Effects of coaching on generalist primary music teachers´ classroom practice and their `musical self-concept´

Abstract

The majority of music lessons in primary schools are covered by generalist primary music teachers, usually with little or no training in teaching it. This practice-based research project is part a PhD program to professionalize generalist music teachers in primary schools to teach music lessons. The aim of this study was to describe changes in the generalist primary music teachers´ didactic classroom practices in teaching music. Moreover, this study aimed to analyze the generalist primary music teachers´ development of their `musical self-concept` (Spychiger, 2010). This longitudinal intervention study is qualitative in character. Participants were 8 generalist primary music teachers and 4 specialist primary music teachers (control group). The 8 generalist primary music teachers were divided into two groups. The first group (n=4) received four coaching sessions (group 1), the second group (n=4) received four coaching sessions and 56 hours of further education in music didactics (group 2). The control group received no special treatment. The individual coaching sessions for all generalist primary music teachers (group 1 and 2) followed the `Content Focused Coaching` (CFC) concept. Empirical data were collected before the beginning and at the end of the study by video-observations of classroom performances in primary music lessons (n=24), and questionnaires concerning the teachers `musical self-concepts` (n=24). The first findings seem to suggest on the one hand that generalist music teachers require fairly little support to enhance their didactic performance of teaching music in primary music lessons. But on the other hand it appears that coaching without a parallel measure of further education seems to be to no avail for the group of less musically trained generalist music teachers.