Embracing a learner identity: An Autoethnographic duet exploring disruptive critical incidents in instrumental music pedagogy

Curricular reforms in Western countries call for pedagogical practices that empower and transform students into professional musicians who have the capacity for deep critical thinking and engagement. For this, several pedagogical frameworks that place the student at the centre of learning have been considered during the last decades. This constructivist trend emphasises the need to work with students at deep levels (cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally) and recognises the need for teachers to be open to also learning and developing through processes of transformative pedagogies. Moving beyond traditional forms of research in music education and music psychology, the authors explore autoethnography as catharsis for conceptual change. Through this process they explore disruptive critical incidents during their musicians-teachers-researchers-learners' trajectories that led to a transformation of their educational practices and teacher identities. After 144 recognising their own instrumental teachers often inhibited (however inadvertently) their learning, the authors recount the shock they felt in realising they were falling into the same traps in their teaching. Exploring their way through the ensuing chaos, both turned to research, to experimentation and insights from students in a quest to learn and embody pedagogical theories in their practice. They describe how clarity in teaching was found not through faulty identities as ‘expert teachers’, but by embracing their learner identities, enabling them to become ‘learners as facilitators’.