Students of higher teacher education istitution observing children in reflexive environment: Conceptions, educational practices, and role of the teacher

In this article, we introduce the MIROR Focus Group carried out in the framework of the European project MIROR-Musical Interaction Relying On Reflexion, with university students undergoing teacher education (nursery, kindergarten and primary school). The MIROR Focus Group was carried out with the specific aim to investigate teachers’ conceptions regarding the novel pedagogical paradigm of “reflexive interaction”. This paradigm explores the idea of letting users manipulate virtual copies of themselves, through specifically developed software called interactive reflexive musical systems. We aimed to extrapolate the social representations held by the participants about reflexive interaction, children’s music education and educational technologies, and develop more specific hypotheses concerning how the MIROR technologies can be used in the context of music education for teachers and teacher education, and in educational scenarios in general. First, we present the background and aims of the MIROR focus group and then the method, the data analysis and some results. We end the article by presenting the discussion and the conclusions.