The Music Teacher I’d Like: Lessons Learnt From Students

Natassa Economidou Stavrou

doi:10.3389/feduc.2021.802560

Abstract

The present study investigates what makes and what does not make an ideal music teacher according to secondary school students’ views and perceptions. Is it a matter of personality characteristics, subject knowledge, and skills or a matter of pedagogy? Or is it a combination of the aforementioned? And more specifically, what are those qualities, personal characteristics, and competencies of the ideal music teacher through the eyes of students? 518 secondary school students participated in the study by completing an anonymous questionnaire. The findings reveal that the characteristics of the ideal music teacher deemed more important for secondary school students fall mainly in the category of personality and interpersonal characteristics, with pedagogical and subject knowledge and skills following, with much smaller percentages. The students’ voices call firstly for a polite, friendly, with sense of humor, kind teacher, patient, pleasant, fair, and creative. By building on the findings, the paper establishes recommendations for music teacher education and teacher effectiveness, as these are framed through the students’ eyes and experiences.

Highlights

“Who is/are your favorite music teacher/s and why?”, is the first question that my undergraduate students are called to answer in our first week of classes, right after they sketch their musical journey map from the moment they recall there was some kind of relationship to music, to the moment they entered my Foundations of Music Education class
We could claim that the findings suggest that, according to the students who participated in the study, whether a music teacher is considered to be a good music teacher is more than 75% determined by the teacher’s personality traits, the social interaction, and the relationship with the students and only around 25% by his/her musical knowledge, skills, and teaching practices and approaches
Comparing the 10 most important, for the students, characteristics for their ideal teacher with the 10 most important characteristics that their ideal music teacher could never have, it becomes obvious that a nice approach, kindness, fairness, and a positive and pleasant atmosphere with no tensions are what the students seek for from their music teachers

Summary

Introduction

“Who is/are your favorite music teacher/s and why?”, is the first question that my undergraduate students are called to answer in our first week of classes, right after they sketch their musical journey map from the moment they recall there was some kind of relationship to music, to the moment they entered my Foundations of Music Education class. In questioning “why some teachers are better than others,” Ryan (2003), in his book on teaching and learning, commented that the effective teacher does not transfer information to the student regarding a specific subject but interacts with the other person For this exact reason, teachers are anticipated to be more than experts in their field. It is critical for the teachers to understand the psychological and sociological dimensions of education, to be familiar with the students’ characteristics, and to know how the educational settings function (e.g., the school) They should be familiar with curriculum requirements, whether these concern the content, the teaching approaches, or the aims and objectives of the subject to be taught. Teachers should have a vision and be able to realize their social mission through teaching (Arnon and Reichel, 2007; Walker, 2008)

Methods

Results

Conclusion