What happens in music lessons held in a municipal school of music and performing arts? Previously, researchers have studied this by interviewing teachers and leaders and by analyzing policy documents. But what about the music? The students? And all the surprises bound to happen when children play music?
In this dissertation, Mari Ystanes Fjeldstad explores the enactments of violin lessons by telling stories based on observations of three teachers and their students. In the stories, violins go missing; spiders, stickers, and students interrupt the teachers’ plans; and professors of the past lurk in the corners. The stories also tell about how violin lessons became a stuttering mess of lagging sound and frozen images as the pandemic moved the lessons to online meeting rooms, and about how teachers and students handled these stressful situations.
By reading the stories through feminist new materialist and posthuman theories, Fjeldstad develops four theoretical concepts. These are useful for researchers aiming to generate a broader insight into music education practices. The dissertation also creates knowledge of how the possible futures offered to the students are connected to social categories such as race, gender, and class. By doing so, it contributes to a feminist new materialist and posthuman music education research that might move us toward to a more socially just music education.
