Musikk, fiksjon og følelser: didaktiske tilnærminger til folkehelse og livsmestring i musikkfaget i skole og lærerutdanning

Abstract

The new curriculum (LK20) for primary and lower secondary school in Norway introduced health and life skills (folkehelse og livsmestring) as an interdisciplinary theme in education. As teachers working at NTNU’s Department of Education in the subject of music, this development has inspired us to explore of new methods of teaching. The research project “Music, fiction and emotions” questions how we can contribute to students’ knowledge of connections between art subjects, health and wellbeing. This applies particularly in connection to children´s and young people’s ability to understand their own and other’s feelings. This chapter describes an action research study, based on a workshop carried out with music students in autumn 2022. Working in a creative, artistic and experimental process, the students explored different modes of expression to create new artistic performances. The data material consists of a workshop design and an online questionnaire which the participants answered after the workshop. We find that through the notion of “distance for nearness”, we as educators can facilitate students’ exploration of music and arts in ways that make them cope with, negotiate and interpret their own and others’ feelings. In the context of health and life skills, we propose this as a fruitful starting point for further development of research and teaching in the given context.