Facilitating Collective Free Improvisation Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

Collective free music improvisation (CFMI) develops musicians’ relationships, identity, and communication skills and engages musicians from different cultures by tapping into their diversities in the music-making process. It also develops an open attitude toward working with children’s creative potential—by paving the way for open, egalitarian teaching approaches. However, teachers may not know how to incorporate it in their music classes due to the lack of teacher preparation in its practice and pedagogy. This interest article offers a theoretical basis for engaging preservice music teachers (PMTs) in CFMI learning in a teacher preparation course—by drawing on research and the author’s experiences facilitating CFMI classes. In combination with theory, pedagogical strategies that develop PMTs’ free improvisational skills based on a socio-communicative framework are described. These strategies offer practical pathways to introducing free improvisation to PMTs that could motivate and enable them to bring the practice into their future music classrooms.