T´ ecnicas de Difracci´ on de Neutrones

A staggering 73% of the participants in this study were never exposed to practicum teaching experiences during their pre-service training, whilst all of the respondents felt it was an important part of music teacher training. For those teachers who reported that they were exposed to some kind of practicum experiences, the period of time involved in this training ranged from one week to three weeks at a time. Respondents’ feelings regarding practicum experiences can be summarised as follows:

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 Participant 30 felt that a whole year of practical teaching should be done at a school – much in the same way that the PGCE students are currently doing. She continued to say:

“ … so that they quickly can find out what the teaching career is about and so that you can enter the teaching career as a trained teacher.”

Participant 6 supported this sentiment:

“I think it is extremely important, because you come down to earth very quickly once you enter the school environment.”

 Another suggestion was to go to schools for at least a few weeks per year.

 The range of activities that were experienced by the teachers who had some form of practicum experience, ranged from observing lessons, some taught individual instrumental lessons and some presented lessons to groups of pupils in classroom settings.

 HOD’s were all willing to facilitate pre-service music teachers’ practicum training in their schools, but only one reported ever facilitating music students in their Music Departments.

“Not since I've been here and it's almost 5 years, no. I've often wondered how is it possible that I've never received a student teacher, …” (Participant 11)

 It guides pre-service music teachers towards the creation of a professional identity. This provides novice teachers with the chance of entering the profession with some idea of who they are and what they can offer the world of music education.

 The opportunity to teach instrumental lessons to pupils on an on-going basis and then to be assessed, based on your teaching methods and success with the pupil, was mentioned as being very valuable for pre-service teachers.

 A large percentage of undergraduate music students engage in teaching individual instrumental lessons whilst busy with their studies on an informal basis. Questions arose as to whether this practice is valuable to the music students or not.

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 Some HOD’s felt that it was necessary for undergraduate students to engage in such teaching experiences before completion of a music degree, because it gave the student the chance to shape his/her teaching style and get to grips with the syllabi available for their instrument.

 The participants felt that the value of practicum experiences lies not only in the teaching experience you obtain, but also in the ability to identify problem areas in which the teacher can improve and develop, such as lesson planning and lesson preparation and presentation, under the guidance of experienced teachers.

 The respondents felt that they wanted to have more practical opportunities to teach instrumental lessons and subject music classes to pupils in the FET band. The teaching opportunities in micro-teaching classes did not provide them with opportunities to try their hand at conveying information to pupils of a school-going age. Even though there is value in such experiences, it was felt that this should still be combined with actual teaching experiences in school settings. This problem was raised a number of times by a variety of respondents.

“Teaching how to teach the theory and how to teach the history to students, is a whole different thing, than teaching it to children who are 15, 16 years old in school.” (Participant 2)

 These problems were experienced even more severely by those novice and early-career teachers who did not specialise in music education, such as participant 11:

“You know, in a sense, you don’t do class music and that type of thing… That’s all part of education. No, we didn’t do any of those things (subject music classes).”

 Another benefit of practicum experiences over a longer period of time, is that pre-service teachers get a better understanding of the other teaching duties , roles and responsibilities of a music teacher.

140 “Well, being here on a day-to-day basis will actually wake them up to the fact that as a teacher, you are basically, also involved with the entire school and all its projects. … they can't live in... under the illusion that when they, they arrive at a school, they're going to teach in a little music nucleus - on ‘Planet Music’ basically - they often have to do lots of things, provide music for lots of things that they would never have dreamt that they would have to” (Participant 29)

 Some HOD’s reported attitude problems and an unwillingness of novice teachers to get more involved in school-life and this could be seen as a result of not having been exposed to the realities of the school environment as pre- service teachers. The teachers who had the opportunity to do practical teaching at a school, found the transition from the pre-service world to the reality of school-life, easier;

“I wasn’t scared to walk into the school set-up, because I often went to schools…” (Participant 30)

as opposed to the teachers who did not have practicum experiences: “Because if I did it for a longer time, I would have been more prepared of what would have been expected of me when I eventually went into the schooling system.” (Participant 21)