Professional attitudes of music school teachers as a projection of future music education

Article deals with the professional attitudes of music/art schools teachers (N=367) in the context of changing educational paradigms. The questionnaire survey method was used for the research and data was processed using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) computer program. The findings of the research helped to reveal the prevailing attitudes towards the objectives of music education, performance and perfection of repertoire, hand and body positions, the importance of basic playing skills, applied methods in education practice and traditional and contemporary repertoire corresponding to the needs of today's student. The study has shown that more than one third of respondents consider the main music education objective to be stimulation of an interest in music. The possibility of nurturing a student's artistic expression as the main objective in music education is least important to the educators. Nearly all educators unanimously agree on the importance of hand/body position and basic playing skills to the quality of playing music. It has been established that more than half of all educators apply conservative methods in the teaching process at work. At present, traditional methods prevail in the educational environment and well over half of all the respondents agree on this. Moreover, educators are sceptical about looking for methodological innovations or implementing new pedagogical strategies. Many educators hold a positive attitude towards alternative musical artistic activities in class.The research shows that the vast majority of educators agree on using traditional repertoire, however educators express a positive approach to using repertoire meeting the needs of today's student