A Cross-Cultural Interview Study of Singaporean and US General Music Teachers’ “Pedagogical Creativity”

Abstract

Abstract In this qualitative interview study, we explored the “pedagogical creativity”—the creativity teachers employ in their generation and execution of curricula and instruction—of veteran and novice general music teachers from the United States and Singapore. We prompted participants, 10 from each country, to articulate their underlying philosophies through semistructured interviews. The teachers discussed (a) a diversity of ways they were flexible; (b) varying degrees of embracing and incorporating ambiguity into their teaching; (c) forming novel associative bonds to create curricula, including incorporating the nonmusical identities of themselves and their students into the classroom; and (d) the ways teacher evaluation and policy mandates did or did not affect their teaching. Findings indicated that the veteran teachers were better able to articulate their processes and had more experiences to draw upon. The teachers from the United States and Singapore differed in their attitudes toward incorporating other subject areas into their teaching, but little on all other aspects of pedagogical creativity. We discuss implications to provide a fuller understanding of how teachers and teacher educators may nurture pedagogical creativity.