High school music programmes as potential sites for communities of practice - a Canadian study

My exploration of the nature of the high school music experience was undertaken with 33 young adults who had graduated from high school one to six years previous to the data collection. All of these participants had been involved in their school music programmes and 30 had not continued formal music study following graduation. One might predict that prevalent themes from their reflections about high school music would include the enhancing of self-worth, the experiencing of a sense of belonging, and the recalling of feelings of pride and pleasure derived from music making. While these themes were indeed articulated, what emerged most strongly from the data analysis is the enormous importance of community as the umbrella for self-making and music making. Importantly, the community these participants were recalling was not uniformly experienced. To better understand this variation, I examine the theoretical concept of 'community of practice' (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998). I also consider what the participants meant by 'fun' and 'enjoyment', two terms that peppered their conversations about their high school music experiences. The community of practice theory together with Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) definition of happiness emboldens me to suggest conditions necessary for a community of practice to develop among students in a high school music programme.