Online Involvement for Georgia Student Teachers During Covid-19

Abstract

As concerns about Covid-19 rapidly escalated in March 2020 in the United States, all levels of education were impacted. A unique population (student teachers) faced challenges from two perspectives: as students and as teachers forced to teach and learn from a distance. Student Teachers, or preservice teachers (PST), are university students finishing a degree and/or teacher certification program by serving as an intern in a school setting. As schools were closed, these PSTs may not have been given access to the online learning platforms of their cooperating teachers (CT) and were no longer included in classroom instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine how the sudden shift away from traditional face-to-face instruction, co-teaching, and mentorship affected the involvement of music PSTs and their CT mentors in one region of the United States. Specifically, the research questions were: (1) How and in what ways were PSTs involved in planning, instruction, and/or assessment synchronously and asynchronously after school closures? (2) In what subdomains (performance, music theory/ear-training, etc.) were PSTs engaged in instruction and learning activities? (3) What challenges and solutions did PSTs report related to Covid-19 closures? A survey was sent, via email, to PSTs attending teacher preparation programs at universities in the state of Georgia at the end of the spring semester. Thirty-seven participants responded to the survey questions representing about 32% of all PSTs in Georgia in Spring 2020. Twenty-one were not given access to the online teaching platform of their placement school. A thematic analysis of the open-ended questions identified common themes including whether experiences were perceived as negative or positive. Of the PSTs given access, the majority of their responsibilities and experiences were creating assignments, additional help videos, participating in Zoom meetings, and assessing student assignment submissions. Of these experiences, interestingly, most were classified as positive by the PSTs. However, the importance of face-to-face interactions for both PST and the P-12 students was mentioned throughout survey responses. Approximately 10 PSTs mentioned their CT relationship/interaction and four of the respondents noted that their CT never reached out for help; however, six noted collaborative meetings or teaching with their CT. Importantly, some PSTs reported a lack of knowledge related to the planning and implementation of music instruction in the online modality. Therefore, teacher preparation programs should consider incorporating technology including online solutions into the music curriculum so that future music educators may more flexibly incorporate both in-person and distance learning.

A Phenomenology of First-Year Music Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Student teaching, a cornerstone in teacher preparation (e.g., Kelly, 2015), was abruptly and fundamentally diminished. The spring 2020 term was effectively halved once instruction moved online and student teachers lost physical contact with their cooperating teachers (Thomas et al, 2021). Many music teacher candidates then faced uncertain job prospects with a delayed recruiting season and atypical vetting processes (e.g., virtual interviews).…”

Distant violin education in the first outbreak of the pandemic: Exploring perceptions of the instructors in Turkey

“…Distance education has also created a socio-psychological gap in students (Koutsoupidou, 2014). It is seen that teachers share their professional experiences and knowledge through social media platforms such as 'Musiklärarna' that they have created during the term (Thorgersen & Mars, 2021), with the attitudes of experienced teachers towards helping their young colleagues (Cheng & Lam, 2021) or cooperation and solidarity meetings with prospective teachers (Thomas et al, 2021).…”

“…were mostly preferred as resources or aids in the lessons. In addition to these, in music lessons, teachers used musical notation software, virtual classroom platforms, music production workshops, digital portfolios and musical notation archives such as BlackBoard Collaborate, Finale, Sibelius, Musescore, NoteFlight, Smart Music (Hash, 2021), Microsoft Teams, Skype, SeeSaw, Groove Pizza, Incredibox, Beepbox (Joseph & Lennox, 2021), Pear Deck, Sountrap (Austin, 2021), Moodle, TeamViewer, Aurlia and musition (Joseph & Merrick, 2021), FlipGrid, Tone Savvy, Shedthemusic (Thomas et al, 2021).…”

Instructors' perspectives on teaching music online after the COVID-19 lockdown: A qualitative analysis in Indonesia

“…Some adverse effects reported during the pandemic were increased stress (Cheng & Lam, 2021) and lower levels of well-being (Habe et al, 2021). The lockdown forced music instructors to learn how to manage their classrooms online (Gül, 2021) and utilise software for music teaching (Merrick & Joseph, 2022;Thomas et al, 2021). The poor sound quality of software not tailored for musical performance (Kruse et al, 2013) caused ineffective summative assessments and an unsatisfactory listening experience.…”