Human Rights Education through Collaborative Songwriting: A Workshop for Music Teacher Education in Chile

Overview & Synopsis

Human rights education fosters the internalisation of reflexive and activist teacher identities, favouring social transformation, empowerment, and civic commitments. This study aims to evaluate the development of teacher identities in a collaborative songwriting workshop. A hermeneutic circle for music education was used as part of a qualitative design, with participation from student teachers enrolled on an undergraduate music teacher education programme in Chile. The results showed that participants have begun to visualise music teaching as a means to achieving equal opportunities and cultural diversity, to focus teacher experience on human rights education, and to learn to deal with the uncertainty and unpredictability of education. In conclusion, student teachers internalised reflexive and activist identities, which will help them improve their own teaching practices, update their professional knowledge, and ethically refine their teacher beliefs. Some implications are suggested.