Strengthening music provision in early childhood education: a collaborative self-development approach to music mentoring for generalist teachers

ABSTRACT

This paper reports an evaluation of a pilot programme of workplace music mentoring for generalist classroom teachers in eleven early childhood education settings in Australia. Mentoring in the arts in general and in music specifically is still under-researched despite a body of literature on approaches to mentoring, and descriptions of mentoring practices and outcomes. The pilot programme was created to increase access to music education for Australian children through establishing mentoring relationships between experienced specialist music teachers and generalist classroom teachers. The programme aimed to address a lack of music training during undergraduate teacher preparation and a perceived lack of confidence in music teaching and singing amongst generalist classroom teachers. The evaluation included semi-structured interviews with ten principals, seven mentors and nineteen mentees regarding their experiences. Three researchers conducted the thematic analysis of transcripts independently and refined the emerging themes through iterative discussions. Findings demonstrate that the workplace music mentoring delivered positive outcomes, enriching schools’ music curricula, structuring locally relevant programmes, building resources, teacher music skills and confidence, and impacting positively on student learning and behaviour. This in-situ longitudinal mentoring model expands on traditional approaches to professional development for in-service teachers of music through a collaborative self-development approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood music education
• in-situ longitudinal mentoring
• workplace mentoring
• collaborative self-development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Professor Margaret S. Barrett Phd is Founding Director of the Creative Collaboratorium at The University of Queensland. She has served as President of the International Society for Music Education (2012-2014), Chair of the World Alliance for Arts Education (2013-2015), the Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research (2009-2011), Board member of the International Society for Music Education (2008-2010), and National President of the Australian Society for Music Education (1999-2001). Her research investigates the role of Music and the Arts in human cognition and social and cultural development including: the meaning and value of Arts engagement for young people, young children’s musical thinking, young children’s identity work in and through music, teaching and learning practices in the arts, and the pedagogy and practice of creativity. This research has been funded by grants from the Australian Research Council, the Australia Council for the Arts, the British Council, and a number of commissioning bodies.

Dr Katie Zhukov Phd is Research Fellow at the School of Music, University of Queensland, Australia, where she has developed evidence-based pedagogical approaches for enhancing music sight-reading skills. Her publications demonstrate a strong record of interdisciplinary approach across music education, psychology and science, and include topics such as teaching and learning in the studio setting, including gender issues, innovative approaches to teaching of music sight-reading, skills for classical music careers, performance anxiety and eye movement during music sightreading. Zhukov has published 18 journal articles in high impact international journals such as Journal of Eye Movement Research, Music & Science, Musicae Scientiae, Psychology of Music, Medical Problems of Performing Artists, International Journal of Music Education, British Journal of Music Education, Music Education Research, Research Studies in Music Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Australian Journal of Music Education, and also four book chapters.

Professor Graham F. Welch PhD holds the UCL Institute of Education Established Chair of Music Education. He is a Past President of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) (2008-2014) and elected Chair of the internationally based Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE). He holds Visiting Professorships at universities in the UK and overseas, and is a former member of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Review College for Music (2007-2015). Publications number approximately three hundred and fifty and embrace musical development and music education, music and general teacher education, the psychology of music, singing and voice science, and music in special education and disability. New publications include an updated Oxford Handbook of Music Education (2018) and the Oxford Handbook of Singing (2019). He is also co-editing with Professor Margaret Barrett (The University of Queensland) the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Early Childhood Music Learning and Development.

ORCID

Margaret S. Barrett http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5904-9915

Katie Zhukov http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1146-6637

Graham F. Welch http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2258-8039

Notes

1 The Federal funding has been extended through to 2019 with contributions from the relevant State Departments of Education. Schools now contribute funding to the program which provides for teacher release to enable generalist early childhood teachers with time for consultation and co-planning with their mentor, reflection, and materials preparation. The funding from all sources provides for the administration of the program, mentor training, mentor and teachers being mentored joint workshops, and, teaching release for the specialist music teachers.

2 In one state (Victoria) a 2013 Parliamentary Inquiry into music education led to increased funding for music education to schools including to this Mentoring Program (Parliament of Victoria Education and Training Committee 2013).

3 Ethical permission to undertake the research was obtained from The University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee and the relevant state Departments of Education. Third party recruitment was employed to recruit study participants. The researchers were commissioned by the relevant funding body to undertake an evaluation of the program’s effectiveness for students, teachers, and schools.

4 The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines socio-economic advantage and disadvantage as ‘people’s access to material and social resources, and their ability to participate in society' (ABS 2016). For example, people living in advantaged areas are typically middle-aged, have high levels of education, work in highly skilled professions and have a median weekly income of AU$2640. By contrast, people residing in disadvantaged areas tend to be young, renting and have a median income of only AU$775 (ABS 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Australian Federal Government funding administered through the Australian Youth Orchestra.