This phase is characterised as preliminary, reflecting the nature of a time period where the main aim was to construct foundations for the educational development work. During this phase, I visited Kathmandu four times for a total of about 10 weeks.
The main characteristic of this phase was to become familiar with one another, the NMC representatives, and the SibA representatives, and to co-develop mutual direc-tions and ways of operating in this collaboration. Activities under this preliminary phase took place under the Music Teacher Education Development Project in Ne-pal (http://mcau.fi/neNe-pal/), funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland. The project involved:
1) Consultation and co-developing music teacher education in Nepal
2) Pilot studies into Nepalese music teacher education by doctoral and postdoctoral researchers
3) Developing music teacher educators’ intercultural skills in Finland and Nepal through mutual cultural exchanges and visits
I was invited to participate in the early-stage project as an expert in teacher education in the field of traditional music, and in this preliminary phase I visited Kathmandu four times, for altogether about ten weeks. The first visit to Kathmandu took place in November 2013. At the time all of us – both the SibA and the NMC representatives – were quite unfamiliar, not only with each other but also with each other’s con-texts. Before travelling to Kathmandu for the first time, the participants from SibA had a preparative session where an independent researcher who had been working in Nepal – and who also joined us for this first trip – gave us a brief introduction to the context, its music and customs, and also introduced us to some music education practices in Kathmandu.
Table 3 Visit 1.
Visit 1. ACTIVITIES PARTICIPANTS
24.-30.11. 2013 • 4 workshops for NMC teachers conducted by me SP
• Meetings with NMC manage-ment
• 2 concert visits
• visiting an elementary school to observe music classes
1. VT (Lecturer, SibA) 2. SP (Music teacher educator,
SibA)
3. HW (Professor, SibA) 4. LA (Researcher, indep.) 5. HP (Post doc. researcher SibA)
This initial visit was designed around teacher training workshops at the Nepal Music Center. We were warmly welcomed, and approximately twenty NMC teachers partic-ipated in the workshops conducted by myself and a music education lecturer. At the time, I had no long-term plans concerning the work in Kathmandu, but the visit was very enjoyable and left me with positive feelings, and provided an interesting learning experience. Therefore, when asked, I was keen on taking part in the next trip as well.
Table 4 Visit 2.
Visit 2. ACTIVITIES PARTICIPANTS
6.-21.3. 2014 • Three workshops for NMC teachers con-ducted by me and HW and HP
• Three workshops for NMC teachers con-ducted by me
• Meetings and discussions about music teacher education module with NMC
During this visit, the main focus was on supporting NMC in launching a 14 day music teacher training session for musicians. The NMC leadership set this goal. For this purpose, we, the SibA participants on the trip, led three workshops for five teachers, where the main focus was to provide both theoretical and practical overviews for teacher education. During the second week, when I was there without the other SibA participants, I conducted three workshops for ten NMC teachers, where the focus was on creative and collaborative ensemble work, the special area of my own exper-tise. At this point, the discussions with the leadership touched upon the importance of providing the participating teachers with certificates to enhance the institution’s credibility in teacher training, as well highlighting the increase in the NMC teach-ers’ competences through participating in these training sessions. Most important-ly, during this visit I made the decision to pursue doctoral studies around the work taking place in Kathmandu. I was accepted to the Sibelius Academy’s MuTri doctoral school in August 2014, and from there on continued the work in Kathmandu as a doc-toral researcher. At this preliminary phase, the plan was to produce pedagogical ma-terial in collaboration with the principal of NMC for the purposes of teacher training.
The principal of NMC had been approved to attend the Teachers Pedagogical Stud-ies-module at the Sibelius Academy, and the idea was that both of us would proceed with our studies by working together. Hence, the participatory action research proach was well suited to the overall methodological frame, and the co-learning ap-proach (Herr & Anderson, 2015) was chosen as a research apap-proach for the process.
Table 5 Visit 3.
Visit 3. ACTIVITIES PARTICIPANTS
30.8.-20.9. 2014 1. Five workshops for NMC teachers conducted by me
2. Joint workshop with other research-ers to the teachresearch-ers and staff at NMC 3. Meetings and discussions about
music teacher education module with NMC leadership
4. Three school visits
5. Workshop for Kathmandu University students
6. 4 Interviews with NMC teachers (app.
30 min each)
7. Attending concerts and other musical events
During this visit, all of the participants from SibA had their own particular activities.
The vocal teacher led three workshops, particularly for the vocal students and teach-ers at NMC. DT, a doctoral researcher, conducted interviews for her research with the assistance of one professor. MJ, a professor from SibA, was working as an instructor for the NMC principal’s pedagogical studies. My role was to map the ground through semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) with NMC teachers and staff, as well as to continue teacher training workshops for the NMC teachers and to con-tribute to the discussions about the teacher training module. I also visited three ele-mentary schools together with the other participants and presented the main ideas of our research project to the NMC faculty in a joint presentation with the other SibA participants.
Table 6 Visit 4.
Visit 4. ACTIVITIES PARTICIPANTS
5.-30.12.2014 • Discussions between the management of NMC and the Finnish researcher team on the collaboration
• Working with the 9.-10. Grades vocation-al study line nationvocation-al level music curricu-lum with NMC leadership
• Two workshops for elementary school teachers conducted by me
• Preparing a conference presentation with the Principal of NMC and DT
• Three workshops for teachers of NMC and other school music teachers together with DT
• Attending concerts and other musical events
Until this point, the collaboration between SibA and NMC had focused on preparing NMC as an institution to take an active lead in music teacher training by conducting ten-day teacher training modules; a model adapted from teacher training in Nepal.
In addition, the NMC administration was providing plenty of time for national level curriculum work on two levels. On the one hand, the primary and secondary school curricula were under construction, and on the other hand, the Technical and Voca-tional Stream of Education in Music (TVSE) for grades 9-12 was also in the planning process. The Finnish representatives participated in the curriculum work through meetings where the principles of curricula were jointly discussed. At this point, I also turned to the literature about curriculum writing processes (e.g. Akker, 1998; Elliott, 1995; Fullan, 1985; Rogan & Grayson, 2003). Consequently, together with the other Global Visions doctoral researcher DT, we wrote an essay in which we familiarised ourselves with national-level music curricula from Finland and Nepal and compared their perspectives on student assessment. This essay laid the ground for our later collaborative work, and resulted in a book chapter: Imagining ends-not-yet-in-view, The ethics of assessment as valuation in Nepali music education (Treacy, Timonen,
Shah & Kallio, 2019), published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qual-itative Perspectives on Assessment in Music Education. The work with the curricula was also the start of the work towards the first collaborative conference presentation:
‘Assessment as manifestations of culturally constructed conceptions of knowledge and values in music education: Challenges for envisioning practices in Nepalese schools’,10 together with DT and the NMC principal.