The music educator: Bridging performance, community and education – An instrumental teacher’s professional understanding

Abstract: In this article I discuss the professional understanding of an instrumental music teacher with multiple tasks in basic music education in Norway. This teacher is positioned in a small Community School of Music and Art that has been honoured as a ‘best practice’ model for such schools. Through thematic narrative analyses of my research data, I identify three pivots in this teacher’s practice: cultural life, school and artefacts. After the researcher’s narrative, A music teacher’s working day, I explore these pivots in a theoretical frame inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s thoughts about sensus communis, and Christopher Small’s thoughts about musicking. Finally, I apply insights from this discussion to basic thinking in the blurred field of community music and music education, suggesting musicality as an approach to articulate and discuss expertise and as a mandate that music teachers in crossover positions might hold.