The music educator's professional knowledge

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The music educator's professionalknowledgeMaria Cecilia Jorquera Jaramillo aa Departamento de Didáctica de la Expresión Musical y Plástica ,Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Sevilla ,Seville, SpainPublished online: 21 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Maria Cecilia Jorquera Jaramillo (2008) The music educator's professionalknowledge, Music Education Research, 10:3, 347-359, DOI: 10.1080/14613800802280084

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The music educator’s professional knowledge

Maria Cecilia Jorquera Jaramillo*

Departamento de Didactica de la Expresion Musical y Plastica, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educacion,Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain

Professional knowledge in teaching is broadly based on personal knowledge. Hence, it isimportant to build teachers’ development out of their initial knowledge. The idea of asociogenesis of educational knowledge, teacher knowledge and training models as wellas teaching models are the basis of this study. It aims to diagnose the knowledge attestedby four teachers, how the components of this knowledge relate to the events andexperiences of their cultural and musical education, and how they explain theirprofessional knowledge. In-depth interviews with four teachers were carried out. Theinterview content and some features of the vocabulary were analysed. The results showthat two teachers have a wide range of interrelated knowledge, although it is apparentlyunrelated to their classroom experience. The other two teachers have a ‘closed’ cognitivesystem, which is centred on their own practical experience.

Keywords: teacher beliefs and practices; secondary music education; instrumentalteaching; professional knowledge; music teaching; teacher cognition

Introduction

Music is quite a recent subject in Spain’s educational system, thus its cultural status is still

not widely recognised. Music educators have a marginal status among musicians and

educationists, so that while there is a strong need for research, this is a difficult task.

This study is a small part of a much larger research project that has a part of its

background in Elliott’s (1978, 1983) ideas related to action research. In this larger project I

have included a broad critical exam of music education history and its influence into

current music education. The study presented in this article constitutes the project’s first

phase in which four other teachers participated. After this initial phase the teachers

recorded their own classes on video, they watched and commented on them with the

researcher and were interviewed again at the end of this work. Hence, the present study

focuses on the teachers’ ideas on teaching and learning music, that is, on their professional

knowledge.The underlying ideas of this study are the sociogenesis of the educational knowledge

(Cuesta Fernandez 1998; Goodson 1991, 1995; Vinao Frago 1982, 1987, 1995) and the

existence of a core ‘school knowledge’ or pedagogical content knowledge1 (Bolıvar 2005;

Shulman 1987), which is different from that produced by scientific research on music. In

music education the sociogenesis of educational knowledge relates to a long tradition of

teaching and learning practices in formal and non-formal contexts, so that the educational

knowledge is the result of social and historical selection. This selection is of crucial

importance because it determines teachers’ conceptions on music teaching and learning.

*Email: [email protected]

Music Education Research

Vol. 10, No. 3, September 2008, 347�359

ISSN 1461-3808 print/ISSN 1469-9893 online

# 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14613800802280084

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The historical analysis carried out leads to the conclusion that there are some milestones

for music teaching, consisting of a contemporary, out-of-context interpretation of the

theories considered.

The first component of the educators’ professional knowledge is the subject matter

taught, so I have considered the following authors: Rameau’s theory published in 1722,

Rousseau’s concept of music published in his Dictionnaire de la Musique in 1767,

Hanslick’s formalist theory first published in 1854, the idea of music as practice mentioned

by Elliott (1995), Stefani’s (1976, 1982) semiotic theory on music, and Blacking’s (1973)

concept of music as a complex cultural practice. The importance of these theories relates to

the transfer of professional knowledge from specialised music teaching to other teaching

contexts. As in specialised music teaching there is a lack of research, with its professional

knowledge based mainly on tradition, and this is the knowledge which constitutes a central

reference for music teaching in different contexts.

I have also taken into consideration different models of teacher education and teaching,

viewing them as an organised outcome of the educators’ professional knowledge.

Additionally, I have outlined the models towards which music educators should direct

their attention so as to integrate an inclusive, democratic educational project. This is an

attempt to innovate and put educational and social changes into practice in music

education, particularly for the teachers who took part in this research.

A very important component of the teachers’ professional knowledge is personal

knowledge (Porlan and Rivero 1998), so that the choice of content taught is based on the

teachers’ ideas. For this reason it is essential to delineate strategies to provide them (in both

initial and in-service teacher education) with scientific knowledge to help develop greater

awareness. Notwithstanding, there is a lack of studies on how to teach. Thus it is necessary to

explore the situation of professional knowledge in music teaching and be able to formulate

strategies for initial and in-service education that really influence the classroom activity of

music educators and promote innovation and changes. In Spain, also at the university level

there is a need to lay solid foundations and to improve music teacher education.

The subject of teachers’ professional knowledge has its roots in a long research

tradition initially called teacher’s thought processes (Clark and Peterson 1986; in Spain:

Marcelo Garcıa 1987; Shavelson and Stern 1981). The main feature of this research

tradition is the psychological interpretation of professional knowledge. In Spain there are

also studies based on a sociological view of professional knowledge (Barquın 1995), and

more recent studies, that take on an epistemological point of view, show that teachers’

actions are contradictory, irrational, and sometimes incoherent (Porlan and Rivero 1998).2

The studies in this tradition have been carried out with different methodologies and some

of the findings are not comparable.

It is therefore not easy to systematise the teachers’ actions into rational and coherent

theories. Professional knowledge is considered from an epistemological point of view as:

a. teachers work simultaneously using different kinds of knowledge (their own

knowledge, the students’, the subjects’, the textbooks’ knowledge, etc.);

b. they expect others to acquire specific knowledge;

c. space and time in schools are mainly organised into subjects related to different

kinds of knowledge;

d. some form of knowledge guides the curriculum and the whole activity in teaching;

e. when facing problems related to classroom practice and promoting genuine

processes of initial and in-service education, a new kind of professional knowledgeis required (Porlan et al. 1996).

348 M.C. Jorquera Jaramillo

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In this study the intention is to inquire into the components of the professional

knowledge of four music educators (two teachers in secondary compulsory education and

two instrumental teachers) and how these elements are organised into personal didactic

models (PDMs). Teachers can profit from the process and the results for their further

professional development, that is, there is a reflective element in this study. This study

mainly intends to explore the situation of music teaching and its aim is to search for

strategies which allow innovation and changes in music teaching, particularly for the four

teachers involved. There is a strong resistance to changes among music educators and they

have a tight relationship to traditional music teaching. However, aided by current research

in music teaching, they can have their own creative responses to teaching practice.

In educational research, models are frequently employed to represent different aspects

of educational reality (Escudero Munoz 1981; Ferrandez Arenaz 1997; Garcıa Perez 2000a;

Perez 2000b; Pont Barcelo 1997). Research on professional knowledge and teaching

models has been carried out with different approaches and methods, so that it is difficult to

compare the findings. However, as models are an ideal representation of reality most of

them turn out to be abstract and far from classroom reality (Porlan and Rivero 1998). The

teachers’ actions, which are often contradictory, are the product of their own choices,

personal knowledge, and experience, which can be described as automatisms and scripts, or

can even be a product of their implicit theories. For this reason I believe that it is

appropriate to speak of the music educators’ actions in terms of elements of a personal

didactic model, which is unique. Possible goals for the teachers’ development are a

desirable school knowledge, a desirable professional knowledge and, consequently,

desirable PDMs that lead to a teaching�learning model based on research (Garcıa Dıazand Garcıa Perez 1992; Garcıa Gomez and Porlan 1992; Grupo de Investigacion en la

Escuela 1991, 1992; Porlan 1993; Porlan and Rivero 1998).

The whole research plan is shown in Figure 1. The research questions aim to find out

the following:

a. What professional knowledge do these teachers have regarding educational action,agents, the context, and teaching activities carried out by the same?

b. How do the components of this professional knowledge relate to the events and

experiences of their cultural and musical education?

c. How do these music teachers explain their professional knowledge?

Methodology and design of the study

As this study mainly intended to explore the situation of professional knowledge in music

teaching, the methodological orientation is qualitative. The different areas of practice

would lead to differences or similarities being found in the teachers’ professional

knowledge. The larger group of teachers invited to participate had never had any

experience related to research, so that they were very reluctant. For this reason, and

because of the exploratory nature of the study, the four educators interviewed were

essentially those who agreed to participate.

In general terms, the main tool used to gather information was the individual in-depth

open interview (Flick 2000; Fontana and Frey 1994; Gaskell 2000; Jovchelovitch and

Bauer 2000), because it allows understanding of the researched situation, and formulating

hypotheses to explain it. This would suit the intention of exploring professional knowledge

in music education. Additionally, as this research also intended to make the music teacheraware of the need for research, the tool chosen appeared appropriate for this purpose. The

Music Education Research 349

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teachers chose the place where the interviews were carried out, so that the settings varied.

The interviews were audio taped with a cassette recorder and then transferred onto CD to

facilitate transcription after asking for biographical information. The questions included in

the interviews were:

. How did you choose music education as a profession?

. What goals do you suggest for music education?

. What is the relation between the suggested goals and the knowledge which is specific

to music education?

. What is your personal definition of music?

. How should this personal concept of music be taught?

. How should this personal concept of music be learned?

. How should the students’ ideas and interests be involved in music education?

. How should the students’ learning in music education be assessed?

. What are the features of your personal curriculum?

. How does music education and music integrate into the school system and into

society?

For analysis purposes the interview texts have been organised as shown in Figure 2.The tools used for analysis are qualitative, reflecting the qualitative orientation of the

whole study. However, it is possible to identify two groups of tools: one of a quantitative

character which leads to some traits in the vocabulary employed by each teacher; and a

second more strictly qualitative, consisting of content analysis (Bauer 2000; Glaser and

Strauss 1967) and code frequency � considering mainly absent and most frequent codes,

using percentages as a means for description. This part of the analysis has been supported

by qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti) to facilitate the most mechanical tasks. The initial

procedure to gather the words for vocabulary analysis was qualitative, that is, a reduced list

of words related to education and to music were gathered from all the interviews, using the

The Music Educator’s Professional Knowledge

Music educator’s

professional knowledge

Indications for initial and in-

service teacher education

Declared PDM

The subject matter: Music,

sound/noise

Music Learning Theories

Curricular hypotheses

Relations among

educational and social systems

...

Figure 1. The music educator’s professional knowledge. A case study.

Note: PDM: personal didactic model.


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tool Word Cruncher 2.0 included in the software Atlas.ti. The percentages in comparing

the most frequent and the absent codes are used with descriptive purpose. The four cases

are firstly described internally and then compared.

Although the debate on triangulation in qualitative research is quite intense (Sandın

Esteban 2003), in that triangulation is actually difficult to achieve, in this study I decided to

return the data to the four participating teachers in order to reach agreement on the

analysis carried out. During the triangulation process, I observed that teachers were aware

of their own declared professional knowledge for the first time and began to acknowledge

the status of their professional development. I felt that that was the beginning of the

possible change and innovation in their teaching.

Discussion of findings

Emilio, an instrumental cello teacher, talked a lot about his musical education and the

context, making interesting analyses on how music could have an important role for

difficult social situations. He did not speak at all about school administration as one of the

agents of education, his students’ families, teaching materials, or assessment, and does not

express how he explains his concept of music education. Additionally, he emphasised the

teaching method, referring to his conception of music teaching as play:

. . . when children play they do it for the sake of playing. But at times winning interferes withplaying, and this means competing. . . . But with music, playing has a different magic. It has themagic that it allows you to integrate yourself into the group and this experience of integratingyourself by means of music is so gratifying that there is what in transactional analysis . . .corresponds to win�win, hey? There is that kind of relationship where the psychologicalcontract doesn’t necessarily mean that if I win you loose. I win and you win! That is, we allwin! . . .

. . . You lose very much, you poison music when you try to systematize too much, youintoxicate it. Something happens to it . . .

Narrative text

Argumentative text

events

Musical education

other

General education

Informal education

agents other

context profession

Teacher Student

Administration

School Environment

Family

Music Education

conceptions

Figure 2. Graphical representation of the texts’ general composition.


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Laia is a young violin teacher with a long experience. She began teaching when she was

14. During the interview she did not speak about the school administration, neither did she

refer to things related to the student�teacher relationship. This seems to reveal that Laia’s

conception of music teaching concerns exclusively with things occurring in the classroom.

Similarly to her colleague Emilio, she talked mainly about her musical education, about her

students, about her teaching goals, about teaching methods, and about what has been

defined as demonstrative examples (Jorquera Jaramillo 2006). These examples concern

experiences she or well-known individuals have made in their own teaching, and these have

a significant presence in the whole interview. This seems to be the main characteristic of

Laia’s conceptions, which is illustrated in Figure 3. When speaking about method, Laia

harshly criticised some orientations in instrumental teaching and consistently gives a sort

of argument which she supported by using demonstrations of these examples. Hence, it is

possible to assign to the demonstrative examples the function of documented facts that

demonstrate the validity or truth of a statement.

Furthermore, Laia’s conceptions about the subject matter of instrumental teaching

reflect a very strong interest on aesthetic questions. She states that aesthetic experience is of

an affective nature but children learn it by acquiring the rules of musical ‘grammar’. She

considers:

Of Beauty, the ‘sublime’, do you mean aesthetical categories? I think it is that, it is sublime. Imean, no . . . To me, a musical work, that is, I think it is something that involves you. It’ssomething that catches you completely at all levels.

Then, on how the aesthetical experience should be learned:

For me, the great musicians or great music teachers I have had, they all were people whoexperienced it at a very intuitive level. You have to say ‘look, listen to what they say, what doesthis piece say to you’. And, a little, that the music carries you by itself.

Here we can observe that teachers have to count on a great amount of intuition to be

good professionals, and to learn how to experience those feelings which involve you, the

Conception 1Own

experience 1

Conception 2Experience of well-known individuals 2

Conception 3Own

experience 3

etc.

Figure 3. Closed system composed by Laia’s conceptions as elements of her professional

knowledge.


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students have to let themselves be carried by the music. Actually, in Laia’s conception the

affective experience of music is not really taught.

Marc, a music teacher in compulsory secondary education who has a broad experience

in popular music, did not speak about the students’ families, but talked mainly about the

agents of the educational relation and about the need to lay the foundations of music

education. Among these, the most frequently cited was the teacher. Marc is totally aware of

the difficulties of teaching music to satisfy the real needs of his students, therefore he is

searching for a way to lay the foundations of his music teaching in a sort of ‘operative’

theory, involving his students as main actors of their own music education. However, he

sees this as a systemic task, where his changes and innovations could not fit into the

‘normal’ way of teaching:

I work in a school where education and life have no relation at all . . . The first thing we shoulddo would be at the level of all subjects, putting things in order, so as to be able to debate, I don’tknow, at least a little about things . . . In the groups and so on, if one of their classmates seessomeone is ‘collaborating with the system’, to say it somehow . . . If they see all this in mylessons, well, I would appear as ‘strange’ . . . you know! I would be perceived as different.

In other words, Marc means that his teaching has to be considered as part of the whole

school, so that he should teach in a similar way to the rest of subjects. Otherwise, if he

would take some innovative initiative in his classroom, showing a critical view of reality, he

would appear strange or different, moving away from the normal teaching in this school.

This analysis reflects part of Marc’s rich, complex and elaborate conceptions, even if

they are apparently not connected to his teaching, where he acknowledges that he does not

possess appropriate tools for the daily classroom activity, as shown in Figure 4.

Pau teaches music in compulsory secondary education and his own musical education

consisted of learning piano and tible, a Catalan traditional instrument, in the parish of the

town where he grew up, so that he actually did not receive any systematic music education.

Pau did not talk about informal education, the students’ families, and explanation of his

own conception of music education. He spoke mainly about his own music education, the

students, the content of music education as a school subject, and in a similar way to Laia,

he used frequently demonstrative examples (Jorquera Jaramillo 2006). However, these were

mostly limited to his own experience in the classroom and just in very few occasions he

appealed to other persons’ experiences. Hence, it seems that Pau’s professional knowledge

nurtures itself with experience carried out by himself in a sort of closed cycle. Pau’s main

concern seems to be that his teaching should be perceived by his students as pleasant:

I would say my objectives are these: making music, being able to listen to it, I mean beingable . . . Also that they like it, that they enjoy it.

. . . Sometimes it happened to me, I have done things that weren’t particularly interesting at thebeginning, but eventually the students liked them a lot, and then, it depends on the class youhave.

Educational and musical vocabulary

Concerning the vocabulary, 16 words were considered in the teachers’ educational

vocabulary, eight words and 11 names of instruments in the musical vocabulary. The

words considered are: pupil, to learn, learning, didactic, education, to educate/education,

educational, to teach, teaching, tool, method, to motivate/motivation, goal, pedagogy/

pedagogical, teacher; song, to sing, singing, conservatoire, instrument, musical/musically,


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music, to play, harp, bass, drums, bass drum, cello, double bass, guitar, organ, percussion,

piano, violin.

The educational vocabulary employed by the instrumental teachers, we can see that

Emilio uses words related to the teacher quite frequently (0.11% of the words in the whole

interview), to learning (0.08%), and to tool (0.17%), even if he never uses words related to

method. Emilio’s musical vocabulary includes three highlighted expressions: instrument

(0.25%), his own instrument, the cello (0.17%) and expressions related to play, in the sense

of playing an instrument (0.22%). Laia’s educational vocabulary is less varied, as she uses

just 10 of the 16 expressions considered, and the word most frequently employed was

teacher (0.32%). Her musical vocabulary includes as the most frequent words to play

(0.33%), song (0.18%), and her own instrument, the violin (0.17%).

The secondary music education teachers employed a more varied vocabulary than the

instrumental teachers: Marc used 15 of the expressions considered, and Pau 14, and Marc’s

musical vocabulary is less centred on the instrument. The expression to play is also less

used than the instrumental teachers (Marc: 0.15%, Pau: 0.13%). The interesting result of

this analysis is that in Marc’s vocabulary there is more variety and balance among the two

areas considered, while the other teachers show more musical than educational vocabulary

(see Table 1).

Components of the music educators’ professional knowledge

In general terms, the variety of the codes and the vocabulary employed by the teachers

appears to be a feature of a well developed, declared, professional knowledge. In this sense,

Marc and Emilio are well developed, even if it seems that they are not able to apply their

good ideas to the classroom. Marc is perfectly conscious about this problem and Emilio’s

educational professional knowledge is weaker than his musical knowledge. Emilio’s context

analysis appeared to be quite separated from educational matters, so that it is possible to

deduce that he is not as aware as his compulsory education colleague. On the other hand,

Laia and Pau show a quite restricted professional knowledge, which is based almost

exclusively on experience, expressed by means of demonstrative examples (Jorquera

Jaramillo 2006). Emilio, Laia and Pau’s professional knowledge seems to derive from

Rich, complex, elaborate and

strong conceptions

Practice in classroom is

apparently weak

Figure 4. Graphical representation of the lack of relation among Marc’s conceptions and his

classroom practice.

Table 1. Percentage of educational and musical vocabulary employed by the four teachers.

Emilio Laia Marc Pau

Education 0.52 0.93 1.54 0.53

Music 1.73 1.71 1.37 1.5


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tradition, that is, from dominant professional knowledge. This fact could mean that there

is limited scope for educational action.

Concerning the subject matter taught, Emilio views music mainly as practice and is

aware that it is also a complex cultural product in Blacking’s (1973) sense. Laia conceives

music as an object, in Hanslick’s (1854) and Rameau’s (1722) sense, so that it is of crucial

importance to teach the musical grammar elements, but for her, music is also practice. For

Marc the music to be taught has to be considered as communication, and as contextualised

human experience as in Blacking’s (1973) sense. Pau’s concept of music is as an object, a

product.

The teachers’ learning theories show different aspects of their views: for Emilio the

highlighted feature of learning should be to do it by means of play, which reflects his

interest in keeping his students constantly motivated. Laia mentions two aspects that are

apparently not connected to each other: students have to understand musical grammar,

and she supposes that this will allow her students to have aesthetic experiences. Probably

she is not aware about the fact that she is really not teaching how to experience what shecalled the involving experience of beauty. For Marc it is very important to consider the

students’ subjectivity, which means departing from their real experiences, so that they learn

significant musical content. Pau, in a different manner than Emilio, is concerned about his

students’ motivation, in terms of liking the activities he proposes.

Referring to curriculum, Emilio did not offer any idea about this subject. For Laia,

curriculum seems to pre-exist as a relatively rigid pattern that the teacher should follow. In

this matter the student has no chance to make decisions, so that Laia’s concept of

curriculum is teacher-centred. Marc’s conception of curriculum includes two aspects: on

one hand there is a curriculum with bureaucratic function, that is, the papers the teachers

have to fill in and deliver to the administration, and this is dissociated from the real

curriculum which is accomplished during the lessons. Pau’s idea of curriculum assigns

great importance to the choice of materials, mostly in the form of textbook, so that the role

of the teacher is to put into practice what others have already planned for the classroom,

without establishing differences among groups and students. It is possible that Pau’s own

music education makes him insecure when facing the tasks of music teaching, so that he

prefers to adopt the role of a teacher who carries out other people’s proposals. Pau’scurricular hypotheses can be defined as technological (Escudero Munoz 1999) because the

teacher just applies a curriculum without making fundamental decisions.

The views the teachers have in relation to the educational and the social system express

different nuances: Emilio declares the importance of this relation and analyses the social

context accurately, but in the more strictly professional matters there is no trace of it, so

that it is possible to deduce that he possesses a complex view of this which is not applied to

his teaching. Laia tends to separate education from music learning when she assigns the

main responsibility in educational matters to the students’ families. It is possible that she is

not quite aware about her educational role, so that apparently the educational questions

are mostly implicit. Marc has a deep comprehension of the relations between educational

and social system: he is conscious about the complexity of this matter as well as its feature

of being systemic, and has a critical view of it. He acknowledges that at the time of the

interviews he was not able to put any project into practice in his lessons that could relate to

the students’ real lives. For Pau, educational matters are related to the bad behaviour of the

students in school, without analysing this fact further. Hence, he states that the family’sinfluence on each student results in discipline or indiscipline in the classroom. He sees

music education quite isolated inside his classroom, so that there is no relation between

school and society.


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The sources of the teachers’ PDMs are the following: for Emilio practice is central,

particularly in the form of play to maintain a high degree of motivation in his lessons. In

Laia’s PDM her own and some well-known individuals’ experience is the main source.

Marc’s PDM proceeds from different sources, mainly reading and workshops on different

subjects, as he is very curious and motivated towards his own intellectual development.

However, his rich and critical view is apparently not applied in his lessons. Pau, similarly to

Laia, nurtures his PDM almost exclusively within his own classroom experience.

Therefore, it is possible to express the development of the music educators’ professional

knowledge as shown in Figure 5.

Conclusions

Even if it could appear daring to derive conclusions from four cases, some observations can

be made. The four teachers’ professional knowledge reflects that none of them has

appropriate tools for classroom music teaching. The two teachers of compulsory secondary

music education received a pedagogical training before beginning classroom teaching,3 but

apparently it has not influenced their professional knowledge in any way. So it is possible

to state that this training should be centred not only on giving information on teaching

that frequently remains unapplied to classroom practice. It would be much more useful and

would influence their knowledge, if the starting point could be their own spontaneous (or

learned) knowledge. Concerning the period of school practice, it is quite short (25�60

hours), and the teachers who accept the practising students in their classrooms do not

receive any training to carry out this task. The consequence of this is that they mainly

assume the role of models, so that the students imitate them and learn from their

experience. Therefore, in the training itself the main components are information, on one

hand, and experience on the other. The didactic model proposed does not connect them to

experience

microsystem

expanded system

contextualised system

reflection

reflection-practicerelation

Teamwork

Organisedknowledge

Classroomresearch

Diffusion ofclassroom

research results

Figure 5. Graphical representation of the developmental degrees of the music educators’

professional knowledge, based on the four cases considered.


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each other, so that the teachers have to create their personal strategies to solve the

problems they face in the daily classroom activity.

The two instrumental teachers did not possess any pedagogical training at the moment

of the interviews, and this was reflected in their interest on music and much less in

educational matters. However, when teachers learn about the meaning of their actions in

classroom they start the process of developing their professional knowledge by being aware

of its present condition. This could be a good opportunity to review the content of initial

and in-service teacher education, outside of the professional knowledge they have, gained

by means of their experience. Hence, the work on the teachers’ PDM could be a tool to

broaden their professional knowledge, intellectually and practically.

The research carried out showed that the main source of the music educators’

professional knowledge is experience, and that the formal education’s influence is very

little. This suggests that formal education should change its methods and that it should

look at the classroom practice more closely to identify content and methods which could

connect the information taught at universities and the school practices with real teaching.

In school practices teachers should be trained when intending to accept students, so that

they can observe effectively and suggest changes in the students’ actions that are relevant

and not only a product of their own teaching experience.

Further research should be carried out with inexperienced teachers, with primary

teachers and with teachers who work in specialist music education. The possible

continuation of this research could also be to inquire into the professional knowledge

and the resulting PDM in the classroom, so that the declared PDM could be compared to

the practical PDM that the teachers demonstrate in their lessons. Another possibility to

broaden the field and to arrive at more precise results would be to carry out an analogous

study in a different country, as a comparative study, to find out whether different cultural

conditions determine different traits in the music educators’ professional knowledge and

PDMs.

Notes

1. Pedagogical content knowledge consists of the ways in which teachers understand and representthe subject matter to their students.

2. In teachers’ thought processes researchers intended to know the reasoning processes the teachersput into practice in planning, carrying out and assessing their teaching. Later on practicalknowledge tends to be central (Carter 1990), so that the representations of the classroom are morerealistic and its analysis includes the teachers’ experiences, perceptions, feelings and knowledgethey activate in their practice. Another naming of professional knowledge identifies practical andreflective aspects (Schon 1983). The former points of view in research were focused on professionalknowledge while the latter develop departing from it.

3. Curso de Aptitud Pedagogica, which is a requirement to access to the teachers’ selection and thento the teaching.

Notes on contributor

Maria Cecilia Jorquera Jaramillo studied singing at the Conservatorio ‘F. Venezze’ (Rovigo, Italy),Musik- und Bewegungserziehung at the University ‘Mozarteum’ (Salzburg, Austria), musicology atthe University of Bologna (Italy), and obtained her PhD at the University of Seville. She has beenprofessor at different Italian Conservatoires and at University of Bologna, Italy, and currentlyteaches at the Faculty of Education, University of Seville, Spain. Her research interests are related tomusic teacher education.


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Documents

The music educator's professional knowledge