ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its focus the relationship between ideology and creativity, and the implications of this relationship for music teachers working in the school music classroom. It examines and analyses the ideologies of creativity from both historical and contemporary perspectives, arguing how dominant, Romantic ideologies of creativity have had, and continue to have, a significant impact on the epistemological and ontological foundations of music education, and hence on its pedagogies, curricula and assessment processes. It argues that, through recognising and understanding the ideological nature of creativity as a concept and acknowledging the role one’s own ideological positioning and dispositions play in the formation of values and beliefs, music educators can come to act agentically as participants within the discourses surrounding creativity. The chapter will conclude by drawing on the concepts of ‘participatory creativity’ and creativity as praxis to propose a narrative for the place of creativity in music education that differs significantly from those articulated through many contemporary, dominant political discourses.
