Abstract

As a teacher mentor, I have observed two types of knowledgeable teachers: teachers who display an instructional ease reflective of the comfort they have with themselves, and teachers who demonstrate an instructional artificiality reflective of the disconnect they have with themselves and their students. What is the difference between these two types of knowledgeable teachers? The difference, I propose, is a matter of authenticity in teaching. My interest in the topic of authenticity originates from my three-year teacher apprenticeship with Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. The problem facing authenticity is that it garners a complete range of favorable and unfavorable reactions. Authenticity is lauded as essential to transformative education. Yet, it is rejected as narcissistic, self-absorbed, and self-entitled. So, is authenticity a good or a bad thing? Would we be better off with or without authenticity? My research investigates authenticity by examining its historical and philosophical roots, its relationship to self-determining freedom, and the contemporary insistence on moral imperatives. I examine authenticity from a perspective of lived experience in order to make meaning. I take advantage of my musical background to investigate the Suzuki Method of music instruction and the phenomenon of musical performance. Furthermore, I propose a repositioning of fear as antagonist, catalyst, and insulation to authenticity. The hermeneutic phenomenological orientation to this research prompts iterative cycles of investigation that serve to uncover authenticity’s bright side and its dark side. Exploration into a Suzuki model of authenticity provides further illumination. Finally, the ideology of stewardship sheds light on the fundamentally nonnegotiable positioning of authenticity in teaching relationships.