8 Suicide Is (Never) Painless Teachers’ Experiences on the Edge of Life and Death Peter Gouzouasis and Anita Prest PRELUDE In the present inquiry, we initially sought to examine how music teacher backgrounds impact their broader curricular and pedagogical decisions. While there has been an increasing call by some scholars for music educators to provide the widest range of musical experiences in schools and community contexts, a potential obstacle to such an appeal may stem from the fact that many teachers may neither musi- cally nor personally identify with a music curriculum and pedagogy that is either culturally responsive or globally informed (Abril 2009; Legette 2003). Moreover, we recognize the unusually wide discrepancy between research and classroom practice in music teaching, as well as in the ways that traditional music education research is written. We posit that for educators to even consider a more inclusive defnition of musicianship and musicking (Small 1998), they must frst develop an awareness of the ways in which their own musical identities inter - sect with, affect, and change their teaching. That perspective, and the notion that research needs to be written in more meaningful and accessible ways to reach a wider audience, may make it possible to link the ways that we have traditionally viewed teacher identities with more contemporary ways of doing research with hybrid forms of arts-based action research. Research has generally focused on the ways that identities of musi- cians are shaped by social relationships and how “the processes and 31656_Clausen-black.indd 141 20-03-10 14:44