Search

The aim of the study was to describe and analyse what aspects of musical learning constitute the process of developing a collective artistic performance among twenty amateur dancers over 65 years old. In focus is how the musical learning proceeds throughout the project, where a series of workshops, consisting of training, choreography and improvisation, leads towards a common performance built on the participants’ life stories. The study takes Heidegger’s existential phenomenology as a starting point. Workshops, rehearsals and performances were observed, and video recorded regularly for one year. A sample of the participants was also interviewed. Generated material was analysed in a hermeneutic phenomenological manner. The results imply that the elderly people become themselves through movement in different musical situations. Crucial factors seem to be how they get to use themselves, each other, their bodies, their stories, their personal artistic forms of expressions and their imaginations, in interplay with music.

Streaming media seems to have become a natural part in teachers’ professional life. Streamed music, primarily distributed by the company Spotify, sounds in most music and dance classrooms, not least in Swedish schools. Hence, the concepts of digitalization and listening are accentuated within the area of music education. Within the frames of a larger border-crossing research project financed by Wallenbergstiftelsen ‐ ‘Evolving bildung in the nexus of streaming services, art and users: Spotify as a case’, which aims to explore the meaning and function of streaming media as a facilitator of bildung, using Spotify as a case ‐ this presentation takes two interviews regarding Spotify use as a starting point. One music teacher and one dance teacher, among sixteen participants, were interviewed about their use of Spotify. The aim with the specific analysis was to describe the phenomenon of bildung regionalized to relational school settings, where streamed music, teachers and students come together in intended learning situations. The interviews were stimulated by the teachers’ own Spotify interfaces, and documented by the virtual communication tool Zoom. They were transcribed and analysed in a phenomenological narrative manner. The narrative is shaped as a dialogue between the two teachers, to make similarities and differences regarding relations with Spotify in the classroom setting visible. The result shows aspects of existential and essential bildung through listening taking place as being, thinking and acting with Spotify in the spirit of Heidegger.

Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools’ and pupils’ performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become dominated by obligations regarding assessment and grading. A common thread is the demand for equal and just assessment and grading through clear criteria and transparent processes. Torrance states that clarity in assessment procedures, processes, and criteria has underpinned widespread use of coaching, practice, and provision of formative feedback to boost achievement, but that such transparency encourages instrumentalism. He concludes that the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with “assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience” and “criteria compliance” replacing “learning”. Thus, formative assessment, in spite of its proven educational potential, threatens to be deformative. In this article we will explore to what extent and how this development is visible in two cases, presenting music education in one Norwegian and one Swedish compulsory school setting. Three thematic threads run through this exploration: quality, power, and instrumentalism.

Earlier research has stated that there is a risk that traditional gender roles are conserved in non-formal popular music education, which might challenge teachers when it comes to offering ...