How to teach creation? Music teacher’s pedagogical preferences and actions in Secondary Education

Abstract

Musical creation is becoming an increasingly recurrent topic in music research, given the multiple benefits it brings to the psycho-educational level of pupils. However, studies analysing its dynamisation in schools are in the minority. The main objective of this study is to identify the pedagogical approach of 14 secondary school teachers in Galicia (Spain) regarding improvisation, composition and arrangement, using a narrative-biographical approach in order to search for conditioning factors in their praxis. To this end, the data collection is based on individual semi-structured in-depth interviews, the content of which is codified through a double individual and comparative process carried out with the software ATLAS.Ti (version 23). The lack of significant references to music-making during initial teacher training favours imitative and reproductive models, aligned with the pre-eminence of the Western academic repertoire in music teaching. In contrast, those teachers who are self-taught, who have formative experiences of collaborative approaches, or who maintain a creative musical life, seek to open up spaces and diversify their teaching in terms of musical creation. We conclude that it is necessary to recognise the challenges of contemporary education as a prelude to proposing training measures that lead to the training of teachers in the enrichment of their pedagogical proposal, with a view to educational models that foster the genuine creative development of the student.