Trajectories of Secondary School Music Teachers Relative to Musical Creativity Practices Within a Community of Practice

Musical creative competency is a subject-specific competency that involves guiding students to explore, improvise, compose, and arrange music through a creative process. Integrated into secondary school music curricula (Odena, 2012), musical creation offers numerous cognitive and emotional benefits, particularly by fostering a deeper understanding of music (Burnard, 2002; McPherson, 1993) as well as the development of creative thinking and personal expression (Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves, 2009; Robichaud, 2022; Tseng and Chen, 2010). Despite its richness and potential, musical creativity remains largely underutilized by music teachers, particularly at the secondary level (Bernhard and Stringham, 2016; Snell II and Stringham, 2018), where instruction often emphasizes performance from musical notation and the development of instrumental technique (Hess, 2015; Stringham, 2010).

This study aims to analyze the professional trajectories of secondary school music teachers who participate in a community of practice focused on musical creativity. This doctoral project builds on the findings of the researcher’s master’s thesis (Mathieu, 2024), which indicate that secondary school music teachers in Quebec have a positive perception of the competency and consider it accessible to all students. However, most participants engage in only a few creative activities per year and do not feel qualified to teach improvisation, primarily due to conceptual distortions, school-related organizational factors, and a lack of experience and training. This collaborative research (Desgagné, 1997) aims to address the pedagogical needs raised by the participants by offering a professional development opportunity that combines reflective practice with experimentation with new ideas (Kohler et al., 2020). In support of the dual objectives of professional development and pedagogical innovation, n=9 secondary school music teachers undertook a process of questioning and transforming their practices through individual interviews, questionnaires, and a community of practice. In addition to helping participants demystify the many facets of musical creativity, this project will lead to the creation of educational materials, workshop or ongoing professional development program, and a model that all music teachers can use to design instructional approaches tailored to their specific contexts.