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Communication across genre borders: language as tool for development

In both the examples above, the teachers developed systematic exercises for a certain learning purpose. Both problems aimed to strengthen the development of individual creative integrity but were situated in different genre cultures. All the teachers had worked with problems that were meaningful to them because they were specific and concrete. Through the effort of articulating these issues to teachers from a different genre, they developed their awareness of tacit aspects in their own genre. Several mentioned that this process made them recognise aspects of practising they had taken for granted. This process also helped them creating systematic pedagogical tools. This underscores a central point: to get to the bottom of meaningful questions, we might need to identify problems that are specific to a certain domain, and maybe not common across domains to begin with, as the two examples show. In a collaborative format focusing on sharing experiential “insider” knowledge and articulating the tacit, the teachers were able to identify problems they had in common, as well as these problems’ inherent nuances. This way, the quest to communicate central values may be seen as contributing to an increased awareness and development of instrumental practicing as a knowledge culture, both within and across genres.

...to get to the bottom of meaningful questions, we might need to identify problems that are specific to a certain domain, and maybe not common across domains to begin with
(Guro Gravem Johansen, project leader)

Another outcome of such collaborative forums may have a wider impact, moving beyond the individual to the institutional level. It is often claimed that Western classical music holds a hegemonic position in music education institutions (Hess, 2013; Kingsbury, 1987; Schippers, 2010), as seen for example when “practising” is used to mean learning, interpreting and performing written music. This aligns with what Knorr-Cetina (1999) calls an epistemic monopoly, when a certain knowledge culture sees itself as universal. Collaborative forums across genres may help expanding subjects’ understanding of their own genre culture by relating it to others, and thus, contribute to change by breaking down epistemic monopolies.