‘I'll do it first’: How a generalist teacher presents a song model to the class. Annamaria Savona
The formal introduction of children to the cultural practice of group singing usually begins in early education institutions where generalist teachers plan to teach songs in class. The Song Leading research project studies how pre-service and experienced teachers organise their general and domain-specific skills. Using the Lesson Activities Map – the transcript of key activities and their combination whilst a lesson –, the structure of video-recorded lessons is displayed and the properties of particular lesson moments are examined. Interviews and semi-structured personalised questionnaires are analysed in order to reconstruct the teachers’ individual profiles in narrative form. This paper presents the case study of pre-service teacher Laura who, during each lesson, repeatedly recited the lyrics and sang solo to provide the children with a song model. The analysis of selected episodes shows how and why Laura’s sung model deviates from the given original song. What conditions may have led Laura to produce an unstable song model? Through this case study, this paper discusses topics that may be common to teachers who lead singing in the classroom.