Attitudes of select music performance faculty toward students teaching private lessons after graduation: A USA pilot study

Abstract

The present study was designed to pilot test an adjusted version of a questionnaire, used in earlier studies with college music students, to determine opinions of college music faculty on the topic of private lesson teaching. Full-time tenure-track college music faculty, with primary appointments in applied music at two universities in the United States, were contacted for the project. Thirty-two of 51 completed the task with no negative comments about the format, focus or specific questions in the instrument. Results were similar in many ways to previous student responses, and this group felt strongly that they liked teaching, training for teaching is important, and that their applied music lesson students would likely teach someday themselves. They enjoyed talking about pedagogical issues with students and liked the challenges of teaching musicians. Future research with this instrument should focus on larger groups with delineations in specialty area, faculty appointment, institution type/size, teaching assignment, and global representation.