What preservice music teachers learn about diversity during student teaching
type: CreativeWork
description: Music teacher educators have been called to work toward diversity, an ambiguous term. Preparing teachers to work toward diversity and more importantly, equity, requires action in every aspect of teacher preparation. Because of its professional and personal significance, student teaching has been implicated as a site for change (Abramo & Campbell, 2016; Conway, 2002, 2012; Draves, 2013). To what extent are student teachers prepared to address issues related to diversity and equity? How do student teachers conceive of diversity during such a complex experience? How do they learn to respond to student diversity in equitable ways? Paine (1990) offers four possible orientations toward diversity: individualistic, categorical, contextual, and pedagogical. In this multiple case study (Thomas, 2016), I examined how four student teachers’ orientations toward diversity (Paine, 1990) changed during semester-long field experiences. I explored the ways that cooperating teachers, the edTPA—a standardized evaluation of the preparation to teach, and school placements influenced the participants. Data collection took place in Illinois during the fall of 2018 and included five observations and follow-up interviews with each participant as well as interviews with the cooperating teachers. The participants taught general music, string, and choral classes at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The student teachers discussed a variety of what they named as “typical” or even “stereotypical” categories of diversity; conversations with the participants about P-12 student diversity were dominated by discussions of age, grade level, and musical abilities. The student teachers mostly viewed diversity as individualistic, randomly occurring, though personally significant (Paine, 1990). These views were associated with normative responses to difference including issues of classroom management and lesson planning in which the student teachers focused mostly on the unsubstantiated catego…
abstract: Music teacher educators have been called to work toward diversity, an ambiguous term. Preparing teachers to work toward diversity and more importantly, equity, requires action in every aspect of teacher preparation. Because of its professional and personal significance, student teaching has been implicated as a site for change (Abramo & Campbell, 2016; Conway, 2002, 2012; Draves, 2013). To what extent are student teachers prepared to address issues related to diversity and equity? How do student teachers conceive of diversity during such a complex experience? How do they learn to respond to student diversity in equitable ways? Paine (1990) offers four possible orientations toward diversity: individualistic, categorical, contextual, and pedagogical. In this multiple case study (Thomas, 2016), I examined how four student teachers’ orientations toward diversity (Paine, 1990) changed during semester-long field experiences. I explored the ways that cooperating teachers, the edTPA—a standardized evaluation of the preparation to teach, and school placements influenced the participants. Data collection took place in Illinois during the fall of 2018 and included five observations and follow-up interviews with each participant as well as interviews with the cooperating teachers. The participants taught general music, string, and choral classes at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. The student teachers discussed a variety of what they named as “typical” or even “stereotypical” categories of diversity; conversations with the participants about P-12 student diversity were dominated by discussions of age, grade level, and musical abilities. The student teachers mostly viewed diversity as individualistic, randomly occurring, though personally significant (Paine, 1990). These views were associated with normative responses to difference including issues of classroom management and lesson planning in which the student teachers focused mostly on the unsubstantiated catego…
author: Fiorentino, Matthew C.
language: en
keywords: Diversity, Student Teaching
date published: 2020-08-26T21:54:37Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:47Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/107945