Short biography

I am a music teacher as well as a musician and a composer. I have worked as a music teacher in many different school forms mainly in high school and culture schools. I have worked as a teacher trainer in higher music education for ten years.

In my work at the Malmö Academy I have been developing, during these ten years, three new teacher training programs, curriculums and courses. My work includes teaching pedagogy, psychology, music education, tutoring exam papers etc. I have also developed websites, study materials and exercises together with and for my students.

Together with Gunnar Heiling and Vietnamese colleagues I have built a Music Education Department in Vietnam National Academy of Music in Hanoi. I have during the years 2008-2010, amongst other things, had in-service courses, master programs and tutored exam papers during this very successful project.

During 2010 I was a school inspector, apart of a national evaluation of music as a subject in general schools in Sweden.

During 2009-10 I have been apart of a research project (NSHU) which aim was to investigate assessment criteria used in the Arts Higher Education.

I have together with my research colleague Eva Saether started a project called “Creativities – transcending boundaries in Higher Education” in 2010. Based on the condition that a project like this has to involve both students and teachers, we have initiated the work that we hope can impregnate the new teacher education in the coming years, and give empirical material for research projects. What we have done so far is to make a general overview of creativity research, national and international, developed concrete proposals on HOW creativity can be the overriding perspective in the new education. This has been done by workshops and a questionnaire to students and teachers. And we have generated new course content, both in the courses for instrumental teaching and in the broader pedagogical courses. Alongside with this we have developed the hub of the project, the website, which contains a library, and arenas for ideas, tools, methods and internet based course modules. This is done with the teachers and students involved. The website is www.creativities.org and is available both in English and Swedish. We have also started a network together with Pamela Burnard, Ann Bamford and Liora Bresler and have just had our first meeting in Cambridge.

As a teacher, researcher and musician I do a lot of lectures, seminars, workshops and concerts.

In December I finished my PhD in music education. The title was “Music teachers’ discretionary power – possibilities and limitations. The aim of the thesis was to investigate the working conditions of music teachers by focusing on their experiences of and ideas about discretionary power in their professional lives. The meaning of discretionary power in the interplay between knowledge, action and motivation. The creation of discretionary power develops when the inner reality of a music teacher corresponds to the shape and nature of external reality. In relationships with pupils and colleagues different proportions of power, control, demand, social support and trust can be identified. These illuminate the social processes through which discretionary power is created, and they are also enabling and constraining in various ways.