Editorial

Vol. 3, , pp. 116118

ISSN: 2703-8041

Editorial, Vol. 3 (2022)

Norwegian Academy of Music, Norway

Contact corresponding author: Guro.G.Johansen@nmh.no

Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University, Sweden

Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland

© 2022 Guro Gravem Johansen, Anna Houmann & Danielle Shannon Treacy. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ()

Citation: , & (). Editorial, Vol. 3 (2022). Nordic Research in Music Education, 3, 116118.

The third volume of Nordic Research in Music Education encapsulates five articles, all published during the autumn of 2022. Directly or indirectly, the articles address issues of power, hegemonies, and the place and treatment of marginalised groups in music education contexts. Additionally, they make us ask questions about the power exerted by music education research itself. What epistemic hegemonies are produced and reproduced in what it defines and accepts as its interest fields? Several articles in this issue address attempts at expanding the domains of music education research, and demonstrate in multiple ways how innovative research may contribute to overcoming limitations for learning and engaging with music.

In the first contribution to this issue, Øivind Varkøy and Petter Dyndahl present the article Do we all have to be “leftists”? A dialogue about antagonism and agonism in music education research. As the title indicates, the format used is a dialogue in which they confront a paradox found in the music education research community, this being that attempts to embrace pluralism sometimes lead to uniformity. In order to counter the risk of uniformity of ideas and practices, and following the philosophy of Chantal Mouffe, they promote the establishment of an agonistic public sphere, in which differences, disagreements, and conflicts are accepted.

Embracing a politics of diversity (in the spirit of Mouffe), leads to an acknowledgement that society consists of groups with diverging and sometimes conflicting interests, often leading to a marginalisation of minorities. In their article Musikundervisning för grundsärskolan? – en forskningsöversikt, written in Swedish, Diana Berthén, Anna Backman-Bister and Viveca Lindberg address music education for a group that is often marginalised, namely children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities. The authors start by problematising the opportunities these children are given to learn music in Swedish special schools. The authors provide a review of the international literature, with a specific focus on what is known about special school teachers’ attitudes towards music; the teaching and learning of music in special schools; and critical studies for empowerment. They conclude that more studies are required if we are to increase our knowledge on music learning among children with intellectual disabilities.

The practice of assessment in music education is often seen as exerting certain forms of power and control in the classroom, since assessment systems may direct what counts as valuable knowledge and skills. Nevertheless, teachers in a school system are themselves subject to the structural power constituted by the school institution and educational policy. The journal’s second Swedish article is written by Johanna Antonsson. It is entitled Musiklärares arbete med bedömning och betygsättning – yttre och personliga omständigheter som påverkar praktiker samt möjliga subjektspositioner and addresses the practice of assessment from the perspective of music teachers. Antonsson explores these practices in relation to possible subject positions within such external, regulating structures, and concludes that even when given these external factors, teachers do have the scope to construct assessment practices independently.

Institutional structures and politics are further addressed in the next article, Between innovation and tradition: The balancing act of the “protean” music student. The author, Veronica Ski-Berg, employs institutional and Foucauldian theory to address how the call for innovation in Higher Music Education is perceived by students and teachers. She found that even though this call has been met with resistance from students and teachers, using the argument that traditions need to be preserved by HME institutions, it has also fostered necessary renewal in the same institutions.

The final article is entitled Interdisciplinary Co-teaching in Higher Education: Comparing results from music-drama and music-physics partnerships in Sweden and Ireland. The authors, Marie-Helene Zimmermann Nilsson and Marita Kerin, participated as researchers in two interdisciplinary studies involving music/drama and music/physics co-teaching partnerships, carried out in Sweden and Ireland, respectively. In this article, they compare the findings from the two studies and address what they see as benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary co-teaching. By means of this comparison, the authors reach the conclusion that there is a great potential for including interdisciplinary co-teaching in higher education as a way of supporting expanded thinking, inquiry-based learning, collaborative approaches and identity development.

As editors, we find that the contributions in the current issue of Nordic Research in Music Education are a timely response to the myriad of challenges and opportunities music education is facing today. These articles encourage a re-imagination of how music education may engage a whole range of human experiences, identities, and practices; and how learning spaces that respect the humanity of all students and support them in developing their full potential may be nurtured; where interdisciplinarity and innovation may turn out to be seen as key strategies.