The Development and Validation of the Preservice Music Teacher Self-Efficacy Survey

Undergraduate programs to prepare future music teachers at colleges and universities across the United States require skill development in instrumental, choral, and general music (NASM, 2015). These preparation programs require students to matriculate through methods courses (e.g., instrumental methods) to learn pedagogical and content skills necessary to be considered competent music teachers. Although content knowledge and teaching skills could be influencing factors on preservice teachers’ future classroom effectiveness, personal beliefs of individual preservice teachers might also influence teacher effectiveness (Bandura, 1997; Pajares, 1996). One such belief, teacher self-efficacy, or teachers’ self-referent judgements of capability (Zee, 2016), has been shown to affect a variety of different outcomes, such as student achievement and teacher burnout (Klassen, 2009; Zee, 2016). With most Music education programs certifying preservice music teachers across all aspects of music instruction (instrumental, general, choral) and age ranges (K-12), Music education majors feel they should be more competent before entering the job market (Hammann & Ebbie, 2009). In addition, research shows that the probability of a music education major teaching outside their area of specialization (e.g., an instrumentalist teaching in a choral setting) is relatively high (Groulx, 2016). In light of these facts, there have been few attempts to investigate the construct of teacher self-efficacy within the context of a music setting. The purpose of this study was to develop and establish validity evidence for a single scale to measure preservice music teacher self-efficacy in the three most-common music education instructional/classroom settings: the general/elementary classroom, the instrumental classroom, and the choral classroom. This process involved developing an instrument that follows specific guidelines for item construction and establishing validity evidence based on (a) test content, (b) response processes, (c) internal structure, and (d) relations to other constructs. Participants were undergraduate music education majors enrolled in NASM accredited schools of music across the United States. In Phase 1 of the research process, expert reviews and cognitive interviews were used to narrow a researcher-developed pool of 41 items down to 30. This researcher- developed survey instrument is called the Preservice Music Teacher Self-Efficacy Survey (PMTSES). After administration of the same 30 PMTSES items within the context of each music instructional/classroom setting (instrumental, choral, general/elementary music) to the sample population (N = 141), the descriptive and psychometric properties of the items in each instructional/classroom setting were investigated. Phase 2 of this research study included data analysis for descriptive statistics of items, demographic data of participants, and exploratory factor analyses for each set of items related to the same instructional setting to investigate the underlying structure of items on the PMTSES. Results indicate multi-factor solutions for items related to all three music instructional/classroom contexts. This means that items on the PMTSES examine varying aspects of preservice music teacher self-efficacy (e.g., self-efficacy for choosing teaching materials). When individually examining each of the 30 items to see if they measure the same aspect of preservice music teacher self-efficacy in all three settings, eight items across all three classroom/instructional settings (choral, instrumental, general/elementary music) were retained on the final permutation of the PMTSES. These eight items measure preservice music teachers’ self-efficacy as it relates to student-specific contexts, instruction, and choosing teaching materials