This article reports the results of a participatory action research study into Norwegian generalist music teacher education, that intended to develop spaces for preservice music teachers to foster agency and prepare for future teaching. We aimed to challenge the discursive practice of generalist music teacher education through participatory action research conducted from January to April 2020 at two central teacher education institutions in Norway. In this article, we present extracts from transcribed video recordings of the completed participatory action research that identify preservice music teachers’ positioning in interactions as a response to the challenges posed by action research events. Through our analysis, which draws on positioning theory from discourse psychology, we identify three primary positions taken up by preservice music teachers: (a) novices, (b) not yet independent, and (c) resource persons. The study identifies a need to interrupt traditional music teaching as a discursive practice that maintains power relations that obstruct preservice music teachers’ agency in their education. We conclude that more systematic long-term work is needed to change both educator and student habits and mind-sets.

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The essay examines the notion of musical–aesthetic experience as an event of appearance in the light of the aesthetic theories of Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Seel, and Gumbrecht. Despite their radically different responses to the challenges posed by late modernity and their distinctive ways of rethinking metaphysics, some underlying common concerns and insights can be detected. What appears in aesthetic experience is, for all of them, not merely a construction by the subject, as implied by Kant’s aesthetics, but rather ‘something’ that arises from the work of art itself. For Heidegger, this happens through the process of ‘enowning’ (Ereignis), while Gadamer speaks of ‘presentation’ (Vollzug), Adorno of ‘epiphanies’ of the ‘non-identical,’ Seel of ‘appearance,’ and Gumbrecht of the ‘production of presence’. There is a common insight that the status of the subject must be changed by such experiences. Instead of ‘using violence against the object’ (Adorno), a certain passivity is appropriate. Gumbrecht suggests applying Heidegger’s notion of ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit) to aesthetic experience as a response to the ‘loss of world’ in late modernity. The essay shows how the event of appearance points towards features typically associated with the notion of musical experience as existential experience.

This essay discusses commonalities between religious and musical-aesthetic experiences regarding their potential for transcendence. Inspired by existential autoethnography, the author presents situations from her own life to explore such correspondence. The essay shows how transcendent musical-aesthetic experiences may occur both while creating and performing as well as while listening to music. Narratives of transcendence in music and literature are discussed and contrasted with philosophical and psychological accounts of musical-aesthetic experience. The essay suggests that the unique value of transcendent musical-aesthetic experience is its existential significance.

The aim of this study is to explore how aspects of dialogic teaching are concretized in classrooms to fill the gap between educational rhetoric and classroom practices. A central competency needed in our time is the ability to participate in democratic dialogue. Education for democratic citizenship can be connected to the notion of “becoming human,” which is a central idea in the Bildung dimension of education. The national educational regulations in Norway state that the teacher’s mandate is not limited to conveying knowledge and skills but also includes fostering the students’ critical reflection, inquisitiveness, and participation. The research questions that guided the study are: What theoretical concepts can be helpful in understanding and analyzing dialogic classroom practices? How can participation be promoted through dialogic classroom practice? How do the dimensions of ontological and epistemological dialogue appear in educational settings, and how do they interact with each other? Methodologically, the article presents, analyzes, and discusses two cases from different educational settings: pre-service teacher education music courses and upper-primary-level mathematics education. The findings show that the chosen theoretical concepts of mathematizing, musicking, and Bildung, as well as ontological and epistemological dialogue, are helpful in making sense of dialogic classroom practices.