Coteaching music in a primary school: teacher perspectives

Abstract

Within the parameters of this research study, an in-service - preservice teacher partnership, which was developed from the work of Murphy & Beggs (2005), was employed to explore teacher perspectives on coteaching music. Coteaching involves two or more teachers learning from each other while sharing the responsibility for teaching the students (Murphy & Scantlebury, 2010, p.1). The aim of this exploratory, mixed-methods study was to examine the impact of a three-year whole-school approach to coteaching music, from the perspective of twenty primary school teachers working in the same school in an urban setting in Ireland. The study sought to better understand the practices, opportunities and challenges associated with coteaching music and to contribute to forming a more robust research base for further development.

The study took place for twelve weeks per year, over three years. Every class teacher from junior infants (age 4-5) to sixth class (age 12-13) volunteered to coteach music with a pre-service music teacher for thirty minutes each week and to participate in the coteaching study. Twenty teachers (20/20) completed one residency. Of those, nine teachers (9/20) completed two residencies and six teachers (6/20) completed all three coteaching music residencies.

Drawing on sociocultural theories of learning and adopting a mixed-methods design, data were obtained from a variety of sources during the three-year study. Teacher semi-structured interviews were conducted annually by the researcher at the end of each coteaching residency. Two months after the study was completed a set of ten teacher interviews were conducted by two independent interviewers, including a school principal from another school and a university lecturer, neither of whom were known to the interviewees. Researcher field notes compiled over three years; pre-and post-coteaching teacher confidence audits, teacher reflection journals and preservice music teacher reflection journals complete the dataset.

Two significant findings emerged as central to participant experiences. The first was a development in teacher agency evidenced in self-perceptions of increased confidence in teaching music, an expanded vocabulary to describe and analyse music and a limited number of skills associated with the three strands, Composing, Listening and responding and Performing. The second involved a change in school culture such that a hitherto predominantly solo teaching culture developed into a community of collaborative practice. Additionally, all teachers indicated that they now possessed increased confidence in the value of their own expertise as pedagogues, a greater desire to collaborate professionally and an awareness of the learning opportunities afforded to the children via coteaching.

The school in which the study was situated subsequently sustained and extended the music coteaching partnership and is currently hosting four other coteaching arrangements in mathematics, dance, science and teacher?parent partnership.

This study has implications for how primary schools and the Department of Education and Skills might consider coteaching as a non-hierarchal, locally-based teacher professional development model, as a means of creating meaningful local knowledge, of promoting collaborative practice and of facilitating change.