Interdisciplinarity in further education and initial teacher training: practitioner research as tool to support learning processes

Abstract

Since 2012, the Departments of Music Education and English Didactics at the University of Applied Sciences have organised continual professional development courses in Switzerland with the aim of empowering practising teachers at primary and secondary level to make more of foreign language and music learning opportunities in their classrooms. Many of these courses were realised within the wider context of the interdisciplinary EU Comenius project "European Music Portfolio - Languages 2009-2012". This contribution gives a brief overview of how practitioner research was used as a reflective tool in the courses to continually improve them, to support learning processes and to feed into own professional development. Depending on the course, data collection was based on in-depth interviews with participants, post-course e-questionnaires, self-assessment and observation. The diversity of results reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the context and the range of interests and backgrounds of the reflective practitioners. A common thread is the light they shed in the search of a common understanding of "empowerment" in interdisciplinary and mixed-ability contexts.