Resumo

This paper discusses how intercultural experiences might shape student teachers’ ideas about music teaching. Based on a long-term international exchange program between a Swedish university and two Brazilian universities, our research adopts a qualitative methodology to investigate how students in that program experience, negotiate, and re-signify cultural, educational and musical differences. This paper is based on a focus group interview with six Brazilian students after their first six months in Sweden. Some of the themes that emerged from our initial analysis of the interview include perceptions of relationships between students and teachers, teachers’ attitudes (trans)forming students’ views of music education, and students’ willingness to “bring back home” some of the experiences they have been living in the exchange program. Moreover, their previous experience in the Brazilian scenario and their current experience of music teacher education in Sweden are contributing to re-shape their identities as musicians and music teachers in relation to their translocational positionality (ANTHIAS, 2002; 2008). This allows more fluidity in their roles as future musicians and music teachers, and might therefore prepare them for a more culturally diverse approach to life, as well as in music education, raising awareness of “the others”, of themselves, and of the relationship among each other.