourself as artist	Think of yourself as teacher
Guard your advantage	Share your advantage with others
Think competitively	Think 'team' and seek interdisciplinary approaches
Instruction is based upon organized, one-on-one faculty-student contact	Instruction is based upon group-contact with faculty. Individual contact must be sought by initiative
The conductor-teacher is the center of instruction	The teacher is encouraged to delegate his/her instructional role to the students
Practicing occurs throughout the training alone in the practice room	Practicing occurs later in the training in collaboration with peers
Professional advancement:
Expected as the result of superior musical skill	Expected to come from following rules, fitting in, and being a team player
A place of strong collective AND social identity as musician	A place of weak collective and strong social identity as educator
Prestige comes with superior skill advantages	Prestige comes with degrees, experience and longevity