Recognizing, Acknowledging. A Designing Music Learning Worlds

The research project Recognizing, Acknowledging and Designing Music Learning Worlds studied the pedagogical practices and the music education principles of music school teachers in Austria. The project was designed as a qualitative comparative study, based on the Grounded Theory method. The theory of formal/informal (music) learning served in the study as a sensitizing concept. Through theoretical sampling, interviewees with different artistic and pedagogical profiles were identified. In the end, a grounded theory was developed. This theory can be summed up in two theses: 1. The work of music schools/music school teachers is to recognize, acknowledge, and design music learning worlds. The work of music schools/music school teachers is not only to teach music or to provide music lessons, but to be aware of music practices i. e. to recognize and acknowledge these practices as learning worlds , to design them together with the parties involved, and to use them to facilitate music learning. The practices of music school work can be classified into four music learning worlds: the learning worlds (1) of lessons, (2) of ensembles, (3) of public performances and (4) of the private. 2. The recognition, acknowledgment and design of music learning worlds are directly related to ideas about goals: to ideas about the phenomenon of music, and to the consequential definitions of the aims of music education in the music school. The individual ways in which music teachers deal with learning worlds are directly related to their own definitions of the aims of music education in the music school. These aims are, on their part, linked to ideas about the phenomenon of music. Music school teachers pursue three main goals in their work: to enable the acquisition of musical knowledge, skills and understanding, to enable the experience of the effects and the functions of music, and to enable the participation in music communities of practice.