Music Teacher Presence: Toward a Relational Understanding

Abstract

The key question in this narrative study was: How do music teacher participants describe experiencing presence in teaching (Rodgers & Raider-Roth, 2006) in the context of their (a) relationship to self (I-I), (b) relationships with students (I-Thou), and (c) relationship to music (I-it)? Guided by the epistemological assumptions of Universal Integralism (Sarath, 2013; Wilber, 1977, 2000a, 2000b, 2004, 2006), this study included the spiritual in music (Boyce-Tillman, 2007) as a source of knowing. Data for each participant included two interviews and three to four classroom observations over the course of two semesters. All interviews were analyzed using the Listening Guide (Brown & Gilligan, 1991), a feminist, relational method intended to bring the researcher closer to participants through careful attention to voice. Through narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2006), each participant described presence in teaching within the relational triangle of teacher, student, and music (Hawkins, 1974). Participants’ common expressions of experience showed great changes in their relationships over time, with disconnections and repair as central forces in their ability to preserve and develop presence. Within the I-I relationship, participants described suspension of selves, identities, or perceived roles as crucial for maintaining presence, and named “safe spaces” as a foundation for I-thou relationships. Participants’ presence in the classroom reflected their own relationship to music (I-it), with music paradoxically described as secondary to its larger meanings in students’ lives.