Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine music teachers’ philosophical beliefs, and their application of those beliefs to teaching and advocacy in the United States. I also explored the factors that might predict those beliefs and their application to teaching and advocacy. To measure music teachers’ philosophical beliefs, I developed the Philosophical Beliefs (Ph.B.) scale based on the foundational utilitarian, aesthetic, and praxial philosophical perspectives. Using the Ph.B. scale, I conducted a survey through the National Association for Music Education in the United States, and 527 music teachers responded to the survey. The results revealed that music teachers’ philosophical beliefs and their use of beliefs in teaching and advocacy varied among the philosophical perspectives. In particular, the aesthetic perspective was most favored as a philosophical belief by music educators but used the least in advocacy. More experienced music teachers had stronger philosophical beliefs and made more use of these beliefs in practice. I discuss how future work may extend the research in this paper to consider additional philosophical and ethical perspectives of music educators.

Keywords

Advocacy beliefs philosophy scale development teaching experience

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abeles

H. F.

Hoffer

C. R.

Klotman

R. H.

(1995). Foundations of music education (2nd ed.). Thomson Schirmer.

Allsup

R. E.

(2010). Philosophical perspectives of music education. In Abeles

H. F.

Custodero

L. A.

(Eds.), Critical issues in music education: Contemporary theory and practice (pp. 39–60). Oxford University Press.

Alperson

(1991). What should one expect from a philosophy of music education? The Journal of Aesthetic Education, 25(3), 215–242. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3333004

Austin

J. R.

Reinhardt

(1999). Philosophy and advocacy: An examination of preservice music teachers’ beliefs. Journal of Research in Music Education, 47(1), 18–39. https://doi.org/10/2307/3345825

Bauer

W. I.

Berg

M. I.

(2001). Influences on instrumental music teaching. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 150(1), 53–66. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40319099

Baumgartner

C. M.

(2020). Supporting beginning music teachers: The development of the Oklahoma Music Educators Association mentorship program. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 29(3), 10–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1057083719885645

Beck

C. M.

(1974). Educational philosophy and theory: An introduction. Little, Brown and Company Press.

Bowman

(2012). Music’s place in education. In McPherson

Welch

(Eds), The Oxford handbook of music education (pp. 21–39). Oxford University Press.

Bowman

W. D.

(1998). Philosophical perspectives on music. Oxford University Press.

10.

Bowman

W. D.

Frega

A. L.

(2012). What should the music education profession expect of philosophy? In Bowman

W. D.

Frega

A. L.

(Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in music education (pp. 17–37). Oxford University Press.

11.

Cholbi

(2007). Intentional learning as a model for philosophical pedagogy. Teaching Philosophy, 30(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.5840/teahphil200730136

12.

Cohen

B. H.

(2013). Explaining psychological statistics (4th ed.). Wiley.

13.

DeVellis

R. F.

(2017). Scale development: Theory and applications (4th ed.). Sage.

14.

Dong

Peng

C. J.

(2013). Principled missing data methods for researchers. Springer Plus, 2(222), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-1801-2-222

15.

Elliott

D. J.

(1995). Music matters: A new philosophy of music education. Oxford University Press.

16.

Elliott

D. J.

Silverman

(2015). Music matters: A new philosophy of music education (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

17.

Elpus

(2007). Improving music education advocacy. Arts Education Policy Review, 108(3), 13–18. https://doi.org/10.3200/AEPR.108.3.13-18

18.

Elpus

(2016). Understanding America’s human capital investment in arts education: Arts educators in the nation’s public schools [Research: Art Works working paper]. National Endowment for the Arts.

19.

Gay

L. R.

Mills

G. E.

Airasian

P. W.

(2012). Educational research; Competencies for analysis and applications (10th ed.). Pearson.

20.

Greene

J. L.

Koerner

Wilson

(2019). From the inside out: Exemplary music education association mentoring programs. Arts Education Policy Review, 121(2), 74–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2019.1596852

21.

Hodges

D. A.

(2017). A concise survey of music philosophy. Routledge.

22.

Jorgensen

E. R.

(1990). Philosophy and the music teacher: Challenging the way we think. Music Educators Journal, 76(5), 17–23. https://doi.org/10/2307/3400984

23.

Leonhard

House

R. W.

(1972). Foundations and principles of music education. McGraw-Hall Book Company.

24.

Mark

M. L.

(1982). The evolution of music education philosophy from utilitarian to aesthetic. Journal of Research in Music Education, 30(1), 15–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/3344863

25.

Mark

Madura

(2014). Contemporary music education (4th ed.). Schirmer.

26.

Marsh

H. W.

Balla

J. R.

McDonald

R. P.

(1988). Goodness-of-fit indexes in confirmatory factor analysis: The effect of sample size. Psychological bulletin, 103(3), 391. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01102761

27.

Miksza

Elpus

(2018). Design and analysis for quantitative research in music education. Oxford University Press.

28.

Payne

B. S.

(1990). Justifying music in the American public school: A survey of selected Ohio school personnel (Publication No. 9031128) [Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

29.

Powell

S. R.

(2019). Structure and agency in novice music teaching. Research Studies in Music Education, 41(2), 206–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X18794514

30.

Raiber

Teachout

(2014). The journey from music student to teacher: A professional approach. Routledge.

31.

Regelski

T. A.

(2005). Curriculum: Implications of aesthetic versus praxial philosophies. In Elliott

(Ed.), Praxial music education: Reflections and dialogues (pp. 219–249). Oxford University Press.

32.

Reimer

(2003). A philosophy of music education (3rd ed.). Prentice-Hall, Inc.

33.

Russell

J. A.

(2018). Statistics in music education research. Oxford University Press.

34.

Shouldice

H. N.

Woolnough

(2022). Relationships among band festival ratings, director gender, and other selected factors. Journal of Research in Music Education, 70(2), 156–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224294211060449

35.

Shulman

L. S.

(1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.17763/hear.57.1j463w79r56455411

36.

Small

(1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Wesleyan.

37.

Song

J. M.

(2022). Strategies for the development of music education philosophy for preservice music teachers: A literature reivew. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 41(1), 7-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/87551233211049542

38.

Stauffer

(2012). Place, music education, and the practice and pedagogy of philosophy. In Bowman

W. D.

Frega

A. L.

(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy in music education (pp. 434–452). Oxford University Press.

39.

Townsend

A. S.

(2011). Introduction to effective music teaching. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

40.

West

(2015). Philosophies in curriculum and assessment. In Conway

(Ed.), Musicianship-focused curriculum and assessment (pp. 23–51). GIA Publications, Inc.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.20 MB

Music teachers’ philosophical beliefs and the use of those beliefs in teaching and advocacy in the USA

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material