Transition from Student to Teacher: Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices

Abstract

This literature review examines research focusing on preservice music teachers’ developing beliefs about teaching and the ways those beliefs influence their practices. Dewey’s theory of experience suggests that experience influences beliefs, and studies of preservice music teachers support this theory. Music education researchers have examined sources of preservice teachers’ beliefs and the challenges for teacher educators in helping preservice teachers identify and articulate them. Studies are also reviewed documenting methods that music teacher educators have explored in helping preservice teachers link their beliefs with teaching practices in methods courses and early teaching experiences. Future research could examine the longitudinal development of beliefs from preservice through in-service teaching and effective methods for assessing preservice teachers’ development. Further research is also needed in preparing teachers with the desire and the skills needed to address the needs of culturally and musically diverse students.

Keywords

preservice teacher development preservice teacher beliefs preservice teacher perceptions music teacher preparation music methods

Thirty-five years ago, Lortie (1975) found that long before entering their own classrooms, teachers have developed beliefs about “good” teaching. He suggested that these ideas are based on their participation in an apprenticeship of observation (p. 61), accumulating more than 13,000 hours of experience as students in others’ classrooms. Similarly, Woodford (2002) identified primary socialization as the time in childhood when ideas about teaching and learning are formed through interactions with “significant others, such as family members, teachers, or others with whom individuals identify emotionally” (p. 676). A substantial body of research in music teacher education supports Lortie and Woodford, finding that preservice music teachers will enter our programs with ideas about more and less effective teaching practices. These beliefs, which may be firmly and often unconsciously held, are important to recognize for their impact on preservice teachers’ practices and learning. Other articles in this issue address this topic from the perspectives of socialization and developmental theories; Tami Draves’s article presents much of the research on learning from experiences as a student teacher. In this article, I examine research that focuses on preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching. In the first section, I discuss processes through which beliefs develop, sources of those beliefs, and methods of making these beliefs explicit. Next, I consider research exploring ways that music teacher educators have guided preservice teachers in connecting their beliefs and teaching practices, through teaching experiences in methods courses and other venues, self-assessment and feedback from others, and relationships with important others. In the final section, I suggest directions for further research.

Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs

Surveys of teachers’ beliefs about effective music teaching (e.g., Bergee, 1992; Button, 2010; Kelly, 2010; Kemp, 1982; Taebel, 1980; Teachout, 1997) often ask respondents to rate the importance of characteristics in a list presented by the researchers. The results of these surveys have offered insights into teachers’ self-reported perceptions about the importance of specific musical and personal skills in their teaching. However, they provide little information about the reasoning teachers give to support their perceptions or about whether or how effectively the respondents demonstrate their beliefs in their actual practice. Another body of research examines the origins and longitudinal development of preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the resulting practices; these studies are the primary focus of this article. In this section, I present Dewey’s (1933/1998) theory of experience as an explanation of the ways individuals develop beliefs about teaching. Following this, I discuss research exploring the sources of preservice music teachers’ beliefs and some of the means music teacher educators have studied to assist preservice teachers in uncovering and consciously articulating their beliefs.

The Development of Experience-Based Beliefs

Researchers in both general teacher education (e.g., Britzman, 1985; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985; Knowles, 1992; Weinstein, 1989) and music teacher education (e.g., Dolloff, 1999; Rideout & Feldman, 2002; Schmidt, 1998) have provided ample documentation that preservice teachers will enter teacher education programs with individually held ideas about more and less effective teaching practices. Researchers have also demonstrated that preservice teachers filter their learning in the preservice program through these preexisting beliefs, whether that filtering takes place outside their conscious thought or through conscious experiences, with guidance from instructors and other mentors, or through self-directed growth (e.g., Bernard, 2009; Conkling, 2003; Dolloff, 1999; Haston & Leon-Guerrero, 2008; Richards, 1999; Schmidt, 1998).

Two of John Dewey’s books, How We Think (1933/1998) and Experience and Education (1938/1963), offer one possible understanding of the links between students’ experiences and their learning. Dewey (1933/1998) suggested that every experience may be educative, miseducative, or noneducative. Noneducative experiences include those experiences that have little consequence for the learner, for example, a lecture on classroom management that a preservice teacher interprets as irrelevant or boring, and thus dismisses and forgets. In miseducative experiences, the learner forms understandings or beliefs that interfere with further learning, as when a preservice teacher, drawing on an experience-based belief that learning should be always “fun” for students, acts in ways that fail to promote effective classroom management. In contrast, educative experiences help the learner develop beliefs and understandings that facilitate further learning, for example, an experience in a classroom where, guided by and reflecting with a more experienced teacher, a preservice teacher develops understandings of effective classroom management and applies them appropriately in practice.

As Clift and Brady (2005) noted, connections between learning opportunities in a university program and the beliefs and practices that preservice teachers develop are far from straightforward:

Although researchers report that methods courses and field experiences have an impact on prospective teachers’ beliefs about content, learning, and teaching, it is difficult to predict what impact a specific course or experience may have; the impact is often different from what instructors or student teaching supervisors may imagine or wish. (p. 331)

Dewey’s (1933/1998) theory may help explain Clift and Brady’s (2005) observation that despite participating in the same program, preservice teachers at a given institution do not all adopt identical beliefs and practices. While enrolled at the university, prospective teachers continue to interpret and process their ongoing experiences through their prior beliefs, influencing what they choose to or are able to learn from their experiences in the university program.

Sources of Beliefs

Music teacher education researchers have examined the origins and focuses of preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching. For example, Cox (2002) constructed a group biography of 10 music student teachers and found that their understandings of the music teaching profession were formed from family influences, music learning experiences, ideas about university and career choice, and early teaching experiences. The four student teachers in Schmidt’s (1998) study relied on trusted models, such as previous teachers, studio teachers, university ensemble directors, cooperating teachers, and music education faculty, in their choices of instructional strategies. However, they were primarily guided by the goal of “‘being myself’ as a teacher,” against which they evaluated all other potential models (p. 36). Ferguson (2003) created detailed descriptions of the developing perceptions of four music education majors teaching elementary string students in a university String Project. She documented influences of their previous teaching and performing experiences, as well as influences from their family backgrounds, on the ways that they filtered advice offered by more experienced teachers and on the practices they chose to employ in their String Project teaching.

Researchers have also focused on the origins of specific aspects of preservice teachers’ beliefs. For example, Schmidt (2005) examined preservice teachers’ planning for classes and private lessons in a university String Project. She found that they drew largely on their own learning styles to guide their planning—or lack thereof—for their students and failed to draw on pedagogical techniques presented in a freshman-year string techniques class. She speculated that perhaps they were still so focused on developing content knowledge of string playing that they were unable to attend to aspects of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). In contrast, Haston and Leon-Guerrero (2008) asked six preservice teachers to identify the sources of their PCK, as observed in videos of their own teaching. All of the preservice teachers cited apprenticeship of observation as the source of some of their applications of PCK, with each one attributing varying proportions of observed instances to intuition, methods courses, and the cooperating teacher. Brewer (2009) found a similar mix of influences on five preservice teachers’ understandings of effective music teaching. His analysis identified three broad categories of beliefs about effective teaching held by the participants: personal skills and qualities, teaching skills and knowledge, and musical skills and knowledge. Focusing her study on preservice teachers’ conceptions of teaching effectiveness, Butler (2001) found comparable categories of beliefs, which she identified as teacher traits, instructional skills, and knowledge.

Austin and Reinhardt (1999) questioned whether six universities’ teacher education programs influenced preservice teachers’ original beliefs about music education philosophy and advocacy and found little evidence of change. In addition, researchers have studied the effects of experiences in methods courses on preservice teachers’ attitudes about teaching specific content or types of students, for example, strings (Mishra, 2005), improvisation (Ward-Steinman, 2007), creativity (Crow, 2008), general music (M. Robinson, 2010), and children with special needs (Cassidy & Colwell, 2012; Hourigan, 2007, 2009; Salvador, 2010; VanWeelden & Whipple, 2005, 2007). Together, these studies demonstrate the complex mix of influences that may affect the ways that preservice teachers construct understandings of teaching from a variety of experiences. They also suggest the importance of acknowledging potential differences in individuals’ beliefs when designing learning situations for prospective teachers (Ferguson, 2004).

Uncovering and Articulating Beliefs

The works of John Dewey (1933/1998, 1938/1963) and Donald Schön (1987) have prompted extensive discussion of reflective thinking as a means to helping preservice teachers articulate and examine their beliefs. Both Schön and Dewey recognized that reflection on one’s own direct experiences is essential for educative learning of ideas, concepts, or understandings. They both identified certain qualities as essential to reflective thought. First, something puzzling or surprising occurs, forcing the learner to question and “suspend” his or her existing beliefs or understandings. Then, the learner must search for and consider multiple options for resolving the puzzle and, finally, must actively test the various options, considering possible consequences of each; Dewey (1933/1998) suggested that the “intellectual attitudes” of open-mindedness, whole-heartedness, and responsibility (pp. 29-33) facilitated this reflection.

Schön (1987) identified a “paradox” for novices learning skills that depend on acquired experience: “a student cannot at first understand what he needs to learn, can learn it only by educating himself, and can educate himself only by beginning to do what he does not understand” (p. 93). This lack of experience can make it difficult for novices to identify appropriate foci for reflection in their early teaching experiences. A beginner may be overwhelmed by all the activity in a classroom, leading to a sense that “these things are obvious to everyone but me,” that the experienced teacher has special understanding that cannot be explained, or that the novice has “not learned to ask the right questions” to penetrate the mysteries of professional knowledge (Schön, 1987, p. 98). A number of studies of preservice and early-career music teachers provide vivid examples of these feelings of insecurity and confusion (e.g., Fredrickson & Pembrook, 1999, 2002; Kelly, 2000; Robbins, 1999; Schmidt & Knowles, 1995; Tarnowski, 1997). Barrett (1999) suggests that such “outcroppings of uncertainty or confusion often signal the breakup of old forms of knowledge, which can lead to significant restructuring of teachers’ beliefs” (p. 35). She considers this uncertainty to be an opportunity for music teacher educators to help preservice teachers articulate, reflect on, and challenge their existing beliefs.

To help in this process, teacher educators have invited preservice teachers to articulate models, metaphors, and images of teaching. Rosaen and Florio-Ruane (2008) provided a thorough review of this research in general teacher education. Similar research in music teacher education suggests that different preservice teachers may view teaching as guiding growth, transmitting knowledge, facilitating learning, nurturing, or sharing; for example, Thompson and Campbell’s (2003) students developed metaphors for teacher, such as ship captain, filling station, bumblebee, cheerleader, or police. Dolloff (1999) asked students to write stories of memorable teachers, create metaphors for themselves as young teachers, and draw pictures of their ideal teacher to help identify mismatches between their beliefs and their teaching practices. She found that these assignments provided her with helpful understandings of her students’ developing professional identities and the teachers they hoped to become. Dolloff recommended additional research to explore how these preservice teachers linked their beliefs with their teaching practice as they continued through the program.

Harwood and Wiggins (2001) also asked preservice teachers to draw pictures of teachers, finding that many of them held conceptions of teacher as performer with children as audience, as well as conceptions of lesson plans as “standard operating procedure” to be followed (p. 35). These metaphors appeared to limit preservice teachers’ imagination and responsiveness to children. Harwood and Wiggins began to promote conceptions of lesson planning as comparable to composing or designing a problem for students to solve. These alternative metaphors enabled the preservice teachers to develop and teach more creative and productive lessons. In contrast, rather than attempting to emulate an image of teacher as performer, the seven preservice choral teachers in Conkling’s (2003) study were helped by following processes similar to those they used to learn to perform: They sought expert models, practiced their teaching between classes, and requested feedback, especially from peers, in developing their personal pedagogies.

In addition to identifying metaphors, images, or conceptions of teaching, structured observation of classrooms may guide preservice teachers toward reflection that influences the development of their beliefs about effective teaching. Walls and Samuels’s (2011) participants used collaboratively developed observation guides to effectively engage preservice teachers in observing interactions among in-service teachers and their students. Preservice teachers in the classes of Miranda, Robbins, and Stauffer (2007) created portraits of their field experience classrooms, describing their cooperating teachers’ opinions and practices, comparing them with the voices of experts and children in those classrooms, and ultimately articulating their own beliefs. Barrett and Rasmussen (1996) asked preservice teachers to reflect on their own participation in a third-grade music lesson, compared with watching a video of the same lesson taught to third graders by an experienced teacher and an interview with the teacher following the lesson. They also discussed various components that contribute to an educational experience. These different lenses for viewing the same lesson helped shape the preservice teachers’ emerging understandings of the purposes and practices of music education.

Music teacher educators have reported a variety of other assignments that may help prospective educators reflect on and make their beliefs about teaching more explicit. They have asked preservice teachers to complete various guided reflection assignments, such as electronic journals (Conkling, 2003), guided verbal reflections (Stegman, 2007), autobiographical narratives (Bernard, 2009), structured written reflections (Stegman, 2001), structured or unstructured interviews (Conkling, 2003; Stegman, 2007), or written or electronic portfolios (Bauer & Dunn, 2003; Tarnowski, 1997). Music teacher educators have also found case studies, written by or for preservice music teachers, to be useful. Hourigan (2008) learned that cases written by preservice teachers promoted reflection and identity formation but required time, discussion, and peer feedback to be optimally useful. Lind (2001) summarized research on case studies in general teacher education, and Conway (1999) studied the classrooms of four expert teachers; both proposed guidelines for music teacher educators wishing to design case studies for their classes. Campbell (1999) collaborated with a preservice teacher in reflecting on her experience and found the process valuable for his own understandings of the ways preservice teachers’ perceptions develop; Bernard (2009) found similar benefits for her teaching by conducting narrative analysis of her students’ autobiographical writing. Of the researchers who have explored reflection as a means to assist the development of teaching practice, some have proposed that the ability to reflect may be developmental, at least in some aspects (Conkling, 2003; Harwood, 1999; Hourigan & Scheib, 2009; Kerchner, 2006; Stegman, 2007).

Summary: Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs

The research presented in the three previous sections suggests that preservice teachers enter professional teacher education programs with a number of beliefs about teachers’ work and about the kind of teacher they wish to become, based on their years of experience as students observing their own teachers. Their beliefs may be strongly held and may shape their learning throughout the university program, as they continue to develop their beliefs from a variety of sources, including methods courses, observation of in-service teachers, and their own teaching experience. I also discussed approaches that music teacher educators have explored in helping preservice teachers make explicit and reflect on their beliefs. The next section presents research that examines experiences that may help prospective music educators make thoughtful connections between their beliefs and teaching practices.

Interactions Between Beliefs and Practices

Both preservice and in-service music teachers consistently rate actual teaching experiences as the most valuable aspect of their teacher education programs (Bauer & Berg, 2001; Fredrickson & Pembrook, 2002; Teachout, 1997; Thompson, 2000). However, as Dewey (1933/1998, 1938/1963) suggested, not all experiences are equally educative; therefore, music teacher educators continue to explore experiences that may be the most effective in helping preservice teachers articulate their beliefs and integrate them with productive classroom practices. Research reported in this section includes studies examining ways to assist preservice teachers in challenging their beliefs and connecting them with their teaching practice, through teaching experiences in methods courses, teaching experiences beyond methods courses, feedback and guided self-assessment, and important relationships.

Teaching Experiences in Methods Courses

Researchers have extensively examined the effect of teaching experience embedded within or concurrent with a methods course on preservice teachers’ developing beliefs and practices. This includes peer teaching or other authentic context-learning activities. These researchers have found that any of these teaching experiences have the potential to shape preservice teachers’ beliefs and practices, but they have also identified some inherent challenges.

Peer teaching has been shown to offer useful learning experiences for preservice music teachers. Several researchers have compared the impacts of peer teaching with those of teaching in a classroom. Butler (2001) used concept maps, interviews, and self-evaluations to compare preservice teachers’ conceptions of effective music teaching before and after two microteaching experiences, one with peers and one with a select elementary choir. She found subtle but noticeable changes in their understandings of teaching, as well as “hints” of “a connection between what preservice teachers deem important and their ability to translate that knowledge into effective behaviors” (p. 269). Powell (2011) specifically sought to compare preservice teachers’ self-assessments of peer teaching with self-assessments of themselves teaching the same lesson to a seventh-grade band class. Like Paul (1998), he found that the preservice teachers believed that peer teaching allowed them to refine their delivery skills, but they also valued classroom teaching for the opportunities to teach in an authentic context and learn more about the achievement levels and responses of the children. However, preservice teachers in these and other studies (e.g., Brewer, 2009; Schmidt, 2010) believed that although peer teaching allowed them to develop and refine some specific instructional skills, actual classroom teaching provided considerably more learning. Richards (1999) suggested that peer teaching may not effectively challenge students’ beliefs because their limited teaching experience may impede their ability to see connections between teaching peers and teaching children (p. 37).

Researchers have found that field experiences that are specifically integrated with methods courses have potential for influencing preservice teachers’ beliefs and practices (Clift & Brady, 2005; Richards, 1999). Robbins (1999) identified strategies that teacher educators may use to help preservice teachers connect their thinking during lesson planning with their “in-flight decision making,” revising their plans in the moment as needed to respond to the children in their classroom teaching experiences. Haston and Russell (2012) and Hunter, Fuster, Suta, and Trincanati (2009) found that opportunities to teach young students specifically connected to instrumental methods courses promoted learning and development of professional identity. In addition to better understandings of themselves as teachers, these preservice teachers developed more clear perceptions of general pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of self, although Haston and Russell (2012) found examples of both adaptive and maladaptive responses to challenges encountered in teaching. The preservice teachers also began to apply their growing understanding of teaching processes to practicing their own instruments, and they “extended their apprenticeship of observation through demonstrated critical thinking about their [previous and current] teachers’ actions and thought processes” (Haston & Russell, p. 382).

Conkling (2004) described the experiences of preservice teachers, in-service teachers, and university faculty as they worked closely together in a professional development school as a component of a methods course. Through teaching experience, observations, and guided discussions, the preservice teachers were able to recognize their beliefs about teaching and teacher identity as multifaceted and malleable and to embrace the “uncertainty” and “possibility” of practices that “transgress what is and evoke what might be” in the school (p. 12). Other studies of professional development schools have shown similar positive influence, and have offered recommendations for strengthening the experience (Conkling, 2003; Henry, 2001). Another form of early field experience, service learning, has been explored and, when correlated with on-campus coursework, has been found to be effective in helping preservice teachers develop clearer understandings of teaching connected with their practices (Burton & Reynolds, 2009; Reynolds, 2003; Reynolds & Conway, 2003; Reynolds, Jerome, Preston, & Haynes, 2005; Siebenaler, 2005).

A limited number of studies in music teacher education have explored the outcomes of courses specifically designed to encourage preservice teachers’ beliefs about and openness to working with students of diverse racial and ethnic cultures and backgrounds. Standley (2000) compared the effectiveness of a curriculum designed to promote tolerance with one representing traditional music education course content. She found that the diversity content increased preservice music teachers’ comfort levels with others representing diverse populations and abilities and increased their willingness to confront others who use racial, ethnic, or religious slurs. Emmanuel (2005) and Henry and Emmanuel (2009) describe the power of intensive immersion experiences on preservice teachers’ understandings of teaching and learning within different cultural contexts. Following a 1-week orientation at the university, Emmanuel (2005) and five preservice teachers (one biracial and four White women) spent 2 weeks living and teaching in a culturally diverse community. This intensive internship, including readings and discussion with Emmanuel, facilitated the development of greater intercultural competence and helped the participants become more aware of their own positions of privilege as aspiring music teachers. The preservice teachers in Neill’s (2004) course experienced similar growth in beliefs about their own attitudes toward and abilities to work with children in an urban school. During the semester, they witnessed the children’s growth from not enjoying music to staging a successful concert. Preservice teachers in Henry and Emmanuel’s (2009) course studied Kodály pedagogy in conjunction with learning about Hungarian culture, history, and music history, followed by an 8-day immersion experience in Hungary. Both these experiences had a marked influence on preservice teachers’ beliefs about themselves and their students, as well as shaping their teaching practices. Hourigan (2007) found that preservice teachers’ perceptions of special needs students became more positive following a field experience that included these students. In contrast, Cassidy and Colwell (2012) identified the difficulty of challenging preservice teachers and music therapists’ beliefs about the value of including children with cerebral palsy in a musical production.

Other studies of field experiences have demonstrated more mixed outcomes. For example, citing a long line of teacher education research documenting a lack of connection between field experiences and methods courses, Abrahams (2009) used a critical grounded theory approach to study a secondary music methods course that he himself taught, to determine whether he could strengthen that connection for the preservice teachers enrolled in the course. He found that all the preservice teachers believed the course was useful in helping them develop their emerging dispositions for teaching from a critical stance. However, they struggled with reconciling differences between what they were learning in the course and their cooperating teachers’ practices. Bergee (2006) found that preservice teachers experienced similar frustrations with discrepancies between strategies advocated in the methods course and teacher practices in their field experience sites. Several studies followed the same preservice teachers through two or more semesters of different methods courses and field experiences (e.g., Brewer, 2009; Henninger & Scott, 2010; Killian & Dye, 2009; McDowell, 2007; Paise, 2010; Schmidt, 2010); they also documented the need to strengthen connections between experiences in methods courses and in the field, so that the beliefs and practices developed in preservice education are not “washed out” by teaching experience in schools (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985).

Teaching Experiences Beyond Method Courses

Many preservice teachers arrange their own opportunities to teach private lessons or music classes. These teaching experiences are not specifically connected with any university coursework and offer varying degrees of guidance for those who teach in them, but they have been shown to be important sources of preservice teachers’ developing beliefs and practices. Hourigan and Scheib (2009), Brewer (2009), Ferguson (2003), and Schmidt (2005, 2008) describe music education majors who taught marching band, drum corps, string classes, and/or private lessons as freelance teachers. The preservice teachers in these studies demonstrated highly individualized perspectives on their developing teaching practices, in their own ways making connections—or not—between learning from their experiences beyond their methods courses with their learning from university coursework. Although many aspects of such self-arranged teaching experiences are beyond music teacher educators’ control, all these researchers join Brewer (2009) in recommending that methods course instructors “embrace them and make conscious to both ourselves and the preservice teachers that connections exist between” these outside venues and content offered in the music teacher preparation program (p. 306).

Self-Assessment and Feedback

Discrepancies often exist between the things that experienced and preservice teachers notice in observations of their own or others’ teaching (Fredrickson & Pembrook, 2002; Madsen & Cassidy, 2005; Pembrook & Fredrickson, 2000/2001). Dorfman (2010) compared expert assessments of the time preservice teachers spent in setting up, teacher talk, teacher modeling, and student playing in small group instrumental lessons with the preservice teachers’ self-assessments of their teaching. He found that the preservice teachers spent about half of the lesson time talking and that those who talked more had more negative attitudes about the overall effectiveness of the lessons. Although Dorfman suggested that this could indicate the preservice teachers recognized that much talking and little modeling limited their ability to accomplish the lesson objectives, he recommended additional research to explore their actual perceptions. Standley and Madsen (1991) asked preservice, novice, experienced, and expert teachers to observe 20 videotaped excerpts of music classes. They found that relevant comments by the four teacher groups generally increased with experience and expertise. However, adding evidence to Dewey’s (1933/1998, 1938/1963) theory that experience does not necessarily lead to learning, the observation task they designed effectively discriminated experienced and expert teachers’ level of pedagogical expertise, as independent from years of teaching experience or musical knowledge and skills. They suggested that the task could provide a framework for further research to identify or evaluate music educators’ level of expertise.

To assist preservice teachers in developing observation skills, studies have explored the effectiveness of forms of self-assessment, particularly guided video viewing of their peer teaching or teaching in the field. For example, Henninger and Scott (2010) found that preservice teachers’ comments about videos of their own teaching, as well as their students’ musical performances and social behaviors, became more positive over the course of two semesters of field experience. The researchers noted that the preservice teachers focused many more comments (75%) on their own teaching than on their students’ responses (25%); it appears from the report that only the researchers were aware of this comparative emphasis. Three student teachers in Burrack’s (2001) study were motivated to improve their instruction through video self-confrontation. Burrack noted that the supervisor’s familiarity with the student teacher’s background and beliefs aided growth, helping connect with and build on the student teacher’s own understandings.

Researchers have also used journals, interviews, and/or other guided forms of self-assessment to examine preservice teachers’ perceptions of their own strengths and areas for growth. Fredrickson and Pembrook asked preservice teachers engaged in field experience (2002) and student teaching (1999) to journal their predictions about the day ahead, a short description of what they did, and the best and worst aspects of that day. For both groups, the best aspect of the day most often mentioned getting to teach, reinforcing other findings that preservice teachers value actual teaching experience (e.g., Bauer & Berg, 2001; Schmidt, 2010; Teachout, 1997). These studies did not solicit perceptions of the preservice teachers’ work from the mentor/cooperating teachers for comparison; Fredrickson and Pembrook (2002) suggested that more guided feedback from the mentor teacher could be helpful in focusing the preservice teachers’ attention on the poor music making and personal teaching competencies absent from their self-perceptions. Electronic portfolios appear to promote preservice teachers’ self-assessment of personal and professional growth, both within a specific course (Berg & Lind, 2003) and over the length of the teacher education program (Bauer & Dunn, 2003; Thornton, Ferris, Johnson, Kidwai, & Ching, 2011). In these studies, the researchers found that preservice teachers experienced technological challenges with electronic portfolios and demonstrated relatively surface levels of reflection. However, they also found promise in the portfolio process and offered suggestions for others considering using electronic portfolios as a component of a music teacher education program.

Other studies have examined types of feedback given and their impact. Chaffin and Manfredo (2010) found that the preservice teachers in their study appreciated oral feedback about their teaching of middle school band students and valued written feedback as a reminder of the information given orally. They also valued group feedback, where they could hear from the other preservice teachers about their more and less effective teaching experiences. Fant (1996) examined early field experiences, both curricular and noncurricular, and found a significant correlation between those field experiences with feedback and effective student teaching performance, supported by a significant negative correlation between early field experiences without feedback and student teaching effectiveness. In contrast, Paul et al. (2001) found that student teaching effectiveness was not significantly correlated with receiving extensive feedback through viewing teaching videos with a coach. Paul et al. suggested that didactic feedback may actually result in rejection by the preservice teacher, and they recommend that future studies examine the quality and appropriateness of feedback offered.

Relationships

As music teacher educators have recognized that preservice teachers themselves play an active part in their own development, researchers have documented that the quality of relationships with cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and other mentors, as well as with students, is very important (Draves, 2008a, 2008b; Stegman, 2007; Zemek, 2008). Ferguson (2004) found that two student teachers filtered feedback in idiosyncratic ways, based on their prior beliefs about themselves, others, and the world, along with their relationships with the feedback providers. Their practices and their feedback to their own students were shaped by the feedback they chose to see and hear; Ferguson suggested that trusting relationships may have helped these preservice teachers develop the self-awareness and reflection skills needed to more openly consider feedback. Campbell and Brummett (2007) offered suggestions for mentors, including university music education faculty, student teaching supervisors, and cooperating teachers in schools that host interns in early field experiences and student teaching. They proposed a collaborative model, a “culture of mentoring,” where all parties involved create a nurturing environment that “encourages questioning, acknowledges [preservice teachers’] developmental phases, and helps them construct their own knowledge of teaching and learning based on continuous inquiry” (p. 55). Liebhaber (2003) similarly recommended that mentoring relationships may be stronger when all participants (student teacher, cooperating teacher, and university supervisor) believe that they can learn things from the other participants.

Summary: Interactions Between Beliefs and Practices

In this section, I have discussed research identifying ways that preservice music teachers’ beliefs shape and are shaped by their developing teaching practices. These studies have found that preservice teachers value opportunities to learn from actual teaching experiences and that peer teaching, field experiences, and freelance teaching experiences may contribute to development of understandings of and skills for teaching, if explicit connections are made with university coursework. However, researchers have also documented that teaching experiences may be, in Dewey’s (1933/1998) terms, educative, noneducative, or miseducative. In attempting to offset non- and miseducative learning, music teacher educators have explored the use of various forms of self-assessment, feedback, live and recorded observation of self and other teachers, journals, or portfolios. These different formats have not only offered useful windows into preservice teachers’ beliefs and choice of practices but also revealed complexities of the idiosyncratic ways that preservice teachers process what they learn from their experiences.

The studies discussed here demonstrate that preservice teachers benefit from learning to analyze the effectiveness of their beliefs and practices. However, they also document the idiosyncratic nature of their development and the consistent, individualized, time-intensive work needed to help them articulate their beliefs so that both they and we can consider their usefulness. Researchers cited here present many useful strategies. As teacher educators, we will each need to carefully consider the content and emphases of our courses, attempting to balance developing essential teaching practices with articulating beliefs and expanding habits of thought (see also National Association of Schools of Music, 2011). We can join Thompson (2009) in asking “To what extent does an emphasis on mastery or coverage differ from helping our undergraduates to uncover understanding?” (p. 1).

The body of research presented in this article has examined complex aspects of the development of preservice music teachers’ beliefs and practices, suggesting that these arise from interactions among individual preservice teachers, their experiences, and significant others, both within and far beyond our classes. Although researchers have identified many useful tools, a continuing challenge is that studying those interrelationships in context is a very messy business. The following section offers suggestions for continued research.

Recommendations for Further Research

Based on the studies in this article, it is clear that music teacher educators and researchers have explored and identified a number of influences that shape prospective teachers’ beliefs and practices. These researchers have documented the experience-based origins of preservice teachers’ beliefs, and they have proposed approaches for uncovering and examining those beliefs. In addition, they have explored many useful methods for helping preservice teachers better align their beliefs with effective practices. Their work demonstrates that influences on novices’ development are context bound, tightly interrelated, and not easily isolated for study. However, their reports also provide sufficient contextual information to assist music teacher educators in determining whether or how to apply the findings in their own work. Because preservice teachers each individually construct their own learning within a variety of specific contexts, more studies in different university programs that explore the same or similar applications as those described here (e.g., reflection assignments, field experiences, peer teaching, portfolios) can contribute to a larger collection of strategies for teacher educators’ use in designing music education courses and curricula for their own contexts. Additional context-rich studies can also assist teacher educators in better understanding the never-ending—and sometimes puzzling—variety of beliefs that preservice teachers espouse and demonstrate in practice.

I identified at least three broad areas that are currently understudied or absent from the research literature on preservice teachers’ beliefs and practices. First, only a few researchers have attempted to explore relationships between experiences during the university years and teaching practices in student teaching and beyond through longitudinal case studies of individuals (e.g., Conway, Micheel-Mays, & Micheel-Mays, 2005; Hourigan & Scheib, 2009; Paise, 2010; Schmidt & Zenner, 2012). Paul et al. (2001) linked the number of authentic-context learning activities in the preparation program with demonstrated student teaching skills, and Hancock (2003) linked assessed student teaching skills with retention in or attrition from teaching 6 years later; neither study assessed the participants’ teaching practices at both points in time, and neither examined their beliefs about teaching. More longitudinal research is needed, to better understand the complex relationships between preservice teacher beliefs, university experiences, and eventual in-service teaching beliefs and practices.

Second, increasing calls for improving teacher quality (e.g., Louisiana Board of Regents, 2012; What Works Clearinghouse, 2012) have led to more general teacher education research focused on assessing the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs and their graduates. Several music education researchers have asked preservice or in-service teachers to retrospectively evaluate the value of particular components of or teaching skills learned in their teacher preparation programs (e.g., Ballantyne & Packer, 2004; Bauer & Berg, 2001; Teachout, 1997), but none of them attempted to assess those teachers’ actual practices. Additionally, few studies of music teacher preparation programs could really be considered formal “program assessment” (Colwell, 2003). Research in this area is needed, as few examples of valid and reliable assessments of either teacher performance or student learning in the arts currently exist.

Third, preservice teachers generally intend to teach in schools that closely resemble those they themselves attended, primarily suburban schools that serve predominantly Caucasian populations and offer strong elementary general music, band, orchestra, and choir programs (Kelly, 2003). However, even a casual perusal of topics discussed in the past several years of Music Educators Journal suggests that the profession is increasingly aware of the need to prepare teachers to work with a student population that is both culturally and musically more diverse than the music programs in which most preservice teachers have participated. Cultural and musical diversity is a third area in which research on preservice teachers’ beliefs and practices is needed.

The term culturally diverse may include differences in race, ethnicity, family customs, socioeconomic status, preferred language, or physical and mental abilities. These terms are themselves difficult to define in precise ways, complicating issues of study design but not lessening the importance of such research. Beyond the limited number of studies that examine connections between preservice teachers’ experiences and their attitudes about teaching diverse populations (e.g., Bruenger, 2010; Cassidy & Colwell, 2012; Emmanuel, 2005; Henry & Emmanuel, 2009; Hourigan, 2007, 2009; Neill, 2004; VanWeelden & Whipple, 2005, 2007), studies of experienced in-service teachers (e.g., Benham, 2003; Brewer, 2010; Eros, 2009; Fitzpatrick, 2011; K. Robinson, 2006) provide examples of approaches to continued study of these complex issues. A seriously understudied area is the preparation of music educators interested in teaching in small and rural schools; only Bates (2011) and Hunt (2009) have raised this issue.

Preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching more musically diverse students are beginning to be studied in order to supplement research about K–12 music classes that go beyond traditional curricular offerings (e.g., Abramo, 2011; Abril, 2009; Tobias, 2010). M. Robinson’s (2010) study of seven undergraduates with an instrumental music education emphasis who, on graduation, chose to accept teaching positions in elementary general music provides a model that could be expanded to study graduates who choose to teach African drumming, mariachi, hip-hop, recording technology and engineering, or other classes. In addition, future research can examine effective approaches to encourage preservice teachers to develop both the desire and the skills to reach out to students with diverse musical interests.

As Rideout and Feldman (2002) noted, one of the perennial issues related to preservice teacher preparation is that “no single model can ameliorate the disparity that occasionally exists between [the preservice teachers’] own values, university-level teacher preparation goals, and the realities of teaching in today’s schools” (p. 883). The research discussed in this article documents a variety of approaches and models that music teacher educators can consider. To better understand differences in university program contexts and individual preservice teachers, continued research that develops complex, situated, and holistic views of preservice teachers’ developing beliefs and practices is warranted.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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(2008). The selection and preparation of cooperating teachers in music education. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 17(2), 7–18. doi:10.1177/1057083708317619