The case of Norway: a microcosm of global issues in music teacher professional development

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze discourse from historically pertinent policy and strategic documents of the Norwegian Schools of Music and Performing Arts, in order to explore the nature of the intractable discrepancy between curriculum, policy, and practice. Popular music has long been part of Norwegian compulsory-school and higher music education. Yet, the national system of extra-curricular schools of music and performing arts seems to lag somewhat behind in this development, despite an overall inclusive policy. The analysis seeks to find reasons for this situation by looking into what forms of musical styles and genres, teaching and learning approaches, and teacher professionalism that have been emphasized in curricular documents throughout the past 30 years. The situation is also explored from the macro-level, drawing on recent work which articulates the specific policy and political conditions of the school system in question. The concluding discussion focuses on how the challenges of the Norwegian schools of music and performing arts can be approached through music teacher education. Overall, this example is used as a microcosmic view of a teacher professional development issue which has global applicability and transferability; divergence between inclusionary policies and exclusionary practice is not unique to Norway.

Keywords:

• Curriculum
• music teacher professional development
• popular music
• policy
• schools of music and performing arts

Notes

1 The 2003 and 2016 curriculum frameworks both contain syllabi for more art forms than music. In our analysis, we have focused only on the overarching and general parts of the curricular texts plus the syllabi specific to the music subject.

Additional information

Funding

This publication has been undertaken as part of the research project The Social Dynamics of Musical Upbringing and Schooling in the Norwegian Welfare State (DYNAMUS) funded by the Research Council of Norway (project no. 274936).