Learning from experience: Influences on music student teachers' perceptions and practices.

In this study, I explore the lessons four preservice music teachers learned from their experiences as student teachers. Their perceptions of good and poor teaching, of themselves as teachers, and of their problems and successes in the classroom, as revealed through interviews and participant observation in their student teaching placements, served as indications of their learnings. Case studies describe each one's experiences and highlight what each appeared to learn about teaching and about self. Constructivist understandings of knowledge, meaning-making, and learning from experience provide a thematic framework for the entire study. I discuss the student teachers' learning in light of three different research perspectives, alternately framing their perceptions as personalized models of teaching; as experience-based understandings constructed through collateral learning and reflection; and as schemata in various stages of cognitive development. Through these three different frameworks, I identify: first, the student teachers' perceptions; second, factors that shaped those perceptions prior to and during their student teaching semester; and, third, ways in which their perceptions influenced their classroom practices. Four constructive processes accounted, in part, for the fact that the student teachers did not all learn the same things from experiencing the University Music Teacher Education program. First, the process of learning to teach involved both cognitive growth and active practice. The student teachers' perceptions of teaching and self directly influenced their instructional practices; and learning from each practical experience in turn altered their perceptions of teaching and self. Second, the student teachers' learning appeared to be cumulative; idiosyncratic interpretations of contemporary experiences had roots in each one's prior experience. Third, no matter how others assessed their experience, personal meanings, particularly their perceived ability to be themselves in the classroom, determined both the quality and content of what they learned, strongly mediating learning from cooperating teachers, supervisors, and University coursework. Fourth, the perceived quality of their relationships with mentors affected what the student teachers learned from them; with the help of a supportive mentor, virtually any experience, positive or negative, potentially could be given educative meaning. Based on these findings, I suggest considerations for practice, within a view of teacher education as a lifelong, continuous process of experiential learning.PhDEducationMusic educationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129308/2/9423310.pd