Challenges Faced During Teaching Practice by Undergraduate Pre-Service Music Trainees at a Teachers’ Training Institution

DeWitt,Dorothy

The purpose of this study was to capture the challenges faced by music teacher trainees during their teaching practice in music education in a Bachelor of Teaching with honours for primary education (PISMP) at a teacher training institution in Kuala Lumpur. The objective of this study was to determine the challenges faced in terms of pedagogical and technological delivery during their teaching practice in primary schools. A total of 10 trainee teachers from Year 4 Semester 2 participated in this study. The researchers chose to conduct an exploratory study employing interviews for data collection. This study comprises of two phases. The first phase consisted of a focus group discussion with three male and three female participants. A semi-structured interview was conducted to enable the music teacher trainees to reflect and give their opinions. As a result of the first phase, four trainee teachers from the same cohort were targeted for a follow-up interview. The narratives of the teacher trainees’ from the interviews were transcribed and analysed according to themes. Preliminary findings revealed the challenges in facing a music class for a continuous period of three months were, difficulty in developing approaches to musical creativity in the classroom setting, unsure in designing creative musical activities that employ higher order thinking skills for teaching, problems in integrating various technological tools that are suitable for music activities and the role of creativity and technology in supporting pedagogic change. This study concludes by proposing the development of emerging technological and pedagogical content knowledge approaches to support the development of twenty-first century skills among music trainee-teachers.

Challenges Faced During Teaching Practice by Undergraduate Pre-Service Music Trainees at a Teachers’ Training Institution

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