I am heading into my thirteenth year as a music teacher… though I feel ‘greener’ than ever. I don’t see this as a bad thing — I am just more aware of my values and motivations. I know that I am, to borrow Swanwick’s phrase, a ‘good enough music teacher’ – “not some idealised perfection but simply moving in a positive direction, contributing quality to the milieu of children’s development with their independence in mind…”[i] I am moving in a positive direction, and I will always have room to get better, improve… I will never know it all, or ever be a ‘great’ teacher – ‘good enough’ is, good enough. To claim beyond this is arrogant. As you become more aware of your ‘situation’, there is an almost paradoxical point where you feel you know less that you initially thought! The more you learn and come to know, the more you realise you don’t know.

This ‘awareness’ became most pronounced at the end of my doctoral journey – an action research study on my own practice. If felt that rather than answering questions, it in fact generated more questions! A few people (they are sane) have asked to read it… but I feel it very unexciting, uninspiring and, well, quite obvious in its findings – it doesn’t feel ‘good enough’. I felt it revealed how little I knew about what I was doing, and the ‘good practices’ of my profession – perhaps somewhat of an overstatement, but the sentiment is the same. It was, for the ‘good enough’ teachers around me, just what they did each day. Broadly (and briefly) speaking, the findings of the aforementioned research were expressed as five pedagogical considerations or ‘conditions’ – that of praxis (Freud’s “the truth is what works”)[ii], student agency, authenticity in working in and with music, fluency with music as discourse, and social construct of music interactions. I have briefly written of these in other posts [here] and [here]. Collectively, these act as my ‘arrival point’, and I still hold these findings dear. I use them (consider them) in every class, every interaction… but it is very interesting (read: uncomfortably revealing…?) to look at the ‘paths’ I took to get there…

Now, I am proud of the doctoral journey I undertook amidst ‘life’ – the sense of achievement completing something so complex and interleaved (amidst a complex and interleaved work environment). I feel the findings are relevant and do actually have a level of generalisability, to music education and education as a whole,[iii] despite the research focus and methodical underpinning. They are valid, and I think useful and usable for and by others; however, my journey to this place was on a path I would no longer take. Of course, I had to travel this path to know this, but looking back it certainly was not the best path to take – it doubled-back and twisted in on itself, visited places unnecessary, unhelpful… but this is stated with the value of hindsight. Despite this, such journey on such paths can be rich and rewarding, and on them we learn a lot about ourselves and the ways we do things…

When I look back, I see how much I have changed – how my thinking changed my future thinking and action. The initial realisation came early on in the writing (write-up) process – my day-to-day practice, informed by the research journey was being reshaped around me as I wrote about a past ‘self’. I had to maintain this ‘person’ as shaped by the data; there were many opportunities for reflection upon actions, but I had to remain true to what I did and how I did it, and what it elicited. The more I simultaneously wrote and ‘practised’ (in my workplace post-study), the more I realised my ‘new self’ emerging. I had become aware of what I am not, don’t want to be, and what not to do. This ‘think-out-loud’ may perhaps be the start of an auto-ethnographic paper – from ‘old’ to ‘new’ me in terms of my practice…! A necessary next step?

This journey has shown me who I am no longer… Holistically, my general philosophy, values, goals and ideals in, about and of music education remain fairly similar; however, ‘practically’, the day-to-day ways in how I now ‘get there’ has seen quite the radical shift. Perhaps this confirms my place in the ‘good enough music teacher’ category – reflection on action allowing me to move in a positive direction. I am enjoying re-framing my thinking and action, continuing to learn ways, and feeling like there is a whole lot more to learn.

There much to be said for feeling ‘green’, in itself it is a condition for being ‘good enough’ – I hope!

[i] Swanwick, K. (2008). The ‘good-enough’ music teacher. British Journal of Music Education, 25(1), p. 12.

[ii] An excerpt from Freud’s Dream Psychology (reading it on my iPad in iBooks).

[iii] This was actual feedback from an examiner – nothing I would confidently attribute to my own work!

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