| This study provides a qualitative examination of the Canadian high school music experience. Using narrative inquiry (the "retrospective meaning-making" [Chase, 2005, p. 656] that people engage in when they tell their personal stories), and an interpretive, constructivist approach (developing analytic interpretations of participants' worlds that offer challenges or extensions to current practice), I sought to understand the meaning that 32 former high school music students make from their school music experiences.;Two theoretical frameworks were especially helpful in interpreting the former student interviews. Figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998, develop this framework from the theories of Bakhtin) and communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) provided rich structures for data analysis. The extent to which high school music is a self-making and community-making experience is much greater than I imagined. Music-making is a vehicle for authoring both self and worlds. It is a particularly potent vehicle because of its collaborative, embodied, temporal, non-discursive, playful, sensual, and occasionally transcendent nature.;I consider ideas from writers on happiness, embodied cognition and spirituality, in tandem with insights from a variety of education and music education scholars and from the "missing voices" of former students and practising teachers to develop suggestions for expanding secondary school music education practice.;I examine issues affecting teacher professional growth in order to articulate impediments to changing practice. Systemic issues of schooling create formidable barriers to effective, transformational professional development. I identify two kinds of professional growth experiences that evade these impediments by circumventing institutional constraints, putting professional development in the hands of small groups of music educators. Empowered and affirmed music educators are better positioned to transform practice.;Seven experienced music educators dialogued with me about key challenges in music education practice. Debating the questions what does it mean 'to know' in music?, what should we do with the musical knowledge students bring to our classes?, whose repertoire should we teach?, and are we creative or only re-creative in our music teaching?, these teachers shared their views and made clear the complexities, uncertainties, and joys of teaching high school music. |
