Tasmanian Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students' musical backgrounds and their perceived readiness to include music in their future practice

This thesis presents the findings of an investigation into the musical backgrounds of generalist Tasmanian Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students, and the relationship between these ITE students' past experiences and their readiness to include music in their future teaching practice. The data from 43 anonymous survey responses and four individual interviews were collected from ITE students enrolled in the University of Tasmania unit ESH130: Arts Education- Music and Visual Art in second semester, 2016. A thorough thematic, inductive approach to the analysis of qualitative data, with the addition of selected correlation and independent two-sample t-tests revealed a number of main themes. The most notable finding of the study was that those ITE students who participated in private music lessons with a specialist teacher felt more confident to integrate music into their future teaching practice than those ITE students who did not participate in private lessons. It was also found that a mix of positive and negative experiences were remembered, with the role of the teacher having a major impact on the way in which respondents described the nature of their experiences. An overall agreement that music should be integrated into generalist classrooms was expressed, while respondents conveyed mixed attitudes towards their personal levels of confidence to do so in the future. Although most ITE students felt they would at least be willing to try and incorporate some music, a lack of confidence and personal skills in music were described as major barriers to achieving this.