Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the type, quantity, and effects of technology instruction currently being provided to undergraduate music education majors. Undergraduate participants (n = 46) at 10 degree-granting institutions completed an online survey on the technology instruction received during their undergraduate degree programs and their plans for future technology implementation in their classrooms. Participants’ responses indicated that 63% had taken a required technology course during their undergraduate degree program. Required technology courses were most commonly taught by the college/school/department of music, with music notation software and sound mixing and editing applications being the most common topics covered. Participants indicated that more technology instruction in instructional and student-centered applications was desired, with 43% of participants indicating that they did not feel prepared to effectively use technology in their future teaching positions.
Introduction to the Topic
There is no denying that our society becomes more dependent on technology with each passing year. We live in a digital age, where instant access to information has become the standard and technological devices such as laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones are our constant companions. In the modern educational environment, the use of classroom technology has been transformed from one of many pedagogical options to a virtual requirement for engaging and motivating today’s students. The ability to use technology successfully in the classroom is, like any other pedagogical technique, a skill that must be learned. To properly equip preservice teachers for the 21st-century classrooms that they will be teaching in, modern teacher education programs must include instruction in educational uses of technology. There is widespread debate, however, over the most appropriate methods and content for this instruction. Research is required to better understand the role that technology instruction should play in teacher education programs and to discover the most appropriate and effective methods of providing that instruction to preservice teachers.
Review of Literature
Any discussion of how to effectively teach today’s “digital native” students must begin with a description of the students themselves. A recent report published by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that children between 8 and 18 years spend nearly 8 hours a day consuming media. Furthermore, because these children are often using more than one media interface at the same time, they are able to absorb 10 hours and 45 minutes of media content in that time (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Digital natives tend to prefer working in groups instead of working as individuals, multitasking and hypertext learning environments instead of linear instruction, discovery-based learning methods instead of tell-and-test instruction, and instant gratification for short-term goals instead of delayed rewards for long-term objectives (Leong, 2011; Prensky, 2001). There is even some evidence to suggest that the brains of digital natives function differently from those of past generations. Herther (2009) described a study conducted at the University of California–Los Angeles in which researchers found that digital natives demonstrated more and different brain activity when viewing a web page than they did when viewing a page from a printed book. Based on this research, it seems clear that modern children are being affected by their exposure to media and technology, and that these effects are causing a change in how they grow and learn.
Teachers and the methods that they use to educate these digital natives have unfortunately not changed at the same rate. As Leong (2011) lamented, “It is regrettable that education in general has managed to achieve incremental progress while the world has surged forward with monumental changes” (p. 237). There are several reasons that teachers have had difficulty in using technology effectively in their classrooms. The first is that many teachers are “digital immigrants,” those who have adopted technology as a useful tool but have not had the same long-term, immersive exposure to it that digital natives have. As a result, digital natives and digital immigrants often use and refer to technology in very different ways. Many researchers agree that the communication gulf between digital natives and digital immigrants accounts for much of the difficulty that teachers have in reaching today’s students (Dessoff, 2010; Herther, 2009; Hicks, 2011; Prensky, 2001).
Another reason that teachers have been slower to adopt technological resources than their students is the multitude of challenges digital immigrants face when they try to learn how to integrate technology into their daily lives. Hicks (2011) suggested that the learning curve for new users of technology doubles every 18 months. Some teachers may even be what Herther (2009) called “digital refugees,” who are forced to use technology but do so unwillingly and need a great deal of assistance to accomplish any task. In many cases, teachers are afraid to use technology in their classes for fear of losing the respect of their much more tech-savvy students (Hicks, 2011). These teachers can even become outspoken adversaries of technology, actively working against those who champion its use in the classroom.
Despite the difficulties mentioned above, researchers have shown that digital immigrant teachers can learn to use technology effectively. Music teachers who participated in a 1-week technology training workshop showed significant increases in their level of comfort with using technology for music learning and in the frequency with which they used technology in their classrooms. These changes in the teachers’ attitudes and actions remained long after the workshops ended, although they did decline slightly over time in the absence of continued support (Bauer, Reese, & McAllister, 2003). Even when organized workshops are not available, those teachers who are willing to put in the hard work necessary to become more fluent in technology use often become more flexible in their use of technology in the classroom and may discover that their teaching is transformed by this flexibility. Furthermore, teacher educators who increased their technological fluency noted that preservice and in-service teachers under their instruction also showed an increase in comfort with and use of educational technology (Monroe & Tolman, 2004).
The most prominent reason that teachers are not able to use technology effectively in their classrooms is that they simply do not know how. Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer, and O’Connor (2003) reported a U.S. Department of Education finding that only one third of teachers felt prepared to use computers or the Internet for classroom instruction. Although some authors have suggested that an increased number of digital native teachers would naturally lead to a decline in problems with classroom technology use (Hicks, 2011), other researchers have increasingly concluded that this is not the case (Davies, 2011; Lei, 2009). Lei (2009) found that digital native preservice teachers exhibited a high incidence of technology use, but the use was frequently narrow in scope and demonstrated a lack of exploration. Furthermore, she found that these teachers have little to no experience with classroom-specific technologies such as interactive whiteboards and are ambivalent about the benefits of using technology in the classroom.
If neither digital immigrants nor digital natives are able to effectively integrate technology into their classrooms based on their own experience, they must find other ways to develop these skills. Teacher preparation programs provide a natural setting for educational technology instruction, but many researchers have indicated that teacher education programs are generally not successful at preparing preservice teachers to use technology effectively in their teaching (Donovan, Green, & Hansen, 2011; Duran, Fossum, & Luera, 2006; Kay, 2006; Rees, 2011). Often, instead of using technology as an instructional tool like any other, teachers use it only for applications separate from the flow of normal classroom activities. Russell et al. (2003) reported that computer use by students was “often treated as a special event or an add-on to the traditional curriculum” (p. 298). Jimoyiannis and Komis (2007) agreed: “In practice . . . established curricula and teaching approaches still remain essentially unchanged, while technology is usually underused and poorly integrated into the classroom” (p. 150). Many other authors have reported similar findings (Bauer & Daugherty, 2001; Davies, 2011; Dessoff, 2010; Donovan et al., 2011; Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007; Lei, 2009; Prensky, 2001).
In light of these issues, a number of researchers have attempted to determine the most effective ways to prepare preservice teachers to use technology in their classrooms. “Stand-alone” technology courses, which are often focused on specific technology skills and isolated from the remainder of the teacher education curriculum, have a limited effect on preservice teachers’ ability to integrate technology into their teaching (Coursund, 1999; Duran et al., 2006; Lei, 2009). Russell et al. (2003) concluded,
[T]his focus on familiarizing preservice teachers with specific technologies rather than on how to integrate these technologies into instruction may further add to their comfort with technology but does not present them with instructional models they can emulate once they enter the profession. (p. 308)
It is much more effective to integrate technology instruction with other content, ensuring that preservice teachers are forced to use technology in various ways throughout their teacher education program (Bauer & Daugherty, 2001; Donovan et al., 2011; Lei, 2009). When technology instruction is integrated into content-based courses, preservice teachers are also able to recognize the connections between technology and content, which prepares them to identify those connections with their own students (Donovan et al., 2011; Russell et al., 2003).
Despite the large body of research on how best to prepare preservice teachers to use technology in their classrooms, few researchers have examined what is currently being done about it. Many studies have been carried out at a single institution and describe only the system that is in place at that location. Researchers should examine practices across a wider range of organizations to make suggestions that can benefit a larger population. Bauer et al. (2003) noted this problem over a decade ago, stating that “the lack of study regarding the most effective instructional strategies in actual use by teachers continues to be an important issue” (p. 290). In the field of music education, only two known studies on the technology instruction being provided to preservice music teachers on a state- or region-wide basis have been published since the year 2000 (Ohlenbusch, 2001; Price & Pan, 2002), and no known study matching this description has been published since 2002.
Ohlenbusch (2001) examined the methods of technology instruction used in music education programs at institutions in Texas, as well as the prevalence of technology use among members of the Texas Music Educators Association. Her analysis of responses to this survey indicated that less than 50% of respondents (N = 252) used technology in their classroom to meet any of the nine National Standards for Music Education. Ohlenbusch also reported that there were significant differences between the courses offered at the university level and the values reported by the Texas Music Educators Association members who participated in the survey. Notably, while university instructors ranked notation instruction as the most important technology application provided, practicing teachers indicated that learning about computer-assisted instruction was more valuable. Price and Pan (2002) surveyed faculty members at colleges and universities located in the southeastern United States to determine what type of technology curriculum, facilities, and personnel were used in the undergraduate music education programs at those institutions. The researchers reported that only 39% of responding institutions offered technology courses specifically designed for music education students, and only 30% of the responding institutions required students to pass a music education technology course as a part of their degree program. Music education software was taught in less than 40% of these courses, although they were specifically identified as music education technology courses and over 90% of respondents identified music education software as “important” for future music educators to know about. Price and Pan commented, “It is striking that many prospective music teachers are not introduced to the use of music technology to augment their teaching” (p. 64).
Given the rapid rate of change in the field of educational technology, these studies from over a decade ago are likely of limited use in informing decisions being made today. Without a substantial body of current research to describe the present level of technology instruction in music education degree programs, music teacher educators have no way to make informed decisions about the most prevalent or effective methods of implementing technology education programs. Although it is possible that collegiate music education programs have improved the level of technology instruction that they provide to their students since these studies were published, the reports of researchers investigating the use of technology by inservice music teachers and the technology instruction being provided to preservice teachers in other specialty areas suggest that this is unlikely. More current research is needed to identify trends in technology instruction for preservice music teachers and to aid music teacher educators in making decisions as they shape new curricula for the music educators of the future.
The purpose of this research was to gain an understanding of the type and quantity of technology instruction being provided to undergraduate music education students, as well as those students’ reactions to the instruction they received and their plans to use technology in their future classrooms. Three research questions guided this study:
Method
This descriptive research study was conducted using an online survey that included both quantitative and qualitative elements. Music education program directors at selected institutions located in the state of Ohio were contacted via e-mail and asked to provide names and e-mail addresses for students in their undergraduate programs who were seniors during the 2012–2013 academic year. The decision to limit the study participants to senior music education students was made because these students had completed all or nearly all of their undergraduate degree requirements and could answer questions about those degree programs in their entirety, as well as questions about how they planned to use technology in their first teaching positions. Music education program directors provided contact data for 132 students at 10 institutions located in different regions of the state.
The research instrument used in this study was an online survey constructed with the Google Forms application. The survey was divided into four sections: demographic information, technology instruction, future plans, and philosophical beliefs. In each section, participants responded to questions in various ways, such as using a 5-point Likert-type scale anchored by strongly agree and strongly disagree, choosing one or several responses from a list, or providing short prose responses. The variety of survey item types allowed the researcher to collect a varied pool of information, providing a contextual background against which individual responses could be considered. Survey items were developed using previous surveys and results reported by Russell et al. (2003), Lei (2009), Jimoyiannis and Komis (2007), and Duran et al. (2006), among others.
After the survey was developed, it was reviewed by a content validity panel consisting of four music education faculty members and five music education graduate students. A number of changes were made to the survey based on the reviewers’ comments, including decreasing the number of survey items, increasing the variety of survey items, and rewording some items to improve clarity and usability. After these revisions were made, the content validity panel agreed that the high face validity and content validity of the survey instrument justified proceeding without conducting a formal pilot study. Potential participants were then contacted via e-mail and asked to complete the online survey by clicking on a link contained within the e-mail. A total of 46 completed survey responses were received, reflecting a 35% response rate.
Results
To answer the first research question (What types of technology instruction are being provided to undergraduate music education students?), participants indicated whether they had taken a required technology course as a part of their degree program. Twenty-nine participants (63%) representing nine institutions indicated that they had taken such a course. The remaining 17 participants (37%), representing four institutions, indicated that they had not taken a required technology course as a part of their degree program. Of participants who indicated that they had taken a required technology course (n = 29), 19 participants (66%) indicated that the college/school of music had responsibility for their course, 17 (59%) selected the department of music education, and 8 (28%) selected the college/school of education. Nearly half of the participants (12, or 41%) indicated that responsibility was shared between two or more academic units. Because of the nature of the survey items used, it was impossible to determine whether participants who indicated shared responsibility took multiple technology courses.
Participants were given the opportunity to provide additional comments about the technology courses that they had taken. Many participants suggested that these courses were not sufficient to prepare participants to use technology in their classrooms. One participant said, “It was NOT aimed at music educators so included nothing involved with creating and maintaining a classroom.” Another stated, “I wish we had taken a class that covered more than just music technology. This would have been extremely helpful.” These responses were representative of the overall body of comments made by participants; only one participant provided an unqualified positive comment about the required technology course.
Participants also rated a number of statements about the presence of technology in their degree program on a 5-point Likert-type scale, anchored by strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (2). Two statements related to the first research question were as follows: “Students in my degree program were required to use technology to complete assignments in a variety of courses” 1 (M = 3.61, SD = 1.13) and “Technology was integrated into all aspects of my degree program” (M = 2.70, SD = 1.03). Participants’ comments about the use of technology in their degree programs indicated that some participants sought out and learned about technology resources on their own. “For instance, I took several audio recording labs on my own time. . . . If you include those opportunities I took, then I would say the technological aspect of my education was very complete overall.”
To answer the second research question (What specific types of technology are undergraduate music education majors introduced to during their degree programs?), participants who took a required technology course identified the technology resources that were covered during the course. These results are presented in Table 1.
Resources Covered in Participants’ Required Technology Courses.
Note. Percentages are figured using only participants who took a required technology course.
Of particular note is the high percentage of participants who indicated that they had received instruction in music-centered applications such as music notation software and sound mixing and editing, as well as the low percentage of participants who received instruction in education-centered applications, such as interactive hardware and gradebook software. This may be related to participants’ indications that, in many cases, the college or school of music was primarily responsible for the content of required technology courses.
To answer the third research question (How do senior music education students plan to use technology in their future classrooms?), participants identified the purposes for which they planned to regularly use technology in their first teaching position. These responses are presented in Table 2.
Planned Uses of Technology in Participants’ Future Classrooms.
Of particular interest was the high rate of planned use among the first four purposes listed (which could be described as administrative or teacher centered) and the relatively low rate of planned use for the last two purposes (which could be described as student centered). Also of interest was that 16 participants (35%) indicated that they planned to regularly use technology for all of the listed purposes.
In comments about their plans to use technology in their first teaching positions, some participants suggested that they would be more willing to use technology in their future classrooms if they had received more instruction. One participant said, “If I had more training or exposure (in my time at college or public school), I would probably naturally use more technology and be comfortable.” Another noted, “It is difficult to say how much I will use technology, since I am not aware of all that I am able to do with it.” Other participants found it difficult to discuss specifics of their plans to use technology in future situations because of their lack of knowledge about the resources that might be available to them.
I would like to encourage student use of technology, but I’m not sure what my first classroom will look like and what technology will be available to the students. That is why I did not select that I planned on doing so regularly.
These comments were representative of the overall body of comments made by participants. Overall, 26 participants (57%) responded that they felt that their degree program had prepared them to use technology in their future classrooms, while 20 (43%) responded that they felt their degree programs had not prepared them to do so.
Discussion
Participants in this study indicated that stand-alone technology courses are the primary method of technology education currently in use in the surveyed music teacher education programs. The participants also indicated that these required technology courses were the primary source of technology instruction received during their undergraduate degree and that technology instruction was not often integrated throughout their degree programs. This is consistent with the findings of previous researchers, who reported that technology use is often approached as a separate activity and poorly integrated into classroom experiences (Coursund, 1999; Duran et al., 2006).
The comments that participants provided about these technology courses suggested that they were, at best, of limited use in preparing participants to use technology effectively in their own teaching. Only two technology applications were present in a majority of participants’ required technology courses: music notation software and sound mixing and editing tools. This supports the conclusion that many of these technology courses are not designed specifically for music education students but are intended to include students in all music degree programs. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that over half (66%) of the participants who took a technology course indicated that the college/school of music had primary responsibility for the course. Although authors such as Dorfman (2013) have questioned the value of nonspecific technology courses focused on general educational technology, these concerns may also be valid for technology courses focused on generic music technology. While knowledge of notation and sound editing applications may be valuable skills for music education students, they represent largely teacher-centered and nonpedagogical uses of technology.
It is important that music education students also receive appropriate instruction in classroom-specific technology applications. Unfortunately, instructional and student-centered technology applications such as instructional hardware and music instructional software were selected by less than a third of participants as being present in their technology courses. Furthermore, applications that are not primarily instruction centered but can be used for instructional purposes, such as presentation software or website design, were also present in only about a third of participants’ courses. It is possible to conclude from these results that some music education students may be receiving little instruction in the classroom-specific technologies that they will be expected to use as practicing teachers.
Participants also indicated that they felt they received little instruction in how to effectively integrate technology into their classroom teaching. Previous researchers have consistently shown that practicing teachers are often unsuccessful at achieving this sort of technology integration; technology use is often treated as if it were independent from the remainder of the curriculum (Jimoyiannis & Komis, 2007; Russell et al., 2003). Furthermore, researchers have suggested that the most effective way to improve preservice teachers’ ability to integrate technology into their teaching is to provide them with examples of technology integration throughout the teacher education curriculum (Bauer & Daugherty, 2001; Donovan et al., 2011; Lei, 2009). Bauer (2014) argued that “knowing how to effectively use . . . technological tools to maximize learning (pedagogy) is a crucial aspect of the teaching-learning process” (p. xii).
Perhaps the most striking finding of this survey was the participants’ perception of whether their degree program had prepared them to use technology in their first teaching position. Nearly half (43%) of the participants indicated that they believed their degree program had not prepared them to use technology successfully. As technology becomes an even more important part of society and education, beginning music teachers will increasingly be expected to enter their first teaching positions with not only the skills but also the confidence to consistently use technology as an integral part of their teaching. It is important that music teacher education institutions ensure their undergraduate students receive a level of technology instruction that allows them to feel comfortable using technological resources.
Implications
This research holds a number of implications for music teacher educators. These implications can be illustrated best by three key participant comments, which offer a description of their feelings and attitudes about the technology instruction that they received during their undergraduate programs.
If I had more training or exposure (in my time at college or public school), I would probably naturally use more technology and be comfortable.
Perhaps the most compelling implication of this study is that undergraduate students in music teacher education programs may benefit from additional technology instruction. The comment included above is a representative example of those made by a number of participants, indicating a strong desire for more technology instruction during the undergraduate degree program. Although student opinions are not always an accurate indicator of the suitability or effectiveness of a teacher education approach, the fact that the participants in this study felt strongly that they would benefit from more technology instruction suggests that the inclusion of more technology instruction in undergraduate music education degree programs is appropriate. Music teacher educators may wish to consider expanding the use of technology within the existing curriculum or creating new technology courses to provide additional instructional opportunities.
[T]here was little emphasis on integrating technology into teaching, either as part of the curriculum or by example as used by the instructors or professors.
In addition to a simple increase in the amount of technology instruction, many participants indicated a desire for different methods of technology instruction, including more faculty modeling and integration of technology with coursework. The results of the present study indicate that a majority of the music teacher education programs surveyed currently use stand-alone technology courses as the primary method of technology instruction. Previous researchers have suggested strongly that stand-alone coursework in isolation is not sufficient to prepare students to effectively incorporate technology in their teaching (Duran et al., 2006; Lei, 2009; Russell et al., 2003). Dorfman (2013) argued that “the responsibility to push forward the agenda of technology-based instruction in music and all other disciplines falls squarely on the shoulders of teacher educators” (p. 186). It is likely that music teacher education programs could be improved by encouraging faculty members to increase the amount of technology that they use while teaching undergraduate courses, in order to not only familiarize preservice teachers with technology resources but also model how to effectively integrate technology with music instruction.
I wish I would’ve been taught in class about Smart Boards, Smart Music [sic], and other things we will need as a music educator; for example, PowerPoint, Excel, basic website design.
The final implication of this study is that preservice music teachers need to be provided with more instruction and experience with education-centered technology resources, especially those resources that are designed for classroom or student use. One possible solution to this issue is to bring technology courses, many of which are currently administered by the school of music or college of education, under the direct auspices of the music education department. Another possible solution might be to implement a technology requirement across the broad spectrum of undergraduate music education courses, including methods and techniques courses as well as student teaching. By requiring students to use technology in a variety of ways throughout the music education degree program (and by providing effective faculty modeling as a guide for completing these technology assignments), music teacher educators can help students grow to be more experienced and comfortable with a variety of technology resources that are specifically useful for music teachers.
A limitation of this study is that participants were drawn from institutions in a single state and therefore may not represent the diversity of music teacher education programs found elsewhere. Future researchers may wish to pursue a similar inquiry on a wider basis or in another region in order to better understand technology use in the wider music teacher education community. Investigators may also wish to examine the specific types and quantity of technology instruction provided outside stand-alone technology courses, a topic that was insufficiently explored in the present study. Finally, researchers may wish to examine the types and levels of technology instruction provided to undergraduate education majors in other content areas in order to determine whether graduates of those programs feel prepared to use technology in the classroom and perhaps identify protocols or strategies that could be implemented in the music education curriculum.
As more and more emphasis is placed on the teaching of “21st-century skills,” encouraging and requiring student use of technology in the classroom is an increasingly important element of basic pedagogy for all subject areas and grade levels. If these trends persist, it will be imperative that teacher educators not only impress on their teacher candidates the importance of using technology for student-centered applications but also provide them with excellent models for how student use of technology can be incorporated into lesson planning and instructional delivery. Although many of the undergraduate music education students who participated in this study indicated that they feel ready to effectively employ technology in their teaching, a significant portion of the preservice music teacher population may still feel dissatisfied with the technology instruction that they have received. To prepare music education students to be successful in a technological society, music teacher educators will need to continue to adapt their instructional methods to ensure that preservice music educators leaving their institutions are equipped to use technological tools to enhance the learning of their own future students.
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.