Undergraduate students’ strategies for negotiating emerging performer and teacher identities

Abstract

Nowadays, instrumental undergraduate students must often negotiate their emerging performer and teacher identities, and the results of this process affect the way they later balance their professional and personal life and their ability to sustain lifelong involvement in music. Drawing from recent sociological studies on bicultural identity integration, this study addresses two research questions: What strategies do undergraduate students adopt for negotiating both professional identities? And what are the characteristics of each strategy? One hundred and twenty-one undergraduate performance students participated in this study. Using cluster analysis, a typology of eight strategies for negotiating performer and teacher identities was developed: moratorium, diffusion, dichotomy, involvement with narrow vision, performers who happen to teach, assimilation or unwilling teacher dominance, quasi-integration and integration. These categories are characterized by students’ level of personal commitment, involvement, perceived freedom, breadth and accuracy of the professional image, and personal and social professional recognition. The strategies unfolded and described in this study could be useful for students who want to reflect on new ways of negotiating multiple professional identities and for researchers involved in musicians’ identity-building research.