Early career challenges in secondary school music teaching

Abstract

The article reports an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study of the early career experiences of secondary school music teachers in England, set within a wider national picture of decreasing age-related pupil engagement with school music, career perceptions of music teaching, variable patterns of teacher recruitment and possible mismatches between the musical biographies of young people and intending music teachers. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from a short-term longitudinal survey (first questionnaire: n = 74, second questionnaire: n = 29), supplemented by case studies (n = 6) and open-ended, written questions (n = 20). Analyses suggest that only a half of the newly qualified participants chose to teach full-time in a mainstream, statefunded school music classroom. Of these, the majority were faced with a range of early career challenges stemming from curricular, extra-curricular and non-curricular school expectations. These included the need to balance their existing musical performer identity with that of being a new teacher.

SEMPRE: Forty years on

“…(However, it was not until the following decade that significant research interest began to be evidenced in UK teaching and learning in higher music education [e.g. BurtPerkins, 2008;Welch & Papageorgi, 2008] particularly in relation to the education of music teachers [Mills, 2005;Welch, Purves, Hargreaves, & Marshall, 2011].) There were also major developments in the areas covered by the psychology of music, including: creativity; composition and improvisation; individual differences, personality and temperament; instrumental learning and practice; the effects of music on non-musical aspects of development and behaviour; musicality in infant development and communication; and social and sociological aspects of musical behaviour (Hargreaves et al, 2003, p. 149).…”

La investigación en educación musical dentro de las ciencias sociales. Reflexiones desde el Reino Unido.

“…Las metodologías más usadas incluyen el estudio de casos (Webster, 2012), los estudios etnográficos (Marsh, 2009), comparativos (Tate, 2001), de encuesta (Sun & Leung, 2013), de investigación en la acción (Rusinek, 2012), de investigación narrativa (Abramo & Austin, 2014), de metodología combinada (Welch et al, 2011) y los cuasi experimentos (Koutsoupidou & Hargreaves, 2009). A éstos hay que añadir otras tradiciones metodológicas de ámbitos académicos con interés hacia la educación musical como la psicología (Webster, 2009), la etnomusicología (Campbell, 2003), la musicoterapia (Bunt, 2012), los estudios de investigación artística basados en la práctica (Harrison, 2014) y la fisiología vocal e instrumental (Rosset i Llobet & Odam, 2007;Wilson & Roland, 2002).…”

The occupational identity development of early-career music teachers: a two-case study of Chinese music teachers

“…The Quality Counts 2000 reported that in the United States (US) about half of teachers entering the profession left within the first five years (Chronister, 2000). In the music area, an investigation from England (Welch, Purves, Hargreaves, & Marshall, 2011) showed that only 50 percent of newly qualified music teachers continued on to be full-time school teachers. In China, there are no reports on the attrition rate of new teachers, but it is reported that Chinese school teachers are facing increasing work pressures, which are the main factor contributing towards teacher attrition (see Jiang, Liao, Zhou, Fang, & Shen, 2012;Tang, Zhang, & Zhu, 2009;Xu, Shen, & Zhu, 2002).…”

“…The relationship between performer and teacher identities is discussed by many researchers (Ballantyne et al, 2012;Pellegrino, 2009Pellegrino, , 2011Scheib, 2003;Wagoner, 2011;Welch et al, 2011). Music teachers are socialised as musicians in the university setting, where they draw on strong technical performing skills and enter the teaching profession.…”

“…Therefore, performance experience and content knowledge are essential for beginning teachers to build confidence when entering music education (Ballantyne et al, 2012). Welch et al (2011) also found that beginning teachers may receive compliments from colleagues, school administrators and parents for organising extra-curriculum performance activities, which contributes to their sense of well-being.…”