Educating Teachers to Drive Change

Reading the propositions of Liisa Tenkku, Ellen Urho, and other visionaries of Finnish music education approximately half a century ago, I am struck by the boldness and innovativeness of their thinking. Why did it take such a long time for their visions to become rooted in and across the whole educational system?

One answer likely has to do with teacher education, as it is not the innovative curricular documents nor even a few visionaries, but teachers, who are (or are not) driving change in educational systems. As is often the case of visionaries, perhaps during their lifetimes the time simply was not ripe for their inventive ideas and approaches. What Tenkku and others were envisioning required music teacher education institutions to take a role in preparing teachers to put that vision into practice. This work is only now well on its way, although we still have miles to go.

An example of recent efforts to support the development of future music teachers’ creative musicianship and composition pedagogy is the introduction of Creativity and composition (pedagogy) as one of the cross-curricular competencies in the Music Education Degree Programme at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. The aim of this cross-curricular approach is to offer student-teachers with multiple and frequent opportunities for creative explorations throughout their studies and to view creativity and composition as a competence that crosses the boundaries of various fields of skills and knowledge rather than a separate “composition course” taking place in isolation from other studies. Centering the advancement of student-teachers’ creative agency also marks a shift in focus in music teacher education: a step away from encul- turation (only) into existing musical traditions toward a culture that develops practices out of the students’ own creative ideas.

Challenges in the coming years include, for instance, the meaningful and versatile integration of digital technology to serve composition pedagogy (Partti et al., 2022(2021]). Opportunities for collaborative creativity and group-composition activities are also yet to be fully realized in music teacher education. The advancement of collaborative approaches also challenges the limited and individualistic—as well as often highly gendered—view of musical creativity as the prerogative of those with special talent and skills. Educating future music teachers in Finland and elsewhere to embrace an attitude of openness and pedagogical flexibility in the area of composition pedagogy is, indeed, a key to fostering music education where everyone has the right to freely explore and discover the landscapes of music.