Teachers as agents in Botswana's music education: challenges and possibilities

Abstract

The research aimed broadly to understand how Botswana's written government curricula for music are interpreted by music teachers as well as teachers' ideals for music teaching, and to what extent they thought it was possible to achieve those ideals. Grundy's writing on curriculum based on Habermas' technical, practical and emancipatory interests has proven an important lens through which to analyse and interpret the observational and interview data generated. Two music teachers in Botswana's Junior Secondary schools participated in the study, one in an urban area and one in a village. Data were generated through observation of 3 months of teaching in both classrooms, complemented by in-depth semi-structured interviews with both teachers. Additional data were generated through interviews with and observation of three other music teachers, interviews with music representatives for both Examination and Curriculum departments, and document analysis. My interpretation of the data is that most music teaching I observed would best be described as technical, meaning that it is concerned with factual information delivered through teacher-centred pedagogy and assessed by student reproduction of information through written testing. However, there were some examples of the practical paradigm when teaching focused on music making and the student's understandings. There was little evidence of the emancipatory view of knowledge, but the teachers did speak freely about their views on where music education should go and how it might get there. I concluded that dramatic changes to teacher education and music education in particular are necessary if music teaching is to become the rewarding, stimulating and enjoyable experience the teachers and students crave. This would involve re-conceiving education and teacher education by minimising the reproduction of factual knowledge and by emphasising the development of teacher judgement.

Keywords:

• Africa
• Botswana
• music curriculum
• teacher agency
• music teaching
• knowledge interests

Notes

1. CIA World Fact Book (2008).

2. This figure depends on what sources are cited – see CIA World Fact Book (2008) or UNICEF (2008) for example.

3. Not the teacher's real name – this word means laughter in Setswana – I gave her this name because she laughed a lot during our interviews.

4. Meaning to ‘shake’.

5. Another pseudonym for one of the teachers – meaning ‘wisdom’ in Setswana.