BEYOND HUMAN AGENCY: RECONSTRUCTING MUSIC TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH POSTHUMAN AND NEW MATERIALIST PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Music teacher professional identity has commonly been examined through human-centred concepts such as beliefs, values, biography, self-efficacy, agency, role negotiation and professional commitment. Although these perspectives have generated important insights, they can also position identity as something possessed by an individual teacher. Posthumanism and new materialism offer a different conceptual possibility by understanding identity as relational, embodied, material and continually becoming. This conceptual paper examines how these perspectives can reconstruct music teachers’ professional identity and professional development. Drawing on recent scholarship in music education, posthuman studies and new materialist thought, the paper argues that a music teacher is not formed independently of students, musical instruments, bodies, classrooms, technologies, curricula, institutions, communities and sound environments. Rather, professional identity emerges through intra-actions among human and more-than-human entities. The paper develops a Posthuman Music Teacher Identity Framework comprising five dimensions: relational becoming, embodied musicality, material agency, technological entanglement and ethical response-ability. It further argues that professional development should move beyond competency accumulation toward sustained processes of becoming-with people, materials, technologies and musical worlds. Such a perspective has implications for teacher education, continuing professional development, curriculum design and research methodology. Reconstructing music teacher identity through posthuman and new materialist perspectives can therefore contribute to a more flexible, inclusive and context-responsive understanding of what it means to become and remain a music teacher.