This research aims to better articulate why teachers should take advantage of the autonomy that they hold and why pedagogical innovation is necessary for providing pedagogical practice that contributes to equity in music education, particularly through a context-sensitive and situational accommodation of teach-ing. The study suggests that the choice and accommodation of a pedagogical approach is at the core of teachers’ professionalism and consists of both autono-mous work and an analysis of cultural frameworks. The more autonoautono-mous and reflective teachers are, and the better they understand the multiple ways in which
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their teaching is affected by pedagogical, musical and cultural traditions and are able to situate and modify them according to the teaching and learning situation at hand, the more equitable and just their educational practices will be.
Innovation and teacher autonomy are generally seen as important compo-nents of education and pedagogy (e.g., DeLorenzo, 2016). As Randall Allsup (2015) writes: ‘Importantly, inferences drawn from these contradicting truths are equally valid: there is no education without innovation. There is no education without tradition’ (p. 57). While the latter aspect is well-established in the field of music education (e.g., through the widespread master–apprentice model), the tendency to cling to traditional ways of teaching, resulting in a lack of innova-tion, has been acknowledged and criticised33 by various music education scholars (e.g., Benedict, 2009, 2010; Regelski, 2002). In the same vein, the concepts of best and evidence-based practices are well-established but also criticised in the field of education, including music (e.g., Biesta, 2007; Churchill & Bernard, 2020). Traditionally, institutional control has manifested itself not only through so-called ‘writerly policies’, such as legislation and curriculum design, but also in the pedagogical and musical conventions that guide educational practices and policymaking. Supovitz and Weinbaum (2008) refer to such conventions, routines, and established narratives that are part of school life as institutional scripts.
Aligning with the social turn as in music education (Allsup, 2010; Wester-lund, 2019), an innovative music educator would entail competencies that are not tied to predetermined skills, aims, and repertoires, but would rather rely on the understanding of societal challenges, the experiences of students, and the characteristics of the learning environment. Westerlund (2019) asserts that transforming professional ethos has implications for educators’ professional-ism, and in terms of increasing their analytical thinking and understanding of music education professionalism as a part of social life. In this respect, the current research project argues that these skills must be connected with the ability to accommodate cultural frameworks that manifest themselves through pedagogical practice.
In practice, pedagogical innovation can appear to be either tangible or intan-gible and may involve, for example, a new theory, teaching approach, methodo-logical approach, educational material or tool, learning process, or institutional structure that, when applied, produces a change in teaching and learning, in
33 Particularly in the North American context, Regelski (2002, 2004) refers to teaching strategies that do not inculcate a critical approach to teaching and learning as a structural weakness of music education, arguing that such modes of pre-determined, stepwise actions could be called a ‘methodolatry’.
turn leading to better student learning and even a broader educational change.34 Accordingly, Fullan (2007) describes three dimensions that are equally important for ‘real’ educational change (p. 17), the first and most evident of which is when new or revised materials are introduced, such as technologies or materials relating to curriculum implementation. The second dimension involves new teaching approaches, referring to pedagogical practices. The third dimension refers to changing people’s beliefs and assumptions about particular policies as part of school communities’ cultures or, even more broadly, in different sub-communi-ties within an education system. (Fullan, 2007.) If new materials are introduced without integration into, or change in, pedagogical practices, change is unlikely to occur. Similarly, changes proposed only in terms of ideals, beliefs, and values are not enough to bring about profound change (Ahtiainen, 2017). In general terms, the more easily approachable an innovation is, and the more it connects with traditional activities, the more likely it is to gain adopters (Rogers, 1995) and initiate broader change.
At best, pedagogical innovation is a way to address an institution-level policy issue. If a problem is not identified in an education system, it is unlikely that any change will occur. In Wildavsky’s (1979) terms, pedagogical innovation can serve as a vehicle that reveals not only the problem at hand but the underlying values.
What makes a pedagogical innovation social is the impact on the ways in which an education system operates. Conceptually, the terms scaling and diffusion have dominated descriptions of the growth of innovations and how they change (educational) institutions (Rogers 1995). Accordingly, a metaphor of policy windows can be used to describe how the recognition of an ethos or ideal (such as educational equity) becomes a part of an institutional agenda. In Kingdon’s (1984/2011) view, when a policy window is open, there is a potential for policy-making to occur: ‘The separate streams of problems, policies, and politics come together at certain critical times. Solutions become joined to problems, and both of them are joined to favourable political forces’ (p. 21); consequently, the issue shifts on the institutional agenda and policy processes begin to address it (Bèland
& Howlett, 2016).
In terms of educational change, pedagogical innovation and teacher auton-omy are understood in this research as policy instruments that are used to put macro-level policies into effect. Policy instruments, then, can be described as hard or soft, according to the degree of government intervention and coercion
34 In terms of innovative qualities, Rogers (1995) suggests that relative advantage (referring to the perceived usefulness or ‘betterness’ experienced by users), compatibility with existing activities, ‘trialability’ as the ease of trying a new innovation, observability as the degree to which the outcomes of using an innovation are visible to others, and less complexity (referring to low difficulty in understanding and using an innova-tion) are among the features of an innovation that enhance its diffusion.
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involved in the application of the instrument. The division stems from Nye’s theory (2004, 2008) of hard and soft power (cf. Jones, 2010 on hard and soft policies in music education). While the policy perspective in music education is relatively new, it has been suggested that music education research follows the tendencies of education policy research in general, in that research focuses either on hard policies expressed in government mandates or on soft policies that manifest themselves in local curricula, textbooks, sheet music, and pedagogical interactions (Rubenstein, 2017). Jones (2010) describes soft policies in music education as including ‘policies such as university admissions criteria and cur-ricula, music teacher organisations’ activities, textbook and sheet music publica-tions, and products from the professional performing arts and music industries’
(Jones, 2010, p. 28).
Typically, the notion of soft policy also aligns with ‘policymaking from below’ (Shieh, 2020), an applicable approach to understanding the meaning of pedagogical innovation and experimentation in policy development. Recent research on policy implementation in the Finnish education context has exam-ined teachers’ professionalism from a co-constructive perspective; for instance, the curriculum reforms in 2004–2006 and 2014–2016 were largely based on the partnership model, in which teachers, researchers, administrative bodies, and parents collaborated (Seikkula-Leino, 2011); the idea of partnerships underpins teachers’ roles as change agents and empowers cross-boundary collaborations.
This is related to Pesonen and others’ (2015) investigation into the design and implementation of Finnish special education legislation in 2011, where they suggest that professional trust between the administrative level and teachers was a key policy instrument in successful policy implementation (see also Paradis et al., 2019). They describe how the legislation was initiated by teachers taking advantage of the autonomy accorded to them, and how the content of the reform was developed by and with the teachers throughout the process. Pesonen and others (2015) claim that, ‘with trust as a policy instrument, no mandates, induce-ments, or monitoring were embedded in the legislation. Trust, as an instrument, relies on professional development, even though this legislation is a “mandate”’
(p. 174). In alignment, Toom and Husu (2012) suggest that teachers in Finland enact the global, domestic, and local education policies through an interactional process built on professional trust (see also Sahlberg, 2015; Niemi et al., 2018).
Along these lines, I examine Figurenotes and situational, context-sensitive teaching accommodation as policy instruments, more specifically understood as soft policies for influencing the education system. As stated in chapter 1, issues of educational equity and discrimination have in many ways remained unrecognised in current music educational policies; this applies to Finland as well. Through the two interlinked cases, I approach problem recognition and educational change in
Finnish music education in connection to educational equity. The research also promotes the notion that policy needs to be approached broadly at both the indi-vidual professional and institutional levels, and that rethinking the epistemology and social basis of music education might imply increasing teachers’ autonomy in pedagogical innovation and policy development.