Supporting the Development of Agency in Music Teacher Education

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for understanding and supporting the development of preservice teacher agency across undergraduate coursework and experiences. Emirbayer and Mische’s chordal triad represents a temporal-relational view of agency that may be used in facilitating class discussions and designing field experiences and curricula. In this article, I connect the three components of the framework, which are the iterative (past), practical-evaluative (present), and projective (future) dimensions of human agency, to music teacher education research and suggest how to incorporate findings to facilitate agentic action. These connections between the chordal triad of agency and music teacher education research may serve as starting points for needed inquiry into and the inclusion of agency in music teacher education. Greater agency may provide individual teachers with the means to expand, innovate, and modify school music education for more inclusive forms and practices in local school contexts.