several times about research incorporating teachers' knowledge in music education (for
example, 1993a; 1993b; 1994/5; 1995/1996). The second of those articles provided a
concise overview of the field as it then existed and described four specific examples that
used different approaches, two of which came from Great Britain (Paynter, 1982;
Treacher, 1989). Bresler is one of the few researchers to have built up a body of work
that includes references to teacher thinking (see also Bresler, 1996c; 1998) and so her
studies, albeit often relating to one particular three-year ethnographic study of the arts in
elementary schools (Stake, Bresler and Mabry, 1991), are referred to throughout this
thesis.
Although one of the leading British journals on music education, the British Journal of Music Education, has included examples of teachers' own 'voices', for instance the narrative accounts of three first year secondary teachers in the very first issue (Gebbie, Elliot and Morris, 1984), the two indexed abstracts (1984-1988 and 1989-1993) contained no category for teachers' knowledge or thinking, with any articles such as the above listed in the Curriculum [Content and] Practice sections.
However, two articles published more recently have discussed something of the nature of secondary teachers' subject knowledge. Gammon (2003), in a journal section entitled Points for debate, described a propositional knowledge test given to prospective secondary PGCE students to assess their 'subject general knowledge' (ibid. title and p. 96), justifying this 'knowledge about music' by the need for 'teachers in schools ... to be able to place the music they teach about within a contextual framework' (ibid. p. 86). Spruce (2003) responded by maintaining that musical knowledge should be gained in a musical context, particularly drawing on the notion of communities of practice (as in 2: 4.2.1 above), and that using such a test sends the wrong sort of messages about what music education should be (ibid. p. 319). However, Gammon had, in fact, previously stated that experiential 'knowledge of' music is 'central to all musical learning' (Gammon, 2003, p. 84) and had also argued that propositional knowledge might have been gained in an experiential music context (ibid. p. 86). Possibly even more interesting than issues round the validity or otherwise of such a test in assessing subject knowledge are the sections of the paper where Gammon describes firstly the lack of consensus as to what subject knowledge might be in QCA and TTA statements relating to higher education courses (ibid. pp. 94-95) and secondly the broadening of a general conception of what musics should be included (ibid. pp. 95-96). This links with the
National Curriculum, as that is the music curriculum students have experienced and is also the curriculum that student teachers are preparing to teach. If there is no agreed core of knowledge for the National Curriculum at secondary level, it is not surprising if there is a lack of 'common understanding' in primary schools (Welch and Adams, 2003, p. 16).
Within the various publications to which Cox and Hennessy (2001) refer in their review mentioned above, there seem none that are principally concerned with the knowledge of primary teachers or with their thinking per se. Nevertheless, several of the works they cite contain aspects relevant to my study. For instance, considerations of teachers' and students' lack of confidence (for example, Mills, 1989; Hennessy, Rolf and Chedzoy, 1999), Mellor's investigation into teachers' response to children's compositions (1999), and the enquiry into the implementation of the National Curriculum by Lawson, Plummeridge and Swanwick (1994) all contain pertinent material in that they include references to teachers' attitudes and beliefs. An account by deVries (2000) of how he learnt to be a primary school music teacher in Australia provides an instance of the teacher's voice in another leading British journal.
Explorations of teachers' knowledge seem frequently to be linked to confidence, as mentioned above, particularly in the case of research related to the National Curriculum, for example, several reports from the Leverhulme Primary Project (Wragg et al., 1989; Bennett et al., 1992; Wragg, 1994) as well as papers by Barnes and Shinn-Taylor (1988) and Linda Hargreaves and her colleagues (L. Hargreaves, Comber & Galton, 1996). Several of the studies involving student teachers in various countries have also been concerned with this issue (for example, Gifford, 1993; Barrett, 1994; Jeanneret, 1997). Mills, in her questionnaire survey of non-specialist B.Ed students, examined the
knowledge required to teach music was inevitably influenced by their memories of being taught by 'teachers who seemed able to do all of this' (1989, p. 133).
When one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools (HMI), with specific subject responsibility for music, Janet Mills wrote frequently about various aspects of primary music education, particularly drawing on data collected by Ofsted (1994; 1997a; 1997b; 1997c; 1998; 2000-2001) and some of her findings have already been referred to earlier in this chapter. These papers were often written for an audience not necessarily familiar with the English situation and tend to be summaries of a general situation involving large numbers of schools, even though vignettes are sometimes given to illustrate the generalisations. Given the connection with Ofsted there is also an emphasis on the assessment of practice. In other words, a detailed exploration of specific teachers' thinking and knowledge is not the principal focus. However, there are indications of teachers' thinking in descriptions of teachers believing that 'they were 'not musical' and very worried about teaching music' (1994, p. 193).
Bresler has written that 'Research focusing on teacher knowledge is typically (but not exclusively) qualitative' (1994/5, p. 28). While reading other examples of research into various aspects of teachers' thinking, including their subject knowledge, it became apparent that although the underlying paradigm was indeed qualitative, the actual methods used revealed a variety of approaches along the quantitative/qualitative continuum. For example, in the UK, Beauchamp (1997) used a postal survey to investigate Welsh and English teachers' attitudes towards the various forms of curriculum support by asking the teachers to rate different aspects. Such data can then be analysed statistically. Similar methods were used in the US by Byo (1999), Kelly (1998) and Teachout (1997) in their respective studies. Although such a method can
lead to clear results, it only measures pre-determined aspects in a pre-determined way. This makes it valuable with large samples and was used thus, for example, by those involved in the Leverhulme Primary Project investigating how competent teachers felt to teach the National Curriculum with their existing subject knowledge (Wragg et al., 1989; Bennett et al., 1992; Wragg, 1994). However, there is no possibility of asking questions or looking for explanations beyond inference (and see, for example, Robson, 2002, pp. 230-232, for other advantages and disadvantages).
Studies involving questionnaires with some form of follow-up inquiry, for example interview (Barnes and Shinn-Taylor, 1988) or observation or both (Dibb, 2002) provide opportunities for clarification and extension. Multi-method studies are common, for example the ethnographic study of the arts in elementary schools carried out by Bresler and her colleagues (Stake et al., 1991; Bresler, 1993a; Bresler, 1995/1996); the participant observation and interviews of Schmidt (1998); the discussion, written tasks and responses to video-taped cases used by Barrett and Rasmussen (1996); the observation, video, and interviews of Lemons (1997); and the range of discussions and observations used by Lawson and her colleagues (1994) in their investigation of the initial implementation of the National Curriculum.
This descriptive overview of the general situation regarding the literature relating to primary generalist teachers' thinking and knowledge is obviously not exhaustive and, as already stated in relation to research in other subject areas, these and other examples are drawn on at various points throughout this thesis.
In summary, therefore, it seems that the bulk of research into teachers' thinking in general and subject knowledge in particular has been conducted in subjects other than
knowledge and associated pedagogical knowledge (Shulman, 1987) and that teachers approach different subjects in different ways (Gipps et al., 1999), there is a need to cover all curriculum subjects, both to help clarify those general views and to extend knowledge about specific subject issues. Research in the music education field, particularly that mentioning lack of confidence, has sometimes shed light, often obliquely, on teachers' beliefs and attitudes, but there appears to be little investigation specifically focused on English generalist class teachers' thinking in relation to music and music education. Hence the current study.
2: 7 Summary
Following on from the interim summaries at the ends of sections 2: 4 and 2: 5, this section draws on the content of the chapter to show how the original aims, as set out at the beginning of the chapter (see 2: 1.1), have been fulfilled. It then pulls together and makes explicit the main concepts and issues on which the following chapters draw.
The first aim was that this study should be sited in the existing research literature.
The field of research into teacher thinking is a broad one and thus this chapter positioning and tracing the nature of research into music subject knowledge has, of necessity, been lengthy, narrowing the focus from broad areas concerning thinking and knowledge to professional teaching aspects, on to subject knowledge and, thence, primary teachers' subject knowledge in music. This has covered
the historical development of the field of research into teacher thinking and subject knowledge;