Differences in intentions, beliefs, and feelings of two groups of elementary education majors concerning music education in the classroom.

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to identify the changes which occur for elementary education majors as they proceed through a course in music fundamentals for classroom teachers and a course which presents methods of teaching music. The subjects responded to several measuring instruments on the first day of classes in the music fundamentals course (the pretreatment group, five classes, N = 103) or on the last day of classes in the methods course (the posttreatment group, five classes, N = 93, all of whom had completed the prior fundamentals course). The study addressed one main question: Are there significant differences between the responses of the pretreatment and posttreatment groups to questions which consider intentions, beliefs, and feelings about the teaching of music? The analysis of data first considered several items bearing on the extent to which the two groups were a representative sample of the population of students enrolling in such classes during a three-year period and to what extent the two groups could be considered equivalent. The lack of significant differences in grade-point average, grade in school, and declared major suggested that the two groups could be considered quasi-random samples from the population of students enrolling in such classes. No significant differences were found between the two test groups in terms of GPA, age gender, and several items related to music background. Regarding the research question, the analysis of data identified significant differences between groups in three areas. Subjects in the posttreatment group: (1) intend to use more musical activities more frequently in their classrooms than those in the pretreatment group, (2) have more positive beliefs about their musical skills/knowledge and fewer negative ones than those in the pretreatment group, (3) have more positive feelings about their ability to provide music in the classroom than those in the pretreatment group.