Stepping Aside From Myself: Intercultural Perspectives on Music Teacher Education
Journal of Music Teacher Education
Published online on January 07, 2013
Abstract
Preservice music teachers enter the profession with firmly held beliefs of what music education entails. With an increasingly diverse population of students in PreK–12 education in the United States and Sweden, a collaborative, intercultural immersion course was designed to challenge preservice music teachers’ beliefs. Twelve music education majors participated in the intercultural course. Data consisted of focus group discussions. With Bildung as a theoretical framework, the following five themes emerged: Beyond Tourism, Democracy and Classroom Management, Shared Experiences, Something to Bring Back, and Old Meets New. The intercultural immersion course provided a scaffold for the participants to consider what and why they teach the content that they do and the ramifications of making such decisions on their potential teaching practices of PreK–12 music students.