Dialogic approaches to education have received a significant amount of interest across Europe particularly with regard to the role of language in education (Mercer, et al. 2019). Dialogic theorisations, however, offer a rich array of conceptual tools for exploring space, time, relationships, embodiment and aesthetics as part of educational experience (e.g. Vass, 2019; Kullenberg & Säljö, 2022). In response to recent calls for greater recognition of the aesthetics of education, waking students up to the world (Biesta, 2022), and the importance of contemporaneous educational encounters (Biesta, 2023) this contribution uses the dialogic notion of chronotope (time-space) to explore how interpersonal entrainment, that is a collective moment of unity, takes shape within whole-class music playing in a Finnish sixth grade classroom. 

Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope is particularly useful in the exploration of education as a form of aesthetic interconnectedness experienced from the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’ (Bakhtin, 1981 & 1986). Examining phenomena from the outside involves attending to the arrangement of space, the relationships between participants, the availability and use of time. Examining from the ‘inside’ pays attention to how participants listen for and respond to one another, interanimate each other’s contributions, sense coming together and differentiate between self and other. Through this ongoing dialogue participants become part of and contribute to something beyond themselves within a particular moment. Music-making, by its very nature, is a form of symbolic and embodied dialogue across time. When people gather together to make music, their joint action is characterised by interpersonal entrainment, that is in-time synchronous interaction between participants through music (Clayton et al., 2020; Phillips-Silver and Keller, 2012). While there is a great amount of literature on music as affective and embodied communication (Clayton et al., 2020; Stern, 2004; Trondalen, 2016), entrainment has often been examined through quantitative, rather than qualitative, approaches and whole class music-playing as part of mainstream education has received little attention to date.

The theoretical significance of this research lies in going beyond the existing metaphor of participation in education to explore education as an encounter in which individuals constantly listen to and map the rhythm of their social environment co-authoring the world through their responsivity (Holquist, 1983; Sabey, 2021, Kullenberg & Säljö, 2022). The aim of this study is to explore the centripetal coming together of individuals through music to create a unified body by carefully mapping the time-space arrangements of a 6th grade classroom and by qualitatively analysing the reflections of students and teachers on their experiences and perceptions of whole-class music playing. The research questions underpinning this contribution are:

1. how does interpersonal entrainment take shape in whole class music-playing within the context of mainstream music education classes in the sixth grade of Finnish basic education? 

2. what do students and teachers attend to in their reflections on the embodied, aesthetic experience of interpersonal entrainment?

The educational significance of this research lies in going beyond words and oral dialogue to embodied and aesthetic forms of meaning-making. This research is an important contribution to music education research as the data is from mainstream, rather than specialised, music education highlighting the potential of ‘regular’ classrooms for different forms of meaning-making. Moreover, this research highlights the multiplicity of relationships that are mutually informing and fundamentally present within educational settings. The findings from this study draw attention to the responsibilities of educators in curating and orchestrating learning environments and activities and the active roles and responsivity of students in their individual and shared being and becoming. The key contribution of this study further is to expand understanding of dialogic education as embodied, contemporaneous relationships mediated through a shared, yet-forming environment.

Importantly the dataset for this study is derived from mainstream sixth grade music education as part of the Finnish comprehensive school, rather than from a specialised music curriculum or programme of study. The multimodal dataset includes 11 teacher interviews, 23 student pair interviews and 6 classroom recordings. While we have already published studies exploring entrainment and agency from student and teacher perspectives (Stolp, et al. 2022 a,b,c), the study presented here focuses on the video data from one classroom-based session in which one teacher and 23 students enter into joint music-making together. Based on a dialogical approach to qualitative analysis (Sullivan, 2012) this study examines the time-space arrangements of whole-class music playing to map and explore how entrainment takes shape within this musical space. Mapping the time-space arrangements of the musical activity should provide insights into the contemporaneous action/s of the students and teacher. The pair interviews and teacher interview provide a different perspective as they reflect on their experience of whole class music-making. As an aesthetic, cognitive, and embodied mode of meaning-making, music education and whole-class music playing provide an opportunity for examining how a multiplicity of individuals with different levels of skill, motivation and ability can come together as one body, a shared moment mediated by music (Stolp, et al, 2022a, b, c; Clayton et al., 2020; Trondalen, 2016; Vass, 2019). While the video data facilitate the exploration of entrainment from the outside, the interviews provide insights from the inside.

The findings highlight the mutually-constituting activities of the student and teacher and their environment exemplifying how shared experience can include a multiplicity of different starting points and experiences. This research contributes to the growing body of work that highlights the value of using multimodal approaches to recognise diversity within education and educational research. Moreover, this contribution illustrates how mapping a teacher’s pedagogical orchestration of the classroom environment and the entrained participation of students and teacher provides an emergent perspective on the historical being and becoming in classroom communities (Osberg, et al. 2008). The findings outline how interpersonal entrainment gradually takes shape in the time-space configurations of the music classroom. This dialogic musical space is carefully curated through the actions and intentions of the teacher as layers and loops of music are added to the shared activity. Through invitation, modelling and guidance the teacher provides the physical, visual and auditory time-space arrangements for the students to step into. On the other hand, the children contribute to the creation of this dialogic musical space by paying attention to and becoming aware of another and to the teacher, by entering into unknown musical experience, by focusing, maintaining, taking turns and risking participation from their individual starting points. When disjunctures or ruptures appear in the time-space configurations, these moments can be addressed through resistance or renegotiation in different forms leading to rich moments of negotiation and embodied meaning-making. The student and teacher reflections provide further insights into pedagogical orchestration and entrained participation and the importance of both recognising and exploring education as an embodied, aesthetic experience in which individuals with different backgrounds can contribute to and become part of something ‘bigger’ without losing, but rather enriching, individual selves.

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