Elementary General Music Teachers Research Articles

Overcoming the Octave Displacement: Vocal Modeling Strategies for Male Elementary General Music Teachers

The purpose of this article is to address the issue that children’s natural singing voices and pitch perception are in a treble range, and a male elementary general music teacher’s natural singing voice is an octave below. There are many strategies to overcome this significant but manageable obstacle in daily teaching, including monitoring of vocal health, use of instrumental accompaniment, encouragement of student vocal modeling, specific vocal exercises and cues, and cognitive strategies to help students discern between child and adult voices. Specific games, prompts, and rubrics are also included in this article to help guide any male elementary general music teacher to the most appropriate long-term vocal modeling solutions.

Male Elementary General Music Teachers

The purpose of this study was to describe the essence of being a male elementary general music teacher (MEGMT). I sought answers for two research questions. First, what are the perceived uniquely male experiences in elementary general music teaching? Second, in what ways might gender be a consideration in the preparation of elementary general music teachers? I conducted semistructured interviews of ten current MEGMTs in one New England state. After three cycles of coding, I found four emergent themes: (a) perceived uniquely male issues in teaching, (b) the hiring process and early years, (c) workplace gender issues, and (d) urban teaching overall. These findings both corroborated and contradicted those of the limited studies about MEGMTs, yielding support to investigate MEGMTs’ multifaceted essence further.

Shifting From Fear to Self-confidence: Body Mapping as a Transformative Tool in Music Teacher Education

Fear and lack of self-confidence toward music teaching are frequently experienced by many Bachelor of Education teacher candidates when they imagine themselves as future elementary general music teachers. Integrating visual art body mapping in elementary music methods fosters a unique opportunity to identify and interrogate musical experience. Findings from a 2-year narrative inquiry reveal how body mapping provides a window into music teacher identity through understanding the role of musical experience in teacher candidates’ daily lives. Body mapping becomes a transformative tool in music teacher education to move teacher candidates from embodied fear to increased self-confidence in shaping future teaching practice.

Music instruction for elementary students with moderate to severe cognitive impairments: A case study

Although elementary general music specialists teach students with a variety of exceptionalities every day (Chen, 2007; Hahn, 2010; Hoffman, 2011), many music teacher preparation programs do not adequately address exceptionality (Salvador, 2010). Articles regarding “strategies that work” appear perennially in the professional literature (e.g., Hammel, 2004), but these strategies have seldom been the subject of empirical research in peer-reviewed literature, and none of these articles pertain to how music teachers modify instruction to meet the needs of students with moderate to severe cognitive impairments (CI) who attend music with their self-contained categorical classes. This qualitative study details the practices of an elementary general music teacher with regard to music instruction of students with moderate to severe CI, both when these students were included with their fourth-grade peers and also when they attended music with their self-contained class.

Online Status

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe preservice music teachers’ perceptions of their experiences participating in virtual field experiences and mentoring episodes with experienced teachers during their elementary general music methods course. Participants were 21 preservice music teachers and 8 elementary general music teachers. Each cohort of two or three preservice teachers was assigned a mentor teacher. Using virtual conferencing technology, cohorts completed two observations of their mentor teacher, two 30-minute post-observation conferences with their mentor teacher, and three post–field teaching conferences with their mentor teacher. Data were preservice teachers’ written reflections about post-observation conferences and post–field teaching conferences. Analysis revealed challenges to and benefits of the virtual observations and conferences. Challenges included limitations of the technology and virtual experiences, and difficulty scheduling experiences. Benefits included improved logistics, view of reality, expanded perspective, and learning from dialogic inquiry. Overall, benefits were perceived to outweigh challenges.

The Influence of Music Teacher Beliefs and Practices on the Expression of Musical Identity in an Elementary General Music Classroom

The purpose of this qualitative collective case study was to examine the ways an elementary general music teacher’s curricular beliefs and practices influence the expression of music in identity and identity in music for second-generation students. In addition to the music teacher, participants were 4 students whose families had immigrated to the United States from Mexico and who were attending the midwestern suburban school within the United States where the study took place. This research was designed to provide an understanding of the interactions between the roles of music instruction, cultural responsiveness, and musical identity. Within-case and cross-case analysis generated specific and broad themes that addressed the purpose of the study. The findings revealed that the role of the teacher’s view of the self as musician and educator, combined with the choice of instructional approach, created a music classroom environment that successfully met the teacher-directed goals for sequence-centered instruction. Nonetheless, the data revealed that the choice of instructional approach resulted in an isolated musical experience that did not support the integration of cultural, linguistic, and popular music experiences and largely ignored issues of cultural responsiveness.

Read, Sing, Play, and Create a Musical Storm

Dayle Ann Dodds and Rosanne Litzinger’s children’s book, Sing, Sophie! provides the elementary general music teacher with an opportunity to read a captivating children’s story, sing the main character’s song and play her guitar, and create a song as well as instrumental music. Lessons outlined in this article may culminate in a veritable musical storm in the classroom.

Elementary General Music Teachers’ Reflections on Instruction

A qualitative study was completed to identify and study the content of selected elementary general music teachers’ evaluations of their own instruction and the instruction of another elementary general music teacher. Participants represented a variety of educational backgrounds and teaching experience: Teacher A (9 years teaching Grades 4—6 at current school), Teacher B (2 years teaching K—5 general music at current school), Teacher C (completing third year teaching Grades 4—6 general music), and Teacher D (completing first year teaching K—4 general music and strings). Through viewing four videotape recordings of lessons and use of an open-ended interview process, participants were able to explain teaching strategies used and reflect on their teaching and the teaching of another elementary general music teacher. The participants recommended that videotape recordings of instruction accompanied by the interview process be used for professional development and to discuss teaching strategies with other teachers.

How Can Elementary Teachers Measure Singing Voice Achievement? A Critical Review of Assessments, 1994-2009

The first content standard of the National Standards for Music Education requires that students sing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music. Although state and district elementary music curricula vary widely, many are based on the National Standards for Music Education and therefore include singing as a primary content area and method of teaching and learning music. However, classroom assessments of singing voice achievement and development vary widely, and information about reliability and validity of these assessments is rarely reported. The purpose of this article was to identify and discuss measurements of singing voice achievement for elementary aged students that have been used in research studies from dissertations and refereed music education journals since the publication of the National Standards for Music Education in 1994. The author describes each measurement tool, discusses its validity and reliability, and evaluates the practicality of each measure for classroom use by elementary general music teachers. Finally, recommendations for how one of these measures might be used to improve instruction in an elementary music classroom have been made.

Curricular Pillars in the Elementary General Music Classroom

Saren, a veteran elementary general music teacher, recently looked at her school district curriculum guide and thought about an engaging way to teach the concept of program music-the idea that music can represent other things-to her third graders. She remembered examples of program music that they had already experienced that she could relate to the current topic. She jotted down Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev as a work to mention to the students to remind them that they had already encountered an example of program music. She looked at her old plan books and noticed that her third graders had covered Peter and the Wolf in the first two weeks of October in the first grade. Unless something unusual happened, her students always experienced Peter and the Wolf during those first two October weeks of their first-grade year. When the day came to introduce program music, she mentioned Peter and the Wolf and asked the students what they remembered about it. Only one student remembered it. That particular student owned the recording and enjoyed listening to it with her younger brother at home. None of the other students could remember the story or any of the characters with their corresponding instruments. At the time, Karen moved on with her lesson without giving it much thought. Her lesson on program music included many engaging recorded examples, and she was thrilled that the students could guess the animal, story, or event behind many of the pieces they heard. Later, as she was reflecting on the success of the lesson, she thought again about Peter and the Wolf This lesson had been equally effective when she had taught it to the students as first graders. Why had none of the students remembered it? Would they remember anything about her current lesson when they were in fifth grade?

Mentoring novice teachers: developing a community of practice

Mentoring new teachers is critical to music education, not only for purposes of retention and attrition, but also to provide the support they need to become reflective practitioners. Researchers consistently report that novice music teachers share feelings of being overwhelmed by the duties and responsibilities of teaching. In 2004—05, a local school district (USA) employed five novice elementary general music teachers. Through the district, I offered a professional development program to these teachers to provide mentoring during the entire school year. With their consent, this program was used to collect data reflective of their experiences throughout the year, exploring the nature of their lived experience and, emergently, the growth of a community of practice. Data included the email correspondence of all participants, each teacher's end-of-year reflective journal, a personal log reflecting my perspective and an audio-recorded group discussion conducted at the end of the school year. Two key issues arose during the year that profoundly affected the professional self-confidence of these novice teachers: their struggles with classroom management, and issues that arose during their experiences with the district's process of teacher evaluation. Within the context of these common problems, the teachers seemed to value the meetings as an opportunity to give and receive support in a safe, collegial environment, in which all those present understood the parameters of their unique jobs and cared about each other as individuals and music educators. What began as a group of individuals emerged as a community of practice.

A dissonant duet: Discussions of music making and music teaching

The literature in the field of music teacher education describes a tension between the music making and the music teaching in the professional lives of music educators. Yet how do music educators themselves think about their work? This study is an investigation of how six elementary general music teachers who are also performers speak about their music making and their music teaching. Data was collected in 4 hours of largely unstructured interviews with each respondent. Data analysis strategies included identifying emergent themes, constructing profiles, juxtaposing interview excerpts and categorizing characterizations of the tension between making music and teaching music. The main findings were that the participants characterized their music making and music teaching in three ways: as two distinct roles that they take on in their professional lives, as a single approach that they take to two activities, and as an experience of making music that they hope to recreate for their students. This study aims to inform the current rethinking of music teacher education programs on the part of institutions of higher education by contributing to a richer and more nuanced understanding of the lives and work of music teachers.

Self-Reported versus Observed Classroom Activities in Elementary General Music

This study compared self-reported music class activity time use and actual time use of general music teachers. Responses from a questionnaire provided self-report data regarding general music instruction from 45 elementary general music teachers participating in a one-day Orff-Schulwerk workshop, whereas observed data were obtained by time analysis on videotaped lessons taught by 19 teachers from the same group. Variables observed included student activities and teacher behaviors. Student activities were measured as the amount of time spent in reading, listening, singing, describing, playing, creating, and moving to music; teachers were observed for the amount of talking or modeling as well as the provision of academic and social reinforcement. Comparison of self-reported activity estimates and time-analyzed data indicate that the teachers' own estimate of time use is greater than is the actual time recorded for each music activity. Additional findings related to general music teaching, teaching intensity, and effectiveness. Correlations among activities are also reported.

A Systematic Investigation of Listening Activities in the Elementary General Music Classroom

This study systematically investigated how and to what extent music listening was initiated by elementary school general music teachers. The specific problems of the study were (a) identification of activities and materials related to music listening and (b) the determination of how and to what extent assigned and assumed music listening was initiated in the selected classrooms. An observation instrument, the Elementary Music Listening Schedule (EMLS), was developed by which 18 elementary general music teachers were observed during 10 lessons. A questionnaire was designed to determine the content validity of the EMLS. Both the EMLS and the questionnaire were found to be internally consistent and accounted for each other in regard to materials, activities, and types of listening that occured in the observed lessons. The researcher concluded the following. 1. Participating teachers tended to think of music listening as a separate activity and not as one that permeated all music instruction. 2. Assigned listening appeared to be utilized mostly in singing or the playing of instruments as well as in traditional music appreciation lessons where students were asked to listen to a recording.