Care as technology for exclusion

Music teacher education in the Nordic countries

In the Nordic countries, a music teacher degree can be obtained at universities, teacher colleges and music academies. Instrumental skills as well as theoretical and practical teacher education are included in the specialist music teacher programmes. Such programmes are still quite popular in Sweden, and there are more applicants than places, so that prospective students have to compete for the available places. Music teacher training is offered at eight Swedish universities and teaching degrees consist of educational science, teaching practice, primary subject and secondary subject. Since 2011, the educational science area of 90 ECTS has been mandatory for all students wishing to attain a teaching degree. Primary and secondary subjects can be made up of 180–210 ECTS and correspond to school subjects. Most music teacher students have music as both their primary and secondary subject. For a graduate to teach at the upper secondary school level, a teaching degree normally consists of 270–330 ECTS.

As in nearly all OECD countries, in Sweden there is a recruitment imbalance to higher education in general, especially regarding social background as measured by the educational level of the parents. Students whose parents lack tertiary education are underrepresented, as are students who have a non-Swedish background (Kahlroth, 2019), something which in Sweden is particularly significant within arts programmes (SOU 2018:23). The government requires Swedish higher education institutions to actively promote a widened access to higher education. Even though Sweden has established some alternative entrance routes into higher education to facilitate the entrance of underrepresented groups of students, uneven recruitment patterns still persist. Research has shown that music teacher education recruits students that have a similar educational background in music. This has been named the “closed educational cycle” or the “feedback loop” (Borgström Källén, 2014, p. 314), which refers to the fact that teachers and students have been trained in the same music educational settings: “Accordingly, music teachers teach in an educational tradition that greatly likens the discourse that once educated them” (Borgström Källén, 2014, p. 314). In research, this conservative system of conformity has for decades been viewed as problematic within school music education (Borgström Källén, 2014; Zandén, 2010) as well as in music teacher education (Gullberg, 2002; Olsson, 1993). In a newly published anthology focusing on the context of higher music education in the Nordic countries (Angelo et al., 2021a), norms of quality and professionality are highlighted in several chapters. Gender inequality (Borgström Källén, 2021) and gendered norms (Jensen, 2021) as well as tensions between generalist and specialist music teacher programmes (Eidsvaag & Angelo, 2021) are some examples. In a study of dominating discourses within four higher educational institutions, Angelo et al. (2021b) discuss issues concerning “what and whose knowledge, views on music, humans, societies, learning and teaching, and values and visions are governed in higher music education, and who and what that are left out” (p. 380).

In a discussion of renewal towards a more socially adapted music teacher education, the hegemonic discourses governing the institutions and their teacher programmes become important to problematise. One important aspect is that higher music education is guided by a musico-pedagogical practice model that upholds a narrow construction of musical expertise (Laes & Westerlund, 2018), a model which derives from the hierarchical master-apprentice tradition. Nerland (2004) shows, for example, how instrument teaching within this tradition is regulated by discursive practices that restrict the students’ possibilities to learn. Another example is Christophersen’s (2009) study, which points at the dominance of certain aesthetical values that function as musical belief systems that restrict music conservatories. This historical tradition is hard to challenge in contemporary music teacher education since music teaching is dependent on the individual teacher’s background (Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010; Jordhus-Lier, 2018). Hence there is a need for critical examination of music teaching traditions (Ferm Thorgersen et al., 2015). Based on the conclusions in previous research, we find it important to examine the discursive legitimation of admission tests, as they function as entrance gates to specialist music teacher education.

Power and governmentality in education

From a theoretical point of departure, teacher education can be understood as an institutionalised way of defining knowledge through power. Institutional practices are defined by power relations which mirror the dominance of certain discourses and ways of being. Higher music education is one such institution. And as in all educational institutions, power is central in higher music institutions. However, power should not be seen here in the conventional sense that those who have power control those who have not. Nor should it be considered something to be taken and given away. Foucault (1969/2002) criticised this notion of repressive power and explained that power is circulating through the practices of people in their daily lives, mirroring the dominance of certain discourses. In these relations, power produces knowledge about the world, and people take up certain subject positions in an ongoing process of “becoming”, rather than “being”, in the world. According to Foucault (1978/1991), power is regarded as a product of complex relationships created in collectively constructed discourses. People are seen as permeated by discourses, continuously created and recreated in specific cultural and historical settings.

Foucault elaborates on the concept of “governmentality” (Dean, 1999) in order to understand the everyday government of normality. The concept of governmentality is used to challenge organisational practices which are taken for granted. Traditionally, government is associated with the activities of political authorities such as the state and its institutions. In the governmentality approach, government refers to the activities that shape our conduct by working of interests and beliefs in the name of truth. A governmental analysis highlights how subjects are discursively constituted and shaped through particular strategies and techniques, including how they are shaping their own subjectivities through techniques of self-improvement. In this study, the concept is used in the making policy of admission tests to music teacher education.

In this study, admission tests to music teacher education are seen as a form of governing when producing principles that quality and disqualify applicants. Hence, the concepts of inclusion/exclusion become central. For Foucault, exclusion was a central concept. In his historical work Discipline and Punish he explored how groups of people were marginalised through different systems of exclusion in French society (Foucault, 1955/1977). However, assumptions about, and links between, governance and inclusion/exclusion must not be taken for granted. Popkewitz and Lindblad (2000) explore the analytical slippage and overlap between the concepts. On the one hand, when defining the issue of social inclusion/exclusion through examining practices, attention is often directed towards representation of categories of groups of individuals, such as race, gender or class, that were previously excluded. This is constructed as equity problematics. On the other hand, when focusing on systems of reason that are embodied in educational practices, inclusion and exclusion are viewed as concepts related to power and knowledge. We agree with Popkewitz and Lindblad on the need of paying attention to both perspectives, as well as the relations between the perspectives. In order to explore the social principles of exclusion, we have to focus on the taken-for-granted ideas, beliefs and practices in the everyday life of educational institutions.

The study

This article is part of a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, focusing on assessment and legitimation of entrance auditions to music teacher education. The data consist of 109 video-documented entrance auditions and 34 focus group conversations/individual conversations with jury members at music teacher education programmes in Sweden. The material was produced during the spring of 2018 at four of in total eight Swedish specialist music teacher programmes. The material was produced during the spring of 2018 and the institutions were chosen based on variation in institutional background, current organisation, teacher programme profile and musical genre. When asking jurors and applicants to participate in the study by taking part in a focus group conversation/individual conversation, they received written information about the project and regarding de-identification, voluntary participation and consent. All applicants and jurors who gave their written consent were video recorded during the admission tests, and almost every member in the jury groups where the video recordings had been carried out, agreed to participate in the study by signing a written consent. 18 interviews had the character of focus group talks with 2–4 participants, and 16 interviews were structured as individual conversations between the researcher and the participant. Altogether, 59 jury members were interviewed. Most of the interviews were carried out within two weeks of the entrance auditions, and all were done within two months. Each conversation lasted between 45 and 90 minutes and was audiotaped and transcribed. The jurors were asked to select sequences from the videos of the auditions they assessed, as stimulus to help the participants recall the auditions and talk about the quality of the applicants’ performances. Finally, they were asked to reflect on entrance auditions to music teacher education in general, and this part of the discussions has been used as data in this article. All participants were well informed about the purpose of the research. Those who participated in the study signed an informed consent document describing the purpose of the research and the procedures involved in it along with contact information of the person responsible for answering questions and a statement indicating that participation was voluntary.

In using the approach of governmentality, we took our departure from three analytical concepts: rationalities, technologies and effects (Bacchi, 2009). By focusing on rationalities, the production of knowledge shaping the understanding of reality is important and decides what is understood as reasonable in the particular context of music teacher education. Technologies refer to the practical methods, the techniques, that enable the governing of the admission tests, while effects focus on how the human subjects are constructed and shaped by the power. This might be seen as equivalent to any discourse analysis; however, what is added in a governmental analysis is an examination of how powerful discourses permeate individual subjectivities by certain techniques, or technologies of power. The subjects are governed by technologies in connection with what is considered to be “truth”, that is, in accordance with the discourse. In the context of admission tests to music teacher education, the technologies used in the tests are inseparable from knowledge production, that is, from the dominant discourses of what is believed as truth regarding music teacher education and the music teacher profession. In the analysis, tools and concepts of rhetorical and discursive social psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987; Wetherell & Potter, 1992) were also used to analyse the rhetorical organisation of language and on strategies used by the jury members when positioning themselves and others. In the analysis of the transcribed interviews, a number of questions were put to the data: How are the admission tests legitimated? What technologies of power are used in the shaping of the conduct? What subjectivities are produced? To challenge the researchers’ own assumptions and acknowledge confirmation bias, we have presented and discussed our analyses and results at various research conferences and seminars. The fact that we are three researchers, based at three different universities, has also contributed to minimise bias.

Something good for all – gatekeepers at work

In the analysis of the jury members’ focus groups conversations and the interviews, the applicants are positioned as fragile and exposed as future music teachers. The teachers at the academy are positioned as caring professionals. In line with this, the tests are often legitimated by evoking an ethos of consideration and care. In almost all interviews the admission tests are constructed as something good for all, for the academy as well as for the applicants, no matter whether the applicants pass or fail the tests. Through care as a technology of power, the entrance tests are legitimated by a rhetoric of well-being of both the applicants as future music students and of the music teachers, the staff and the other students at the academy. This well-being is constructed as a way to avoid future problems. In the following, quotes from focus groups illustrate how a rhetoric of care is operating by the jurors’ positionings in legitimating the tests as something good for all.

The production of knowledge

Our analysis has focused on governmentality and the production of knowledge in the jurors talk. The theoretical strength of the concept of governmentality is that it allows us to look for what is going on beyond laws and regulations in shaping subjects to become amenable to governing. In this study care has been visible as a technique of governing, which functions as a gentle and considerate way of handling the applicants, aiming at the applicants’ well-being. In Foucault’s (1955/1977) pastoral power, care is a central technique of power, creating space for the members of the juries who can interact and express their professionalism. Pastoral power originated within the church, where salvation could be achieved by the pastor’s care of the flock, and Foucault argued that pastoral power extends beyond the church in several institutions attending to the well-being of both individuals and communities (Dean, 1999). However, care is built on deep knowledge of the individuals and their confessions. Since our empirical data of this study does not include analysis of the verbal exchange between the applicants and the jurors during the admission tests, it is hard to know whether the jurors learned anything about the applicants’ background, thoughts or wishes. Hence, in general, the jurors’ knowledge of the applicants was devoid of any confessional information. Rather, their impressions of the applicants were built on assumptions based on their musical and pedagogical performances exclusively. Despite this, judgements were legitimated with statements about the individuals’ personalities and future abilities and the need to save the individual from failing later on. This is a form of productive power that is embodied in the rules through which a music student is differentiated in the social practice of music teacher education. From a Foucauldian perspective, this could be seen as an ethical project (Foucault, 1994) of exclusion of individuals from the social life of music teaching. However, through care as a technology of power, this ethical project must be considered a tension between exclusion and emancipation. In this study, failing applicants are excluded from becoming music teachers, and at the same time they are rescued from struggling in the future.

Concluding thoughts

Special requirements and selections in the form of proficiency tests have long been used as sorting tools in higher music education (Jørgensen, 2009). However, there is surprisingly little research on admission tests, given the decisive importance for applicants’ possibilities to pursue careers as music teachers. Our research has so far elucidated that knowledge production during admission tests is based not solely on demonstrated musical skills, but also on jurors’ assessment of the individuals’ attitude and dress styles (Sandberg-Jurström et al., 2021b). In this article, we have shown how discourses on the applicants’ personalities are based on care as technology of power. Although these practices are built on the best of intentions, in the sense that the aim is to provide the best possible music teachers for an excellent school music education, the operating discourse of admission tests as something good for all is built on governmental rationality and the assumptions that the tests make it possible to reach conclusions about applicants’ future development.

Our results are in line with music education research discussing issues of hegemonic discourses and traditions governing higher music education institutions (Angelo et al., 2021b; Laes & Westerlund, 2018; Nerland, 2004). Admission tests to higher music education are gates where those discourses are made quite visible. Besides, researchers agree that these traditions are hard to challenge (Georgii-Hemming & Westvall, 2010; Jordhus-Lier, 2018). We argue, however, that hegemonic discourses in higher education are products of power, operating beyond the state or traditional forms of top-down hierarchical control and as such always open for change. Governmentality analysis offers a critical approach and opens a critical space for exploring resistance in terms of working out alternatives (Foucault, 1955/1977).

The relevance of admission tests has been questioned by researchers from different countries over the last decades, and this questioning could in itself be a way of practising resistance. In 2007, Froehlich stated that we, as teachers and researchers in academia, have to consider whether the gates of academia should be open to all who ask for entry, or only to those who correspond to the core values of the music academy. She asks: “Do we really want the gates of academia open to all who ask for entry, or are we more comfortable teaching those who fit into the academic world that we have helped to conceptualize and frame?” (Froehlich, 2007, p. 8). In 2008, Koza stated: “Stringent and restrictive notions of what constitutes competence, together with narrow definitions of legitimate musical knowledge, shut out potential teachers from already underrepresented culture groups” (p. 146).

Maybe now is the time to re-make the policy of admission tests to music teacher education? If so, we could benefit from Popkewitz and Lindblad (2000), who remind us that this is not only a question of inclusion of marginalised groups into the academy, looking at categories such as race, gender or class. We should also recognise that both students and staff are intertwined in the discursive rules governing higher music education in relation to specific contextual perspectives. Therefore, we must consider increasing transparency in the recruitment processes (Sandberg-Jurström et al., 2021a, 2021b). And, in addition, this study has shown that we must also take into account the ethical aspects of power operating in the governing of the tests for admission to music teacher education.