Developing identities in music education

The notion of ‘musical identities’ may help us to understand the origins of the ‘problem of secondary school music’, which seems to be particularly acute in the English secondary school. Pupils' musical identities are strongly bound up with the importance of pop music outside school, and the distinction between ‘music in school’ and ‘music outside school’ may be very significant for them. Many secondary school music teachers, on the other hand, are trained in the Western classical tradition, and so the congruence between the musical identities of pupils and teachers is very likely to influence the success of school music. We review some preliminary findings from two of our own current research projects, on pupils' attitudes to music in and out of school (conducted as part of the work of the Music Development Task Group of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority), and on the Teacher Identities in Music Education (TIME) project, respectively. We conclude by showing how the concept of musical identities might enable us to understand people's musical behaviour ‘from the inside’, as well as in developing broader conceptions of the scope of music education.