Pre-service teachers' efficacy in teaching music.

Abstract

This study investigated pre-service teachers' self-efficacy in teaching children music. One hundred ninety-six candidates in early childhood and elementary education program from an urban public university participated in the survey. Results indicated that, pre-service teachers have positive attitudes towards teaching music to children. However, they did not have knowledge of musical concepts and they showed low self-efficacy in teaching music. Based on the results, suggestions were made on how teacher educators should help pre-service teachers to develop their musical content and pedagogical knowledge.

Introduction

Early childhood and elementary classroom teachers are known as generalists. They are not specialized in a certain subject but are prepared to teach all the subject areas in an integrated curriculum, including music. However, it has been found that classroom teachers are considerably less comfortable than music specialists in teaching music (Byo, 2000). According to the report of the National Center for Education Statistics, 72% of the nation's public elementary schools have music specialists to teach music (Carey, Kleiner, Porch, & Farris, 2002). One can assume that as a majority of schools have music specialists, classroom teachers may not feel that they should be responsible for music education. Their sense of responsibility for teaching music can often influences the efficacy of curricular implementation (Saunders, 1992).

We contend that leaving music education up to the music specialists and weekly music classes is a disservice to students. Teacher education program should provide music education to pre-service teachers who will confront diverse educational setting; who will need to integrate different subject in a curriculum; and who will respond to children's different learning styles and needs (Kim, 2004). Therefore, pre-service teacher education programs in early childhood and elementary education should find a way to help those who are not necessarily musicians improve their self-efficacy in teaching music.

The term 'self-efficacy' was identified as a part of social-cognitive theory by Albert Bandura (1997). Bandura's definition of self-efficacy involves two components; a) the individual's belief or self-perception of his/her competence and b) outcome expectancy toward specific results. When individuals believe that they are capable of executing behaviors successfully, they are more likely to engage in certain behaviors and perform with assurance while they avoid situations they believe exceed their capabilities (Omrod, 2004). Teacher efficacy has a strong influence on teachers' classroom practices from teaching in the classrooms to interacting with students (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001; Dembo & Gibson, 1985). Teachers with high self-efficacy are more likely to overcome challenges in teaching (Goddard, 2002); to motivate students to set difficult goals (Goddard & Goddard, 2001); and to help students with different abilities and interests (Betts & Frost, 2000). They also tend to use instructional materials more effectively in their teaching and hold higher expectations for their students. There is also high correlation between teaching behaviors and increased student achievements (Rimm-Kaufman & Sawyer, 2004; Shaughnessy, 2004). According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy develops from a subject's appraisal of past experience with the task or with activities similar to it. However, perceptions of efficacy can be modified by other sources of information such as observing performances of others. Given that self-efficacy is more related to teachers' achievement and inner ability than experience itself (Chambers, 2003); teacher education programs can no longer prepare teachers by transmitting knowledge and giving ready-made teaching materials (Kim, 2004). It is more important for teacher educators to facilitate prospective teachers to develop high self-efficacy in teaching different content areas.

In addition to teachers' self-efficacy, it is widely believed that teachers' subject knowledge influences teaching effectiveness and student performance. Therefore, subject knowledge has been considered as an important part of teacher preparation. Like other professionals who possess a body of knowledge unique to their profession, teachers need to master the essential content, skills, and strategies required for effective teaching (Gerges, 2001). Previous studies have found that a teacher's subject-matter competency is the prime indicator of student learning or achievement (Lin, Gorrell, & Taylor, 2002; Muijs & Reynolds, 2002; Mullins, 1993) and should be the major component of teacher preparation (Reimer, 1993). However, few studies have focused on pre-service teachers' knowledge, self-efficacy and their ability to teach music.

Purpose of Study and Research Questions

The purpose of the study is to identify pre-service teachers' attitudes on expectations and self-efficacy in teaching music. Specifically, the study focused on the following research questions:

* What are the attitudes of pre-service teachers regarding the importance (or lack thereof) of incorporating music in the classrooms?

* What are the attitudes of pre-service teachers in early childhood and elementary education program regarding the teachers' efficacy towards teaching music in classroom?

* What degree of self-efficacy regarding musical content and pedagogical knowledge is demonstrated by pre-service teachers?

* What degree of self-efficacy regarding teaching of musical concepts is demonstrated by pre-service teachers?

Methodology

In this study, surveys were distributed to students in a music education course the first week of class for multiple semesters. The purpose of the study was explained to the students and they were invited to participate in the study voluntarily. They were instructed to keep the survey anonymous to ensure confidentiality of their responses. The survey consisted of thirty-four 5-point Likert scale questions. It was created by reviewing different sections of existing instruments (Bandura, 1989; Betz & Hackett, 1983; Pajares & Miller, 1994). It was divided into four major sections. The first section focused on their opinions towards the importance of incorporating music into early childhood and elementary school curriculum. In the second section, participants were asked about their expectations of what classroom teachers should be able to do with music in their classrooms in general. The third section was related to their familiarity with musical concepts and pedagogical knowledge. The fourth section asked questions about perceptions on their efficacies in teaching musical concepts to children of different age levels. The reliability Cronbach alpha of the survey is 0.92.

Data Collection

The survey was distributed at the beginning of the first class and 196 pre-service teachers voluntarily participated in this study. The response rate was 96%. A vast majority of the participants were in the third year of the undergraduate program because they were enrolled in a 300-level Early Childhood Education or Elementary Education course. As student-teaching starts in the fourth year, none of them had any prior classroom exposure. All of the participants had completed foundational coursework in social and development psychology. They had not taken any musical content or method courses at the time data was collected. Most of the participants do not play a musical instrument. Less than 10 percent of the participants claimed that they could play at least one musical instrument. The average age of the pre-service teachers is 25 years old. Most of them are under 24 years old (70.9%), and there are also about 10 percent of them who are over 40 years old. Among the 149 participants from the elementary program, there are 6 male participants and 143 female participants. All 47 participants from the early childhood program are female.

Data Analysis and Results

Attitudes towards music integration. As the participants showed high expectations about teachers' efficacy in teaching music, it is not difficult to understand why they also perceived that it is important for children to have musical experience in their learning process. More than 90% of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed that it is important for children to learn music, with an average of 4.50. Also, they think that music should be incorporated into different types of learning. For example, music should be used in helping to learn other subjects, like learning alphabets (4.55); in helping to relate to a theme, like animals and plants (4.37); and in learning the musical concept itself (4.24).

Expectations on classroom teachers' efficacy. There were twelve statements in this section that tried to find out the pre-service teachers' opinions towards classroom teachers and teaching music. Overall, the participants have high expectations on what teacher should be able to do with their children using music. Their average rating fell between strongly agree and agree in teachers should: like music (4.23), be comfortable in teaching music to children (4.17), feel or respond to music (4.17), be able to teach music to children (4.01) and be musically knowledgeable (4.00). They also expect teachers to: be familiar with music teaching methods (3.97) and know musical concepts (3.95). However, even though they believe that classroom teachers should be comfortable in teaching music, they do not seem to believe that classroom teachers should possess musical skills such as reading musical notes (3.12) or playing musical instruments (2.73) respectively.

Self-efficacy regarding musical knowledge. In general, participants reported that they like music very much, with an average of 4.74. Also, nearly 45% of them perceived themselves as musical and almost 30% believed that they are good at music. When asked about their understanding of music, nearly hall of them agreed that they are musically knowledgeable. As the participants did not have any prior Music Education experience, the percentage of them who believed that they are good at music is relatively high. However, they did not show the same positive attitudes regarding to their understanding in musical concepts, such as: timbre, rhythm/beat, tempo, dynamics, pitch, melody, harmony, and form. When asked if they know the above musical concepts, 83 percent of them do not know timbre, almost 80 percent do not know dynamic and 84 percent do not know what form is. In addition, about 60 to 70 percent of them showed that they do not know rhythm/beat, melody and harmony.

Teaching efficacy regarding musical knowledge. The participants showed some confidence in teaching music children, even before any Music Education. Over half of them believed that they can teach music to children from pre-kindergarten to second grade. However, only 25 percent of the participants think that they can teach music to children from third to fifth grade. In teaching musical concepts, they did not show the same confidence. Most of them perceived that they cannot teach form, timbre and dynamic (over 80%). More than 60% of the participants said that they cannot teach the children harmony, tempo and pitch. For melody and rhythm/beat, almost 60% and 45% of the participants did not think that they can teach these concepts respectively. As all participants did not have any prior formal music education, a vast majority of them showed that they are not familiar with various teaching methods in music. Four different types of teaching methods were mentioned in the survey, Dalcroze, Kodaly, Orff and Suzuki. Over 98 percent of all participants indicated that they are not familiar with these music teaching methods.

Discussion and Implication

The results of the study showed that pre-service teachers have high expectations on music integration and classroom teachers' efficacy to teach music in the classrooms. However, pre-service teachers did not perceive themselves to have content and pedagogical knowledge of music and to be capable of teaching musical concepts. Another interesting discrepancy was seen between musical content knowledge and self-efficacy in teaching music. These results may give following implications

Musical knowledge and efficacy. Since early childhood and elementary school teachers are not expected to be music specialists, most pre-service teachers who enter into the program are lack of musical knowledge and skills. This may be due to the school system and policy that place less emphasis on music program (Lee, 1997; Russell-Bowie, 1993). Previous studies (Lowman, 1996; Rimm-Kaufman & Sawyer, 2004; Shaughnessy, 2004) suggested that teachers' knowledge base in other subject areas, such as math and science, is correlated to students' performances. The result of these studies implies that teachers' lack of knowledge will affect students' achievement. Even with the lack of support to music education in elementary school level, research studies still suggest that music fosters children's musical intelligence and developmental skills; not only in music but also in other areas such as language skills (Beaton, 1995; Feierabend, 1990; Szabo, 1999). From previous research and the results of this study, we may draw the consecutive statements: a) music is important in education, b) it is less emphasized and lacks support from school system, c) pre-service teachers enter classrooms with limited musical knowledge, and d) teachers' lack of efficacy will lead to students' lower achievement.

Transferring musical knowledge to pedagogy. Another important finding of this study was that, even with knowledge, teachers do not feel confident to teach what they know. This result gives additional implications to teacher educators. For instance, pre-service teachers who have musical content knowledge from their musical background still need to learn pedagogical knowledge to translate content knowledge to classroom pedagogy. Teacher education program should begin with what pre-service teachers already know rather than standardized, programmed knowledge and skills (Clandinin, 2000). Learning to teach should become a process of reflecting previous knowledge and re-constructing knowledge so that it can fit to the practice in the educational context.

In conclusion, pre-service teachers have high expectations on what teachers should be able to do with music in classrooms. They also believed that music should be incorporated into different aspects of school curriculum. However, most of them are lack of the content and pedagogical knowledge in music and they showed low self-efficacy in teaching music. As they expect classroom teachers to teach music, they would expect themselves to be able to teach music in the future. Therefore, teacher educators should help pre-service teachers to fill the gap between their high expectations and lack of self-efficacy in teaching music in the classrooms. Teacher education programs should provide content specific and pedagogical knowledge in order to help pre-service teachers to integrate musical knowledge in the classrooms.

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Jinyoung Kim, College of Staten Island/The City University of New York, NY Doris Choy, College of Staten Island/The City University of New York, NY

Jinyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education, and Doris Choy, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, are from the Department of Education at College of Staten Island/ The City University of New York