TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 1

Teacher Preparation: A Qualitative Study

Margarita Arredondo, Danny Canty, Devon Garber, Jonathan Galeana, Samantha Calkins, Kristian Bumanlag TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 2

Abstract

Past experiences are a big part of what shapes us as human beings, giving us more perspective about life, understanding things we like and dislike and possibly leads us down a career path. In this study, we wanted to explore how past experiences, more specifically taking a deeper look into how curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level prepare music faculty for college teaching positions. In this study we conducted one interview with a Pacific University music department faculty. From the interview there were five themes that popped out as to some past experiences that have shaped Dr. Scott Tuomi: learning from life experiences, change in life trajectory, learning about the world outside of music, extra preparation to attain better musicianship and beneficial courses in the curriculum.

Keywords: teacher preparation, music education, TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 3

Teacher Preparation: A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate what undergraduate music education curricular changes might be desired to better serve the profession. The participants of this study were 601, K - 12 NAfME music educator members. The method that was used during this study was a survey from SurveyMonkey. The survey consisted of a 5-point Likert-type scale, 1 being most important/applicable, through 5, which was labeled least important/applicable. The results of this study were the rating of 20 most common types of courses in a music teacher education program. The highest rated courses were student teaching, ensembles, applied lessons, conducting, early field experience, aural theory, and music theory, the lowest rated were education courses and educational psychology. As stated earlier in the purpose of this study, it was to investigate the undergraduate music education curriculum and to determine what classes would best serve the profession. Looking at the results of the highest rated courses, it shows that the more practical and hands-on-experienced classes is what most current teachers valued the most while reflecting on their education and that they felt the most important to the practicality of the field. This is important to our study as it shows the skills that are valued and most important when it comes to real-world teaching versus classroom learning and not getting time in real-life teacher situations.

The purpose of this study was to investigate music teacher educators vision on music teacher preparation. There were 12 music teacher educators who teach pedagogical courses called instrumental pedagogy and classroom music pedagogy in three academies in Finland,

Norway, and Sweden. Using the Hammerness’ concept of teachers’ vision, they concentrate on the educators’ vision of good music pedagogy teaching, ideal graduate, and the vision of their TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 4 subject as a whole. The results indicated that visions were personal and not consistent between educators or across institutions. They were strongly related to, steered, and limited by establishing teaching traditions. This study is related and important to this study because it is looking at the visions of music teacher educators and what they want their students to be able to do. Some abilities that were listed for an ideal graduate were: being curious and analytical, independent, learning how to plan, run and evaluate music teaching and adaptability of teaching according to students’ preconditions for learning.

The purpose of this study was to explore whether levels of self-efficacy among music teachers in Texas differed systematically. The participants in this study were 143 respondents that were alternatively and traditionally certified music teachers from Texas. The method that was used in this study was Cynthia l. Wagoners’ subscale which included items related to respondents’ confidence in their ability to successfully accomplish various instructional aims in their classrooms as well as items related to the broader functioning within a school and community. The results of this study were that both traditionally and alternatively certified music teachers reported comparable levels of self-efficacy. What was also found was regardless of certification pathway, teachers with 10 or fewer years of experience reported lower self-efficacy then teachers with 11 or more years of experience. This helps us understand a more long-term perspective of self-efficacy in both traditional and alternative pathways to being certified as a music teacher. TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 5

Method

Participants

The participant in this study is Scott Tuomi. Dr. Scott Tuomi attended USC as a vocal performance major. While at USC he eventually made it in the USC Chamber Singers that went to tour Australia, through the United States, and in his senior year went to Europe! When coming back to Portland Dr. Tuomi started to freelance such as getting hired as a tenor at Trinity

Cathedral, Temple Beth Israel and Catholic cleric all while also working at Papa Haydn’s. He got to sing with different orchestras and in some cases opera companies while teaching at four different schools (UP, Linfield. Pacific and Portland State). Eventually joined Pacific University and was offered many incentives for him to come there since at that time Pacific had the weakest of all the programs which is crazy because it used to be a conservatory. Created the music history curriculum then brought World Music Class in to mix after coming back from performing in a

Balinese opera. Also, while teaching a class on musicians with disabilities gave him the momentum to start the music therapy degree here at Pacific.

Research Methods

Our research methods consisted of one 27-minute formal interview over Zoom, recorded and transcribed for later analysis. The participant for this project was Dr. Tuomi, the music department chair, and the director of choral and vocal activities at Pacific University. Preparation for the interview began with creating relevant interview questions that would be applicable to the research questions. Eight questions were created, and only four were asked and answered within the interview with Dr. Tuomi. Other questions were asked during the interview than what were TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 6 prepared, to be able to guide the topic of discussion and delve deeper into something that Dr.

Tuomi had brought up or said. The interview task force set out to keep control of the interview and not let the topic and hand stray too far from the question. However, it was difficult to judge what was far from the answer, because many points that Dr. Tuomi spoke about were all encompassing, and beneficial to his path and preparation to becoming an educator. At the end of the interview there was 27 minutes of material to transcribe and analyze.

Analysis

Table of Illustrative Quotations extracted from interview transcript:

Research Question Code Theme Quote

How do past Making the switch to “I went to the football experiences influence Change in life music from playing coaches and said, I'm going teaching? trajectory football. to drop and they said, that's good”

Extra Taking private “So that got me started preparation to lessons that helped taking voice lessons from attain better lead him to study at sister Claudia Foltz, a nun musicianship USC. over at Marylhurst. She was the voice teacher in the area. And Marylhurst at that time, was an all women's college.”

Learning from Realizing that as “You are all on a trajectory. life experiences musicians we need to You know, you're all going welcome and learn to have these experiences from our past/future and they're really cool. So I adventures. just embrace them and reach out to them.” TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 7

How does curriculum Beneficial Benefits and joys of “I love vocal pedagogy [...] at undergrad/graduate courses in the vocal pedagogy. the idea of diagnosing an level prepare music curriculum issue with a singer and then faculty for their trying to help them bring college teaching out their best self.” position? Learning about All learning is “The more you know about the world beneficial to everything, the better you outside of musicians are as a musician.” music Having interests and “What I'd like to see people passions beyond do is choose stuff in their music can be core that that kind of fits fulfilling. maybe where they think is going to benefit them somehow. But here I am still in love with the natural sciences too [...] It's weird, but I'm fascinated by that stuff. And I guess I'm always going to be like that. But I want to be like that the rest of my life.

Results

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to discover how undergraduate and graduate programs prepare students for future teaching positions by questioning current music faculty about their educational journey. Dr Tuomi’s interest in music started before attending college. He had always enjoyed singing but he did not discover how much he was interested in it until

Sophomore year of high school when he got more involved with groups and private voice TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 8 lessons. When he entered college, Dr. Tuomi realized he had a knack for vocal pedagogy which began his interest in teaching voice. His undergrad education was at University of Southern

California, where he majored in vocal performance. He continued on to get his Masters degree at

Portland State University while doing some freelance work and trying to figure out what it was he wanted to do after he graduated. At this time he was also teaching voice lessons from his apartment in Portland. Dr. Tuomi started teaching as a voice teacher at four different universities:

University of Portland, , Pacific University, and Portland State University.

Pacific, having the weakest program at the time, offered him a big incentive to start teaching there. He started working at Pacific, while still doing gigs the rest of his free time. He graduated from Portland State University which left him open for more gigs, including performing operas across the state and being a featured soloist. Dr. Tuomi was asked to join Pacific full time where he taught music history courses as well. He helped build the music department back up from a very bad spot. By 1994 he decided to get his doctorate, which he did in Tucson AZ, finishing the coursework in 18 months; it would take him several years to finish his doctorate, in 2001.

Unlike the findings of the study by Timothy J. Groulx, which stated that students found certain undergraduate courses such as ensembles, student teaching, applied lessons, conducting, early field experience were rated at a higher value than other courses for their education and training, Scott Tuomi found value in all his undergraduate courses. While Dr. Tuomi recognized that some classes might be more directly helpful for music educators, such as his class piano, he said that all, or more, core classes will help students become better musicians and teachers. TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 9

A limitation of this study is that only one professor was interviewed, giving us only the experience of one person. A recommendation would be to have multiple professors to interview so their answers can be compared.

Supplemental Materials

Research Project Students and contributions:

Margarita Arredondo - Introduction task force: Wrote out the discussion part which included brief restatement of the purpose, summary of findings, limitations and recommendations for future studies.

Danny Canty - Methods and Analysis task force: Description of Research Methods; analysis of transcript, particularly with regard to curriculum and preparation; created the second half of the coded table in Analysis.

Kristian Bumanlag - Introduction task force: Abstract for study and peer reviewed articles, created reference page and title page.

Sammie Calkins - Interview task force: Contacted Dr. Tuomi to confirm interview date and time, developed several interview questions and determined the structure of the interview. Created rough draft of interview transcript and created final draft of the first 13:45 of the audio.

Jonathan Galeana - Methods and Analysis task force: Description of Participants, analysis of transcript; past experiences that influenced/lead to teaching, created the first half of the coded table in Analysis.

Devon Garber - Interview taskforce: Contacted Dr. Tuomi and set up an interview date and time;

Helped develop interview questions that would be related to the research questions; Held the interview and recorded it using Zoom’s record feature; Transcribed 13:45 of the 27 minute long TEACHER PREPARATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY 10 interview; Helped create the slide show, adding the title page, research questions, methods page, and the research articles; Assisted writing the methods section pertaining to the interview protocol.

References

West, J. J., & Frey-Clark, M. L. (2019). Traditional Versus Alternative Pathways to

Certification: Assessing Differences in Music Teacher Self-Efficacy. Journal of Music

Teacher Education, 28(2), 98–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1057083718788035

Groulx, T. J. (2016). Perceptions of Course Value and Issues of Specialization in Undergraduate

Music Teacher Education Curricula. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 25(2), 13–24.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1057083714564874

Ferm Thorgersen, C., Johansen, G., & Juntunen, M.-L. (2016). Music teacher educators’ visions

of music teacher preparation in Finland, Norway and Sweden. International Journal of

Music Education, 34(1), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761415584300