"Det er jo viktig, men ikke lett å få til" - En undersøkelse av sangens plass i grunnskolen.

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to examine singing in Norwegian primary schools. Through a schematic overview of the singing activity at ten schools in Agder and qualitative interviews with teachers and school management, we focus on the following question: How is singing used in today’s schools, and what are the teachers’ arguments for implementing or not implementing singing activities? As a theoretical framework, we present singing in educational contexts in Norway from a historical and contemporary perspective and present relevant theories related to the concepts of “formation” and “community music”. The results show that singing activity varies from school to school, decreasing when students get older. The results also show that teachers find it essential to conduct singing activities as a part of the educational courses, but challenges associated with the teachers’ own singing skills and choice of repertoire leave the teachers feeling insecure when carrying out the activity