Past, present and future: teacher's ideas on "contemporary music".

Theoretical background The theoretical background of this paper is based on a research project developed at the University of Bologna (Addessi 2004, Addessi, Carugati, Selleri 2007) the aim of which was to study teachers' “musical knowledge” (Olsson 1997, 2002) on the basis of the socio-cognitive theory of social representations (Moscovici 1981). The fundamental hypothesis in Bologna's project is that the teachers' main attitudes to 'music' and 'musical training' are influenced by their personal underlying and implicit knowledge and that the latter works as a 'social value' which might influence the practice of musical education, their professional identity, as well as their approach to learning how to teach music. The project is aimed at improving the University curricula for training primary school music teachers. The social representations of contemporary music are also introduced in the project, though not yet systematically developed. Aims The aim is to apply the theory of Social representations to analyze the teachers’ attitudes to the label of “contemporary music.” Furthermore we wish to propose a musical training for young learners who choose to become musicians, and later join today’s complex world of music. Method We handed out a questionnaire organized into three sections, each dealing with a different field of enquiry: contemporary music, today’s musician and musical training. Each topic included open and closed answers. Subjects. Teachers from Music Academies, high level private music schools, and specialist music secondary schools. Teachers with different musical backgrounds were selected in order to compare a wide variety of perspectives. Synthesis of the content Firstly, the answers were classified into categories. The co-occurrence of words, as well as the correspondence between the various concepts expressed, were analyzed. Then we related the different attitudes we had gathered as regards contemporary music to the various conceptions about what teachers thought the training of today’s musicians should consist of. In fact, contemporary music has contributed to the enlargement of the concept of music itself, by opening up to noise, use of technology, improvisation and stimuli from different cultures. As a consequence of this, nowadays it is necessary to reconsider the role of the professional musician in a more up-to-date perspective. Conclusions and implications for music education. The data analysed so far highlight different attitudes in the survey, especially regarding contents, methods and the fundamental aims of a musician’s training. Despite some relevant differences, most teachers seem to be in favour of a wider professional training, focused on the gradual blending of current musical identities, as it is considered more open to professional prospects and more functional to present society.