Pätevä musiikin opettamiseen? Luokanopettajaksi valmistuvan musiikillinen kompetenssi perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteiden toteuttamisen näkökulmasta

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the musical competence of students in the primary teacher programme in terms of the implementation of the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Musical competence consists of a teacher's knowledge of music and personal music skills as well as the pedagogical content knowledge needed when teaching music. Both Gino Stefani's theory of musical competence and David Elliott's viewpoint on the development of musicianship were applied to this study. The study was mainly in the form of a quantitative survey and was carried out in five Finnish teacher training schools (n = 392) during the 2014-2015 academic year. The research data was substantial, and the results of the analysis are displayed in the form of diagrams, frequencies, percentages, mean values and standard deviations. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was applied in the determination of dependences. The differences between the averages of various teacher training schools were studied using the independent samples t-test. Some analyses were complemented with factor and selective regression analyses. On average, the students' musical knowledge turned out to be moderate. They knew the various music genres quite well, while their knowledge of Western music, the basics of musical notation and musical concepts was moderate. However, almost half of the students possessed only adequate or poor knowledge of musical concepts. Their knowledge of Finnish music was adequate, which was particularly evident in art and folk music. When asked to assess their own music skills, the students deemed them to be moderate, but there were significant differences between individuals as these skills are, to a great degree, influenced by the students' previous musical activities and hobbies. These future primary teachers assessed their ability to implement in their music teaching the learning content of the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education as follows: "moderate" in grades 1 - 4 and "adequate" in grades 5 - 6. It is thus obvious that Finnish teacher training does not provide the students with the necessary tools to attain the requisite musical competence; only one in five students felt they were fully or almost qualified to teach music in lower comprehensive school. It would seem that for the majority (60 per cent) of these students, teaching music in grades 1 - 6 is well-nigh impossible, even though teacher training provides all graduates with the formal qualification to teach music. Keywords: competence, diversified music studies, music education, musical competence, national core curriculum for music, national core curriculum for basic education, primary teacher training