Fantasies and Other Romanticized Concepts of Music Teaching: A Cross-Cultural Study of Chinese and North American Music Education Students’ Images of Music Teaching

Abstract

Within an international context, this article reports on the use of drawings by Chinese and North American music education majors as a means of examining these students’ images, expectations, and emerging concepts of music teaching. By studying and discussing these drawings within the methods class, it is hoped that these music education majors could project their present orientation toward music teaching. Several common themes were seen in both the Chinese and North American drawings. Individual drawings are analyzed and included as evidence of archetypal images and signifiers. It is proposed that these students’ drawings might serve as a means of uncovering, analyzing, and challenging music education students as they begin the career-long task of reconciling romanticized notions with more realistic experiences in teaching music.