Imagining Music Education in the “We-Mode”

In this article, I explore the “we-mode,” a concept under investigation by social cognition researchers that emerged from John Searle’s concept of collective Intentionality. Wemode thinking captures the viewpoints of individuals engaged in social interactions and expands each individual’s potential for social understanding and action. This access to the knowledge and understandings of those with whom they collaborate creates shared knowledge and understandings that may lead to collective Intentionality or we-mode. The discussion begins with a look at how living and working in groups affects identity formation, using Paul Gilroy’s notion of planetary humanity as an example of we-mode thinking. As Searle explains, collective Intentionality emanates from the Background (similar to Bourdieu’s habitus), which thus allows for the possibility of collective Intentionality or we-mode thinking and action. The article concludes by querying the potential for developing we-mode thinking in music education within an anti-racism framework, followed by an introduction to the four articles published in this issue.