Elementary music and classroom teachers\u27 time -use: A comparison by grade level, time of day, and day of the week

This study investigated time-use of elementary music teachers and elementary classroom teachers to determine: (1) whether there was a relationship between grade level, time of day, and day of the week and teachers\u27 time-use in teaching, monitoring, and non-curricular, and (2) whether ethnicity, training, and years of experience affect teacher time-use. Sixty-nine music teachers and 55 classroom teachers participated. A MANOVA was used to examine the hypothesized relationship. ANOVA results were significant for time spent teaching, monitoring, and non-curricular. An independent t test revealed a significance difference (t (302) = 5.20, p \u3c .001) between the two groups of teachers. A significant difference was found for teaching, t (302) = 5.20, p \u3c .001: music teachers spent more time actively teaching than did classroom teachers. There was a significant difference for monitoring (t (302) = 13.62, p \u3c .001): classroom teachers allocated more time to monitoring than did music teachers. A significant difference was also found for non-curricular (t (302) = 7.03, p \u3c .001): music teachers spent more time in this category of activities than did classroom teachers. Analyses of the activities subsumed under the major categories indicated significant differences between elementary music teachers and elementary classroom teachers, overall, in subject matter (p \u3c .001), discussion (p \u3c .05), school-wide activities (p \u3c .001), seatwork (p \u3c .001), giving directions (p \u3c .001), changing activities (p \u3c .001), lunch (p \u3c .05), planning (p \u3c .001) and interruption (p \u3c .001). Analyses of the relationship and ethnicity, training, degree, experience indicated significant difference for main effect, ethnicity (F(2, 116) = 4.22, p \u3c .017). Time-use for black non-Hispanic teachers was higher than time-use for those who were Hispanic and white non-Hispanic. Analyses of time-use by grade showed no increase for either group as grade level increased. A statistically significant Wilks Lambda ( F (1,294) = .917 p \u3c .013) was found for the independent variable day of the week. ANOVA indicated that elementary classroom teachers monitored more on Thursdays and Fridays: music teachers allocated more time to non-curricular activities on Fridays