Current and Future Challenges
1) Perhaps the main challenge for teacher educators of music is the wide range of music degree courses from which the prospective teacher trainees graduate. Trainees arrive at a teacher training course with very varied music skills and also different gaps in their subject knowledge and skills. For example, one trainee might complete their undergraduate degree in classical music, another in popular music and another in music technology. Those involved in technology-based courses – and even those on more ‘traditional’ courses – may not have developed key skills required for work in schools, including instrumental and vocal performance and conducting, aural and harmony. Even students completing the same type of undergraduate degree will not have covered the same areas of study owing to the large amount of choice that is offered on most undergraduate courses and their modular nature. This sets up difficulties for both the teacher educators and for the trainee music students themselves. Those leading a teacher training course may be aware of their students’ individual areas of weakness but in what is already a very short, intense course there is limited time to address these divers needs in organised tutor-led sessions. The difficulty for the students is finding the time to further develop their areas of weakness further when the course is already very demanding in terms of teaching and written – often Master’s level – assignments. Indeed, many educators and students feel that 38 weeks is a very short time to develop teaching skills, even when trainees have a high level of competence in relation to subject skills and knowledge.
2) At the outset of their music degrees, most students are completely unaware of the musical requirements for entering a PGCE course. As such, for most, it is only in the last year of their degree when they apply for a teacher training course, that they become aware of their gaps in knowledge and skills - and this is rather late for skills - such as aural - which require development over a long period of time. Many educators believe there is a need for undergraduate course to clarify the requirements of teacher training at the very beginning of the first year, to enable students who know they want to enter the teacher profession to be informed of ‘important’ modules to cover during their music course.
3) In those institutions where only Masters certification is possible there is a challenge for music teacher educators in creating appropriate assignments. On the one hand, these assignments should focus on supporting the development of the practising teacher, yet being certificated at Masters level there is a requirement that literary skills are strong; the combination of strong musician skills and competence in written expression is not always found in good music teachers. As such, there is a real likelihood that, with the introduction of the Masters accreditation, students who are excellent musicians and teachers might still fail their teacher training course on the basis of weak written assignments.
4) Owing to the very small amount of time allocated to the development of musical and music pedagogical skills in generalist primary school teacher training courses, many primary school teachers lack the expertise and/or the confidence to teach music well.
5) The increasingly diverse nature of the curriculum for music and the emphasis on informal and non formal modes of learning demand that teachers are able to act as a resource and mediator or coordinator of children’s music learning. Training courses need to incorporate this by enabling trainees to have experiences in out of school music learning contexts. This may challenge the structures and modes of assessment that are currently in place.