Developing the music pre-service teacher through international service learning

Service learning in tertiary education is about partnerships between higher education institutions and communities, as co-generators of knowledge. Arts programs in service learning engage what Rendon (2009) calls sentipensante (sensing/thinking) pedagogy, in which critical examinations of ways of thinking and doing sit alongside relational contemplative practices. This paper draws inspiration from this sentipensante pedagogical framework as well as principles of teaching in international contexts (Ballard & Clanchy, 1997), and uses both frames to examine the development of music pre-service teachers in the story of one young teacher and his supervising teacher. The young male teacher participated in international service learning in Penang, Malaysia. The paper sets out to highlight the benefit that such a case study can provide by critically examining the experiences of the pre-service teacher in the classroom and the community.