The musical risk of education A qualitative study of music teaching in a Waldorf School

Abstract

Music is a subject that plays an important role in Waldorf education. The music curriculum emphasises musical practice and the pupils’ active participation in and interaction with music as crucial elements of the teaching and of the school’s efforts to make the school day meaningful. At the same time, music pedagogy research problematizes schools as an arena for musical experience. Relevant questions that arise in this context include: How does a music teacher work to facilitate musical interplay in music teaching? What are music teachers’ experience of and reflections on this issue? What can we learn from this? The article is based, among other things, on educational theory that highlights and elucidates the importance of working with the unforeseen in teaching. This is put into a music pedagogy context with the focus on facilitation of musical interplay, and it raises questions relating to music’s place as a school subject in general and in Waldorf education in particular.