Teachers’ opinions of student dropout from formal music education centres of the Canary Islands

ABSTRACT

One hundred and eighty-five teachers were surveyed to determine their opinion of student dropout from formal music centres in the Canary Islands. The goal of the study was to investigate the causes of dropout and strategies to prevent it. Teachers' opinions were collected by means of a questionnaire. The influence of the environment on the students and the teachers' reflections about the music studies carried out were among the topics addressed. The sample is made up of the teachers who were teaching during the 2010/2011 course. Among other issues, the results show the great influence of teachers on student achievement, the importance of facilitating the compatibility of music studies with general education, and the need for the students to study the desired specialty. In addition, the teachers revealed curricular deficiencies and the relevance of motivation for preventing failure.

KEYWORDS:

• Dropout
• conservatories
• education
• quitting
• formal music studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sonia Lorenzo Socorro is a Piano Teacher at the Professional Music Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. She holds a high degree in the specialty of Piano and Chamber Music, as well as a Degree in Law. She has attended numerous formation courses, underlining those taught by Monique Deschausséss, Gábor Csalog, Monika Leonhard, Esteban Sánchez, and Carmen Bravo. In her professional life, she has alternated her facet as a performer with that of teacher and researcher. As a performer, she has offered many concerts among which are notable the concert for Lebanon, those offered in collaboration with the singer Zulema Cimardi, and those carried out as a member of the Chamber Group of Teachers of the Music Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. She has also diffused the music of Canarian composers, participating in the collection ‘Musical creation in the Canary Islands’, specifically in the CDs 22 and 28. In her researcher facet, she has mainly been interested in the topic of dropping out of studies, and has published a work in 2003 about the opinion of the teachers of the High Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria about dropout from music studies. In 2013, she finished her thesis, entitled ‘Dropout from formal music centers in the Canary Islands’.

María Olga Escandell Bermúdez is a Ph.D. in Psychology. She has directed the Technical Quality Unit, which depends on the Vice Rectorate of Planning and Quality, and was in charge of the Institutional Assessment of diverse degrees of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and in charge of presenting an annual report to the Social Council of the ULPGC about students' failure and dropout from the degrees. She has taught the Predoctoral course ‘Failure and dropout in education’ of the Doctorate program ‘Teacher Formation’. In the field of research, she has directed a thesis on students’ dropout in the ULPGC, various research projects about the causes of students’ dropout at the ULPGC, and various treatises on dropout from music studies in the High Music Conservatory of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, dropout from the career of Law in the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the implementation of advanced programmes for access to professionals studies in the Music Schools of the Canary Islands.

José Juan Castro Sánchez is a Ph.D. in Psychology. He has been the director of the Institutional Assessment Council of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Vice Rector of Planning and Quality of this university. He has directed several doctoral theses related to assessment of teaching quality, assessment of teacher staff, the incidence of formation courses on the improvement of teacher quality, the impact of the implementation of a system of quality management on non-university teaching centres, and dropout from formal music centres in the Canary Islands.