scholarly journals Choosing to Teach Music: Reflections of Elementary Music Teachers in Vancouver and Hong Kong

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina W. Wong
Author(s):  
Jennifer Potter

The purpose of investigation was to examine the perceptions of elementary music teachers concerning the preparation of elementary music performances and the impact on their perceived stress. Participants were practicing elementary general music teachers ( N = 3) representing three different elementary schools from a metropolitan area in the Midwest. All participants were interviewed twice over a period of two months via Zoom. Data were analyzed through an open coding process (Gibbs, 2007), which yielded three themes: time management, control, and isolation. Facets of time management included strategic planning, organizational techniques, and instructional time; control concerned scheduling, repertoire selection, equipment, and performance venues; and isolation pertained to relationships with colleagues and administrators and an overwhelming amount of responsibility. These findings indicate the importance of acknowledging various stressors affecting music educators and how those might positively and negatively affect teachers and students.


2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 344-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos R. Abril ◽  
Julie K. Bannerman

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary music teachers’ perceptions of factors impacting their music programs and teaching positions as well as the actions these teachers take in response to those factors. The following research questions guided the study: (1) What factors are perceived to impact music programs and teaching positions? (2) What is the nature of these factors? (3) How and within what socioecological levels do teachers act on behalf of their programs or positions? (4) To what degree are specific actions, people, and/or groups thought effective in impacting music programs? U.S. music teachers ( N = 432) responded to a survey designed to answer these questions. A socioecological framework was used in the design of the survey and analysis of the data. Results suggest that teachers perceive micro-level factors (school) to have a substantial impact on their programs. Teachers’ actions were mostly focused on the micro level although many teachers considered meso-level (school district) engagement to be vital for maintaining or improving music programs in a given school district. Besides music-specific policies, macro-level issues (state and national) were not viewed as impacting programs in substantive ways. The further removed a factor from the micro level, the less impact was felt and the fewer actions were taken.


Author(s):  
Cathy Benedict

This book challenges and reframes traditional ways of addressing many of the topics we have come to think of as social justice. Offering practical suggestions for helping both teachers and students think philosophically (and thus critically) about the world around them, each chapter engages with important themes through music making and learning as it presents scenarios, examples of dialogue with students, unit ideas, and lesson plans geared toward elementary students (ages 6–14). Taken-for-granted subjects often considered sacrosanct or beyond the understanding of elementary students, such as friendship, racism, poverty, religion, and class, are addressed and interrogated in a way that honors the voice and critical thinking of the elementary student. Suggestions are given that help both teachers and students to pause, reflect, and redirect dialogue with questions that uncover bias, misinformation, and misunderstandings that too often stand in the way of coming to know and embracing difference. Guiding questions, which anchor many curricular mandates, are used throughout in order to scaffold critical and reflective thinking beginning in the earliest grades of elementary music education. Where does social justice reside? Whose voice is being heard, and whose is being silenced? How do we come to think of and construct poverty? How is it that musics become used the way they are used? What happens to songs initially intended for socially driven purposes when their significance is undermined? These questions and more are explored, encouraging music teachers to embrace a path toward socially just engagements at the elementary level.


Author(s):  
Jason Chen

To follow up the trends from an Asian perspective in globalization and technology provided by the Core Perspective, this section further discusses the recent development of mobile learning in music education and ICT in music education in Hong Kong. A detailed study of 120 teachers, including 60 in-service and 60 preservice music teachers’ concerns and expectations regarding mobile learning in the music curriculum, was conducted in 2014 and 2015, respectively, in Hong Kong. The top three concerns among teachers were equipment setup, technical support, and financial burden. The top three expectations are e-learning resources, interactive functions, and self-directed learning. This chapter proposes an ecology of ICT in music education as an “outside in-inside out” relationship, where cultural practices involving mobile learning can be brought into the school, enhanced at school, and then fed back into the digital world at large.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1321103X1987107
Author(s):  
Jody Stark

This article outlines the methodology and findings from an interpretive collective case study exploring the professional learning of three elementary music teachers. Participants were purposefully selected based on their differing career stages, background, and teaching situations, and each participant was interviewed five or six times over the course of the 5-month study. Additional data sources included field notes from classroom observations, a variety of artifacts provided by the participants, and responses to Pre-Interview Activity prompts. Through hermeneutic analysis of individual case data related to each participant’s teaching and experience of professional learning, participants were found to have a variety of highly personalized learning processes which they used as mechanisms for their ongoing professional growth. Cross-case analysis revealed three larger themes related to the participants’ professional learning: (1) The quality of the participants’ learning was always instrumental and related to specific personal goals for/issues in practice; (2) meaningful professional learning had a temporal element and was characterized by continuity; and (3) the participants’ professional learning was social in nature.


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