Music Teacher Development and Identity Part I

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Music Teacher Development and IdentityPart I

• Introduction to Music Education
• Fall 2008
• Dr. Miksza

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Pre-service teachers developmental trends
through field experience

• Survival
• I am just trying to get up on time, keep my
  stuff organized, and make it day to day.

Feel like student not teacher I feel organized
and competent but have a hard time picturing
myself as the teacher, I feel too young and/or
inexperienced.
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Pre-service teachers developmental trends
through field experience

• Concerned primarily with own performance as
  teacher
• I feel organized and competent and am
  constantly analyzing and questioning my teaching
  to maintain that degree of accomplishment.

Concerned primarily with whether student learning
is occurring I feel organized and competent and
above all, am focused on trying to figure out
whether my students are getting the lessons.
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Pre-service teachers developmental trends
through field experience

• Where are you?
• Survive fight or flight
• Still a student
• Focus on teaching
• Focus on student learning

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Trends of thought processes in higher education
students

• Dualistic and Absolute
• Only one view and thats truth
• I will warm-up my band by playing long-tones,
  then a major scale in thirds, and then a tonguing
  exercise because thats what my HS ensemble did
  and we won state.

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Trends of thought processes in higher education
students

• Multiplicity
• It is not right and wrong, but right, wrong, and
  unknown
• Although I know that my choir warm-up (diction
  and scale exercises) is the right way to go,
  there may be other methods out there that I dont
  know about or that havent even been thought of
  yet.

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Trends of thought processes in higher education
students

• Relativism
• Right, wrong, unknown are all dependent on
  context
• Orchestra programs vary so much from school to
  school and town to town that there is no way to
  tell if there are good or bad methods in
  teaching.

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Trends of thought processes in higher education
students

• Commitment to Relativism
• Acknowledge multiple alternatives, acknowledge
  that there is doubt in each, but choose to act in
  accordance with your own identity and beliefs
• I am confident that as my teaching situation and
  students change over time I will be able to adapt
  and use my professional judgment to design or
  adapt an elementary curriculum that will be most
  valuable for the children in our community.

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Trends in music teacher identity

• Two axes
• Professional
• performer vs. teacher
• Musical
• broad comprehensiveness vs. narrow
  comprehensiveness
• Creates 4 types All around musician,
  pupil-centered teacher, performer,
  content-centered teacher
• (Issues present in at least US, Canada, Sweden,
  Denmark - likely everywhere there are music
  education majors)

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Trends in music teacher identity

• Avoid the traps of falling into one stereotype or
  the other
• Try to create yourself in the image of someone
  who (a) has well-developed inter-personal
  skills, (b) is a fine musician with a wide range
  of experiences and abilities, and (c) is a
  dedicated and skilled teacher

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Some Important Closing Points to Think About

• THE ARTISTRY OF TEACHING
• How can teaching be an art?
• PASSION FOR PEOPLE AND MUSIC