Lauri Väkevä

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Helsinki

This article conceptualizes and discusses change in music teacher education. Results from the FUTURED research project provide the starting point for the article. The project explored various dimensions of change within the music education programs in Norwegian generalist teacher education. In this project, change was regarded as having a transform...

This chapter focuses on three themes from the previous discussion: sustainability, performativity, and ‘doing universality’. It is argued that cultural naturalism can help connect these themes in the context of eco-ontological and world-centered education to present a viable and workable alternative for art-centered art(s) education. A world-center...

This chapter discusses post-philosophical approaches to (the) art(s). Art of the second half of the 20th Century provided post-philosophers with models for creativity that can alleviate the dehumanizing effects of late capitalism. Following the lead of contemporary artists, some post-philosophers turned to aesthetics as the measure of the workabili...

This chapter discusses cultural naturalist aesthetics and art philosophy. The guiding light here is John Dewey, who, in his later works, placed aesthetic experience in the focus of meaningful life. Dewey also presented a vision of the role of art in such life, arguing that we need to reconstruct the modern aesthetic distinction between fine art and...

This chapter begins with a discussion of the changes in the digital distribution of art. After this, a sociological perspective on late modernity is presented that applies Andreas Reckwitz’s theory of ‘the society of singularities’ in how the role of art is defined in late modern life and how the members of the creative class perform distinctively...

After presenting three key terms of this study, the chapter outlines cultural naturalism as a philosophical platform. It then elaborates on naturalist criticisms of philosophical modernity and non-naturalist arguments. Philosophical naturalism is revealed to have worked along with several lines of inquiry, getting a push from the positivism critiqu...

This study presents an analysis of hidden elitism in music education through the free choice argument – that individuals are fundamentally free to choose to study music – as a meritocratic power structure. Qualitative Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is applied to understand music education as a social system with a special structure in which its pur...

This article urges a reconsideration of professional responsibility in arts education, moving beyond an emphasis on narrow technical expertise and strict disciplinary boundaries in order to respond to the needs of complex late modern society. We reconsider ‘professionalism’ in arts education as a site of struggle that requires ‘systems reflexivity’...

In this article, we consider Western Standard Music Notation (WSMN) as a normative communication system that, through representing certain cultural frameworks, may pose obstacles to musical learning, particularly in general music education. To focus this examination, we discuss different critical aspects of what we call the “notation argument”: Bec...

This article is based on a case study of how the Rocksmith entertainment music video game can be used in the context of studying electric guitar and bass as part of music teacher training. In empirical terms, we were interested in how music teachers’ knowledge becomes articulated in the pedagogical discourse of our participants. As conceptual point...

This article addresses the discourse on social justice and inclusion in music education by exploring how educational systems can be transformed in the rapidly changing world of late modernity. We aim to show that one possible approach to tackling injustice in music educationat the micro level is to reflect on the possibilities for institutional...

Music education in the Nordic countries in notable for its relatively early inclusion of popular music genres. Widely equipped with instruments such as guitars and drum kits, and focused on hands-on approaches to music-making, Nordic classrooms serve as models for many nations where this process is still in its early stages (Allsup 2011). The growi...

Charles Taylor has argued that recognition is a vital human need. This essay discusses recognition as a philosophical concept, following a line of argumentation that can be traced back to Hegel's early philosophy. An important premise of this tradition is that because a subject's freedom is conditioned by other subjects, individual agency cannot de...

In this article, we discuss Christoper Small's concept of musicking in order to explicate his understanding of music as a practice and the implications of such an understanding for today's general music education. Our main argument is that, armed with Small's concept of musicking, we can deal with music in its full social-cultural significance. Fro...

In this article, author examines how digital mediation may change the way musicianship is conceived in the late modernity. Author will discuss the theoretical implications of confronting this change in music education, suggesting that recognizing its creative potential may offer a renewed theoretical perspective in music education. Author will also...

The initiative to collect this suite emerged originally as an upshot of the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME) 2010 conference, hosted by Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. The ideas developed in these articles are based on the papers presented in a panel that discussed Western music education systems, ideologies, a...

In this article we argue that learning initiatives could be better recognized and mediated in order to support meaningful learning and agency in music education. We base our argument on John Dewey’s notions as to how learning initiatives emerge from indeterminate situations as impulsions and how learning as contextual inquiry towards a practical co...

Dewey belongs to the small company of philosophers who granted education a major role in their philosophical argumentation. For Dewey (1916/MW pp. 9, 338), education was not merely an institution to transmit skills, ideas, and attitudes, but also a laboratory “in which philosophic distinctions become concrete and are tested”. Moreover, he argued th...

While John Dewey did not write much about music education, his philosophy offers tools for reframing the philosophy of music education to account for the significance of music in human life. Dewey's reconstructive view of philosophy was based on his critique of the traditional image of the discipline interested in the "quest for certainty" rather t...

For a practicing arts educator, the relationship between theory and practice is often unproblematic: theory is considered to be irrelevant for the good practice. Considering the matter from an academic standpoint, one faces the distinction between poietic, or productive, and contemplative, or responsive, mindsets stemming from the classical philoso...

In this paper, I suggest that it is perhaps time to consider the pedagogy of popular music in more extensive terms than conventional rock band practices have to offer. One direction in which this might lead is the expansion of the informal pedagogy based on a ‘garage band’ model to encompass various modes of digital artistry wherever this artistry...

This article offers a clarification and application of aspects of John Dewey's philosophy of art and music that have often been misunderstood, even by philosophers (such as Susanne Langer) and, in particular, by philosophers of music education who quote Dewey in support of neo-Kantian aesthetic conceptions that Dewey was in fact at pains to critiqu...

This article describes the history and current situation of popular music pedagogy in Finland. While popular music is widely accepted in the curriculum, there are differences in its application in the comprehensive schools and music institutions. Popular styles were first introduced into Finnish music education by secondary school music teachers; h...

Abstract: Educational art and art education. Diss. -- Oulun yliopisto.

Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us from transcendent...