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Teaching Instrumental Music: Do I Think I Can?

Dr. Danni Gilbert

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Minnesota Music Educators Midwinter Convention

Friday, February 16, 2024

2:15-3:10 (55 minutes)

101DE

2:15-2:16; 1 minute

Good afternoon and thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you today. My name is Dr. Danni Gilbert and I am the Assistant Professor of Instrumental Music Education at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Welcome to all of you joining! This session is geared primarily towards collegiate students and early-career music educators, but can also be useful for seasoned music educators who mentor collegiate students or early-career colleagues, as well as seasoned music educators who I would like to lovingly encourage to consider benefiting the profession by mentoring collegiate students and early-career colleagues. We’ll explore ideas aimed at improving self-efficacy towards teaching in instrumental music settings. Your beliefs about your abilities may strongly influence your choices when applying for and accepting jobs, making curricular decisions, feeling successful in your teaching, and may influence your ability to overcome challenging situations. We will explore the effect that instrumental practicum and field experiences, methods courses, applied area, and other factors may have on self-efficacy.

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Panel of Experts

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2:22-2:28

To investigate how this might actually impact future music educators, I conducted an action research study during the Spring 2023 semester with my junior Instrumental Methods and Instrumental Practicum students. At the time, I taught at the University of Nebraska and because students were completing requirements that lead to a PK-12 state licensure to teach ALL music, all music education majors were required to take Instrumental M ethods regardless of their main applied area. In this semester, most of my students were applied vocal majors, but taking Instrumental Practicum as indicated on the table you see here. I was interested in determining how the completion of these courses influences students’ perceptions of their beliefs in their ability, or self-efficacy, to teach instrumental music. So once at the beginning of the semester and again at the conclusion of the semester, I asked my junior music education students to respond to 30 items in the Preservice Music Teacher Self-Efficacy Survey that correspond with instrumental settings.

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2:22-2:28

First, I calculated descriptive statistics, such as mean or average and standard deviation, based on student responses to the survey for both the beginning and end of the semester. Then, I ran some other statistical tests to see if there was a greater-than-chance difference in self-efficacy between the beginning and end of the semester based on students’ experiences completing the Instrumental Methods coursework and Instrumental Practicum.

Results indicated that my students reported a statistically significant increase in beliefs about their self-efficacy towards teaching in secondary instrumental music settings between the beginning of the semester and the conclusion of the semester. That means their self-efficacy improved over the span of the semester. This finding is consistent with previous research that suggests university coursework can positively influence the self-efficacy of pre-service music teachers. However, the difference in scores between the beginning and end of the semester based upon practicum or field experience setting is negligible. So self-efficacy didn’t seem to be influenced by the practicum setting. Therefore, based upon the results of this study, it appears that completing coursework in Instrumental Music Methods may be beneficial for all of my pre-service music educators in improving self-efficacy towards teaching instrumental music, while the practicum setting may be arbitrary—it made no difference. I can use that information to validate how I teach Instrumental Methods-–in the curriculum and text used, assignments, class activities—and to make a case that it may not matter what practicum setting you’re in as long as you’re getting teaching and musical experience since it does not seem to effect beliefs about teaching instrumental music specifically. So that’s what I found for my group of university students, but let’s turn now to our panel of experts to see what they suggest you could do now, or what you could do as a mentor for collegiate students or early-career music educators, to build self-efficacy for teaching in instrumental music settings in the future.

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Panel Discussion #1

�What do you recommend that students and early-career teachers try to most absorb from their current coursework, field experiences, ensemble participation, and opportunities outside of school to improve their self-efficacy for teaching instrumental music?

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Panel Discussion #2

How might self-efficacy, or your beliefs about your abilities to teach music, have affected:

choices when applying for jobs during your career,
curricular decisions,
perceived or measured success in teaching,
ability to overcome challenging teaching situations,
and other factors such as burnout?

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Panel Discussion #3

What can university music education majors, or early-career music educators, do if they don't necessarily identify as an instrumentalist or feel deficient in instruments other than their applied area?

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Panel Discussion #4

How might we practice skills for instrumental instruction in:

adapting instruction for all students,
selecting repertoire and teaching materials,
understanding and skill of various instruments,
classroom management,
developing and assessing goals,
and dealing with difficult people (or difficult feedback)?

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Panel Discussion #5

How could first-year (or newish) teachers adapt to teaching in settings that are unfamiliar to their own upbringing or experiences?

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Questions for panelists?

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Thank you!