To Örebro University

Music teacher education, and consequently music teacher education research, poses many challenging questions. Studies from different parts of the world show teachers as being continually in the grips of educational change and rapid reform. Many music teachers are striving to achieve improved social status and legitimacy and pressures to reform curricula in music education are widespread.

Professional music-pedagogical knowledge therefor includes critical thinking skills and a reflective approach in order to allow music teachers to react at a micro-political level. If teachers were to engage only in practical aspects of teaching, they would inevitably contribute to the implementation and the acceptance of initiatives coming from above in the hierarchy, or from the outside. Music-pedagogical practice cannot be limited to how others define it.

Music teacher education as well as music teacher education research has an urgent theoretical and critical task ahead if we are to prevent pedagogical activities for future music teachers from being confined to adaptation to government directives and political and organizational changes, following and submitting to new guidelines and policies, and delivering only what is expected.

Building an understanding of music teachers and music teacher education is concerned with professional knowledge; questions of the role of ‘knowledge’, epistemological issues, ways of viewing the value of music as well as assumptions about what it is to be musically educated and what this means for the pedagogical practice and development.

The new book Professional Knowledge in Music Teacher Education, edited by Georgii-Hemming, Burnard and Holgersen, focuses on how ‘knowledge’ in music teacher education is understood, what theories we held and related assumptions we make about teachers and learners, and how we can understand and make connections between theory and practice.

Within this symposium, my intention is to point to some fundamental issues addressed in the book, but first and foremost to discuss significances for further research.