Technology in the service of educational purposes in music classrooms

Abstract

The rapid multiplication of research studies on music education technology, as well as the increasingly central role of technology in policy documents, signify a general interest in the possible applications of technology for music teaching and learning. Whether these possibilities are fully actualised in school classrooms has been the topic of many recent investigations. Indeed, multiple studies (e.g., Partti, 2016; Calderón-Garrido et al., 2020; Holdhus et al., 2022; Partti et al., 2023) have pointed out the disparity between curricular aims and the varying, and often quite limited, technological skills of music teachers in implementing these aims. In this chapter, we suggest that this disparity is at least partly due to the diversity of terminology used and the variety of meanings given to technology in music education. Just as the conceptualisations, justifications and meanings of technology vary in different contexts and from one author to another, the understandings of the aims and possibilities of technology also differ both in curricular documents and in teachers’ interpretations of the aims stated in those documents.