The Politics of Reflexivity in Music Teachers’ Intercultural Dialogue

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore the politics of music teacher reflexivity that emerged in a transnational collaboration between two institutions, the Nepal Music Center (NMC) and the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki when co-developing intercultural music teacher education. We examine in particular the reflexivity in this intercultural dialogue and how the collaboration became a complex field of issues of power related to social positions and epistemologies. Such reflexivity may act as an invitation to discomfort but at the same time as an invitation to deep professional learning. The empirical material was generated in the flow of activities within teachers’ pedagogical studies organized by the Sibelius Academy for the NMC teachers in Nepal. The authors’ experiences and the omnipresent colonial setting were taken as a backdrop of the overall interpretation and discussion. We argue that in an intercultural dialogue, negotiating one’s premises, stance, and the ethical relations with the Other requires reflection on one’s existential groundings. However, professional learning in intercultural dialogue is prone to persistent paradoxes that cannot be swiped away, or even solved. The politics of reflexivity thus keeps the questions open, with no final answers or ultimate solutions.