Browsing by Author "Shupe, Abigail, committee member"

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Open Access
Rural music teacher job satisfaction, retention, and music education's career ladder
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Padron, Casey Lee, author; Johnson, Erik, advisor; Sebald, Ann, committee member; Shupe, Abigail, committee member
In order to provide an equitable music education to all students, rural schools need to retain experienced, job-satisfied music teachers. Teacher job satisfaction is determined by working conditions, student interactions, goal progress, and self-efficacy (Badri et al. 2006; Lent & Brown, 2006; Williams, 2015). Additionally, rural teacher satisfaction is concerned with community identity (Bumgartner, 2013; Huysman, 2007; McCoy-Wilson, 2011; Richardson, 2017), while music teachers emphasize a strong support system within the school (Howard, 2006; Siebert, 2008; Scheib, 2004). Music teachers and teachers in rural schools have different priorities in determining their job satisfaction, which suggests that rural music teachers have a unique set of values in job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is an important predictor of teacher retention (Stockard & Lehman, 2004; Thibodeaux, 2015; Williams 2015), along with years of experience and preparation for entering the teaching field (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Ingersoll, 2001; Stockard & Lehman, 2004; Strunk & Robinson, 2006). These predictors pose major concerns for rural schools who often employ young, inexperienced teachers (Monk, 2007). Music teachers are especially challenging for rural school districts to retain (Hancock, 2009), which has negative effects on student performance (Barnes, Crowe, & Schaefer, 2007; Kloss, 2012; Russell, 2012; Terry & Kristonis, 2008; Rockoff, 2004) and perpetuates a "rural to urban" career ladder for the music education profession (Bates, 2011; Brossette, 2015; Howard, 2006; Kuntzelman, 2016). This mixed-method study investigated how working conditions, school support systems, teacher characteristics, and community belonging relate to rural music teachers' senses of job satisfaction and the relationship that their job satisfaction has with their decision to retain or leave their current teaching assignment. Quantitative data were collected via questionnaire (Duffy & Lent, 2009) and qualitative data were gathered through multiple-case-study methodology (Stake, 2006) to illustrate both broad job satisfaction considerations across a population of rural music teachers in Colorado as well as specific context-dependent job satisfaction and retention considerations. Questionnaire respondents demonstrated strong relationships between positive affect as a teacher characteristic, organizational support, and perceived fit as a working condition and overall job satisfaction. Case study participants further color these findings by specifying autonomy, participation in a musical community, support from the school community, and by their own strides in making progress toward student-centered goals as factors that contribute positively to their job satisfaction. Detractors from job satisfaction include a low value of music in the school community, dissonance between professional goals and community values, and isolation as an impediment to student-centered goals.
Open Access
Teacher-student rapport in the secondary instrumental music ensemble: educational psychology and teacher disposition standards
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Adams, Sebastian Phillip, author; Johnson, Erik, advisor; Phillips, Rebecca, advisor; Frederiksen, Heidi, committee member; Shupe, Abigail, committee member
Critical topics of teaching music continue to undergo philosophical evolution as unique concepts and perspectives are introduced by a variety of experts both in and out of the field. One concern among many is the role of the secondary music educator in the ideal classroom for student learning, part of which is impacted by teacher-student rapport. Teacher-student rapport is defined in this paper by the author as an adaptation of the general definition of rapport by Carey et al. (1986a): the quality of relationship between teacher and student that is characterized by communication and mutual, emotional understanding. The following questions were explored through content analysis of an education practitioner journal as well as literary analysis: how are teacher-student rapport-building strategies informed by the behaviorist, cognitivist, constructivist, and humanist schools of psychology; how can the information garnered from a literary analysis guide the transformation of teacher disposition policy; what are best practice techniques for teachers to build rapport in the secondary instrumental ensemble as implied by the data? It is with the data and discussion of this study that the author hopes to support teachers' positive rapport-building efforts with students in the secondary instrumental classroom through the avenues of immediate classroom application, and policy transformation. Data reveals that articles in the Journal of Educational Psychology examining positive rapport-building elements most comprehensively cite principles of the constructivist school, and the top three cited psychologists are Albert Bandura, Abraham Maslow, and Jean Piaget. Recommendations for teacher disposition policy transformation are suggested to help preservice teachers cultivate positive rapport-building practice, and they include standards for promoting socio-cultural investment, positive expression, student discourse recognition, reflective practice, empathy, and effective communication. Examples of potential applications in the secondary instrumental music classroom include, but are not limited to, engaging in students' referential (Reimer, 2010) connections to rehearsed repertoire and permitting exploration of expressive interpretation of said connections; consistently raising standards of musicianship and community in response to achievement through promotion of reflective processes and demonstrations of exemplary performance; recognizing and utilizing students' abilities to think critically and abstractly about the expression and artistic merit of class repertoire. Other implications of best practice are refined from Bandura's (1986) self-efficacy, Maslow's (1943 & 1971) hierarchy of needs, and Piaget's (1952) schema and genetic epistemology theories. Finally, potential operations in chamber music are presented in relation to constructivist principles.