Perception of confidence and background in the arts 1
Perceptions of confidence and background in the arts of preservice primary teachers from five countries
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 3-6 September 2008
Associate Professor Deirdre Russell-Bowie,
University of Western Sydney,
PO Box 81, MILPERRA NSW 2214
Phone: (02) 9772 6298
Fax: (02) 9708 3000
Email:
Abstract
This paper reports the findings of a study involving 939 preservice primary generalist teachers in five countries. Initially the paper identifies the students’ perceptions of their background and confidence in relation to music, dance, drama and visual arts. Secondly, it ascertains whether or not there is a statistically significant difference between male and female students in relation to their arts education background and confidence. Results indicated that, in general, students had a stronger background in music than in visual arts, dance and drama, and had a greater confidence and enjoyment in visual arts education than in music, dance and drama education. Twenty five percent of students had a good background in music, 20% in dance, 16% in visual arts, 15% in drama. In relation to confidence and enjoyment, 56% enjoyed and felt confident in, visual arts education, 49% in music, 46% in drama and 45% in dance. In general, females were more confident in arts education and had a stronger background in the arts than males. Based on the results of this survey suggestions are made to enhance the teaching of arts education.
Perceptions of confidence and background in the arts
of preservice primary teachers from five countries
Introduction
“When well taught, the arts provide young people with authentic learning experiences that engage their minds, hearts and bodies. The learning experiences are real and meaningful for them…. Engagement in the arts … nurtures the development of cognitive, social and personal competencies” (Fiske, 1999, p. viii).
Arts educators around the world know well the importance of a strong arts education in the lives of children. Every culture is surrounded and immersed in music, dance, drama and visual arts. For many people, the arts are an integrated way of life and of self-expression from the day they are born. For others, the arts are more like a spectator sport, which they enjoy to watch from afar, only occasionally stepping up to participate in making, appreciating or performing activities. However, research indicates that students with high levels of arts participation outperform students with little arts background, by virtually every measure, and arts participation makes more significant difference to students from low-income backgrounds than for students from high-income backgrounds (Fiske, 1999).
In non-academic areas, engagement in the arts nurtures and develops competencies and attributes within the students’ cognitive, social and personal domains. As such, the arts should be a basic part of children’s learning experiences both inside and outside of school (Fiske, 1999). But are the arts given this importance in our schools, are preservice teachers entering their training with an adequate background in each of the arts subjects, and are there differences between the background and confidence levels of male and female students? This study examines the arts experiences and attitudes of male and female preservice generalist primary teachers sampled from five countries, Australia, Namibia, South Africa, USA and Ireland in relation to their confidence and background in arts education.
Background
In Australia, for the past thirty years, there have been several enquiries into the adequacy of the provision of arts education in schools and each report has produced similar results – there is a paucity of quality arts education happening in state primary schools (NSW Ministry of Education, 1974; Schools Commission / Australia Council, 1977; Comte, 1988; Senate Environment, Recreation, Communication and the Arts Committee [SERCARC], 1995). The Australian Senate Inquiry into arts education (SECARC, 1995) found that ‘Generalist primary classroom teachers, because of their own poor arts experience at school, and because of inadequate teacher training, lack confidence to teach the arts. As a result... there is a strong impulse to marginalise the arts in their teaching’ (p.49). In relation to the cultural background of Australians and their attitudes to the arts, the Saatchi and Saatchi report, Australians and the Arts, notes that people with some non-English speaking origin in the survey sample differ from the overall population (of Australia) in having a more positive view of the arts. Those with non-Australian origin are more likely to take a positive view of the arts, compared with those with Australian origin (Costantoura, 2001).
In USA, Bresler (1991) reports that ‘training in the arts is inadequate. Teachers find arts education a difficult assignment’ (p.136). She notes that although American schools have an arts program, the emphasis is on instrumental and vocal performance within music, drawing in visual arts and producing sketches for drama. Although strong advocates for the arts helped ‘draw rhetorical attention to the arts ... practices in the schools appear largely unchanged’ (p. 3). Bresler adds that ‘according to the National Endowment for the Arts (1988), “Basic arts education does not exist in the United States today”’(p. 3) and ‘there is little need for research to establish the low priority and fragmentation of arts education in the schools’ (p. 3). Of the arts subjects that are taught, music and visual arts were the most often implemented, with dance and drama (theatre) faring the worst. Also, when the arts were taught they were mainly taught as ‘acts of production’ rather than forms of knowledge (Fowler, 1988, p. 6).
In Namibia, where many people are brought up in an arts-rich culture which permeates their lives, the arts were ideally meant to be taught in schools by specialist teachers, but practicalities often resulted in the arts being taught by a classroom teacher with minimum formal experience and training in the arts subjects. ‘In terms of the true aims of music education, little appears to be achieved in these classes – in fact the result is often inculcation of a dislike of music’ (Lepherd, 1995, p. 29). Prior to political independence from South Africa, there were extremes of inequalities. For example, in relation to music education, most black schools had no qualified music teachers or even instruments, white schools had planned curricular, trained teachers and excellent facilities and resources, and the so-called coloured schools were placed in the middle of this extreme continuum (Mans, 1997). With the continued implementation and resourcing of the new Primary Arts core subject within the primary schools, since 1996, it is hoped that this situation will be changing for the better.
In South Africa, a similar country where the arts are an integral part of peoples’ lives and ways of expressing themselves, and generalist teachers were expected to teach the arts in the primary school, ‘most South African children of all races were supposed to have tuition in Class Music … but it often featured on timetables but not in practice’ (van Niekirk, 1997, p. 268). There are many exciting arts experiences happening outside of the school setting, but inside the school system, little seems to be happening. Similar resource inequities to Namibia are seen in schools across the country, but the aim of the new Arts in Culture syllabus is to ensure that engagement in authentic arts activities happens inside the school situation as well as outside (van Niekirk, 1997).
Although in Ireland the children and teachers come from a rich heritage of music making, and in some cases dancing, within the classroom situation, many teachers seem to devote little time to playing instruments and creating music, and instead rely mainly on singing within their music lessons (Murphy, 1998). Across these five countries, specialist teachers in the arts in most public primary schools are currently a rarity and with the crowded curriculum the arts are generally the first set of subjects to be left off the timetable (Kornhaber & Krechevsky, 2002; Russell-Bowie, 1993, 2000).
Given this seeming paucity of adequate training in the arts, generalist primary preservice teacher education students often enter their teacher education programs with very little background and low confidence levels within the arts. In their primary school experiences, they have had little satisfactory arts education as their teachers were generally ill equipped by their preservice training to provide them with developmental and quality arts experiences (SECERC, 1995).
When these students enrol in teacher education courses, having little background in the arts subjects, it is hard to expect the universities or colleges to turn them round in a few years, working only in class time (SECERC, 1995). Over the past twenty years, universities have decreased this class time for arts education, despite the repeated recommendations from a variety of reports into Arts education, for teachers to be more adequately trained in the arts.
In most of the universities and colleges used in the study, music and visual arts were the predominant art forms studied, with drama often seen as a part of the English curriculum and dance as part of the Physical Education curriculum. Many schools also reflect this emphasis on different art forms. This lack of adequate, in depth training in the arts subjects creates enormous challenges for the teacher education staff who are meant to equip their student teachers to be able to teach each of these arts subjects when they graduate. Preservice primary teachers generally have very little background in the arts when they arrive at university and then have very few lecture hours for input – is it any wonder that many of them start teaching and omit the arts from their programs? Perhaps Teacher Education programs need to be held more accountable for the lack of training they offer their students in these particular subjects.
Although lack of adequate arts background is perceived to be a significant problem, another connected issue is that of arts participation in relation to gender. If one examines the gender issues in relation the arts, when boys are involved in the arts, they are often seen as wimps or homosexuals; fewer boys are involved in the arts, and although girls playing hockey is accepted, boys doing ballet is often seen as surprising (Young, 2001). An Australian national survey into the arts, by Saatchi and Saatchi (Costantoura, 2000) found that males are ‘substantially less likely than females to place a high value on the arts’ (p. 140). While 74% of females surveyed gave the arts a high or fairly high value, only 59% of males chose this option. In relation to Grade 12 participation in the arts, more girls than boys were involved in arts subjects (Fillarton, Walker, Ainley & Hillman, 2003). This issue may also impact the background and confidence of preservice primary teachers.
So teacher education institutions are faced with students who bring with them poor arts experiences and negative attitudes to the arts, built up over a lifetime, with boys seeming to be involved less in the arts than females. This study will examine the background and confidence of these student teachers in relation to arts education and gender issues across five countries. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided for improving the situations of arts education in schools.
Aim of Study
This present study is nested within a larger study which is called the Creative Arts: Students’ Attitudes – National and Overseas Associate (CASANOVA) study, the aim of which was to survey a sample of generalist primary preservice teacher education students from various countries to investigate their attitudes towards the creative arts. Most of these countries were moving towards using the generalist classroom teacher as the main arts educator, as the number of specialist teachers, if used, was on the decrease. This present study uses specific items related to background and confidence in relation to gender across the four art forms.
Specifically this study examines the following questions:
1.Is there a reliable set of scales relating to background and confidence in music, dance, drama and visual arts education that could be derived from the CASANOVA data using exploratory principle component analysis?
2.How do generalist primary preservice teacher education students perceive their own background and confidence in relation to the arts and arts education?
3.Is there a statistically significant difference between male and female student teachers’ responses to the questions relating to their background and confidence in the arts and arts education?
Method
Survey Instrument
The survey instrument was developed specifically for this study, but was based on a similar previously validated survey used in 1991 to ascertain the attitudes of teachers to music and music education in New South Wales state primary schools (Russell-Bowie, 1993). Similar questions were asked in both surveys; however the instrument for this current study was focussed on primary preservice teacher education students, covered all four strands of the creative arts (music, dance, drama and visual arts) and was administered in five different countries. Apart from the demographic questions, each of the other questions had one stem with four endings, and each of the endings related either to music, visual arts, dance or drama, eg.
I think that elementary schools should give a high priority to:Music
Visual Arts
Dance
Drama
Responses were given by circling a number to indicate one answer in the demographic questions, or one number on a Likart scale from 1 – 5, with 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree. This study reports on those items related specifically to background and confidence across all four art forms.
Participants
As Table 1 indicates, the participants were 936 university students enrolled in tertiary generalist primary teacher education programs in Sydney and Newcastle, Australia (n = 385 = 41%), Windhoek, Namibia (n = 187 = 20%), Durban and Pretoria, South Africa (n = 254 = 27%), Illinois, USA (n = 59 = 6.5%) and Dublin, Ireland (n = 51 = 5.5%). These institutions were selected on the basis of lecturers being willing to administer the instrument to their students and return the surveys to the author in Australia. Other institutions in different countries were also approached but the above were the only ones to respond with completed surveys.
Table 1
Number and percentage of generalist primary preservice teacher education students from five countries who completed the survey
Countryn%
Australia38541
Namibia18720
South Africa25427
USA 596.5
Ireland515.5
TOTAL936100
The demographic details of the sampled students are included in Table 2. Of these students, 82% were females and 18% were males, 82% were aged 18 - 25 years, 18% were aged 26 years or older. Responses indicated that of the sampled students, 30% were in their first year, 25% were in their second year, 28% were in third year, 15% were in their fourth year and 1% responded with ‘other’. It was also noted that some of the sampled institutions only had three years of teacher education while others had a four year course.
In response to the survey, students were asked to indicate what score they received as their university/college entrance score, and whether or not this was applicable to them. Twenty-three percent indicated that they received a score from between 0 – 60 and 25% had a score above this, with 52% of the responding students not required to have a university/college entrance score so indicated ‘not applicable’ on their survey form. In relation to the language spoken at home, of the responding students, 62% spoke English at home and the rest spoke a variety of other languages including Arabic, various African languages, Vietnamese, Spanish and Greek.
Table 2
Demographic details of sampled students
ItemCategoryn%
SexFemales 75082
Males 16218
Age18 – 2150855
22 – 2525227
26 and over16518
Year level at UniversityYear 127730
Year 223025
Year 326528
Year 414015
Other121
University entrance score0 – 6017023
61 – 1009425
Not applicable37852
Home languageEnglish57362
Other35038
In most of the sampled countries, the creative arts is one of the key learning areas in the primary schools and comprises a crucial component in the teacher education program. Most of the countries (NSW in Australia, Namibia, South Africa and Ireland) at the time of this study were in the process of introducing a new creative arts syllabus instead of separate curriculum documents for music and visual arts. Dance and drama tended previously to be part of other subjects such as Physical Education and English. Despite the diversity of schooling and schooling structures, these syllabi were each being prepared for the generalist classroom teacher to implement, as most schools in these countries have a significantly decreasing number of specialists to teach arts education in the primary school. Within this context, all the sample students were training to be generalist primary school teachers, not specialists in any of the particular art forms.
Data Collection procedure
Students were asked to complete the survey during lectures at each university or college and the same instructions were printed on the front of the instruments and were read out to every group of students. The students were given a practice example to ensure they understood how to complete each question then took between 15 and 30 minutes to complete the survey.
Data Analysis
The raw data from the surveys (individual responses for each of the questions for each of the subjects), were then entered into an SPSS file and analysed using frequencies and cross tabulations to gain an overview of the data. Statistical procedures were then selected in light of the questions to be tested. Exploratory principal component analysis with Varimax rotation was used to validate the scales, and Cronbach coefficients of internal consistency (alphas) were computed to check reliability of the scales. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to identify statistically significant differences between female and male responses within the two scales. Listwise deletion of missing data was undertaken for each of the statistical analyses.