Teachers' confidence in navigating the complexities of 'being a teacher' influence their behaviour, how they are perceived, how they make sense of their environment and circumstances and their successes. A web-based survey was developed and distributed to music teachers via an online community of practice. This paper reports on the respondents'…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the creative musical identities of pre-service music education students in the US and Australia. This work builds on prior work that has employed similar procedures with pre-service music teachers (PSMTs) in England and Finland. As in prior research, the creative identity in music (CIM) measure…

While constructivist theory is widely promoted in pre-service music teacher education, there has been a lack of research conducted to reveal the ways in which the theory is individually personalized, then subsumed, translated and adopted into in-service classroom teaching practice. To address this shortfall, this article explores some of the ways…

The relationships between discipline specialization, teacher identity, and pedagogy can be seen as the crux of practice in the music classroom--impacting on all the actions of the teacher, both within and outside the classroom. Crucially, the impact of music teacher identity on the nature of music teaching and learning is one that has the…

This study investigates pre-service music teacher's (PSMT) perceptions of their professional identities. University-level education students in the United States America (USA), Spain and Australia were all asked interview questions based on general themes relevant to teacher identity development, and their responses were subjected to content…

This paper provides a description and critical analysis of student perceptions of a nationally funded university teaching development project that aimed to bridge gaps between research, teaching and academic development in music teacher education. Based on research recommendations the project utilised collaboration between schools and universities…

This article reports the findings of a study exploring early-career music teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of their pre-service teacher education programmes in Queensland, Australia. It also explores influences impacting upon early-career music teachers' perceptions of effectiveness and early-career music teachers' perceived needs in…

Early-career music teachers are well placed to comment on the effectiveness of pre-service teacher education. Their perceptions are particularly relevant in determining why music teachers are "burning out" at an early stage of their career. This article explores how 15 early-career Australian music teachers perceive their job and their…

"Burnout" and praxis shock seem to be causing teachers to leave the profession early. Much research suggests that this is a reflection on the quality of teacher education programs. Interviews with teachers who were in their first four years in the secondary music classroom reveal how they view their pre-service preparation, and therefore…

The quality of teaching in schools is directly linked to the quality of preservice preparation that teachers receive. This is particularly important in the area of music teacher education, given the unique challenges that classroom music teachers commonly face. This paper reports on research designed to investigate the knowledge and skills that…