The purpose was to investigate the role of influential persons in the professional socialization process of music educators as musicians and teachers. The problems were to determine: who encouraged subjects toward music and teaching during pre-college, college, and post-college years; and the interrerationships of gender and teaching specialty with influential persons in subjects' lives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the self-perceptions certified public high school teachers in the fine arts have toward their roles as artist and instructional staff member.

Each music teacher steps into their classroom as an educator shaped by their unique life experiences. Former music teachers, ensemble participation, culture, media, teacher education, and family dynamics are just a few of the influences that make each music teacher unique. Acknowledged or not, these factors shape the verbal messages of music teachers in the classroom. This study explored how elementary music teachers explicitly share what they believe about the potential of their students’ musical ability through verbal messages during instruction. Symbolic interactionism was used as the theoretical framework for this study because it helps explain how people attach meaning to language through social interactions. Carol Dwek’s growth mindset research was the lens for the theoretical framework. The growth mindset framework of Dweck was adapted for music in this study to help teachers identify and reflect on their mindset and explore how applicable it might be as a framework for music educators to foster growth in developing musicians. This intervention study recruited four elementary music teachers. Interviews, classroom observations, a Likert scale survey, open-ended questions, and reflection prompts were used to collect data. Each instrument's design was built on Dweck’s research regarding mindset identification but adapted for musical ability. The four research questions sought to capture the experiences of participants from their existing knowledge of growth mindset practices to observable changes after the growth mindset intervention. The data were analyzed and coded to find evidence of fixed and growth mindsets explicitly in elementary music instruction before and after the growth mindset was used as an intervention. This study showed that a growth mindset framework can only be observed through verbal messages when opportunities for skill development are authentically facilitated. The bulk of verbal examples presented in this study indicate that a growth mindset is embedded in the scaffolding of effective teaching strategies. Triggers of a fixed mindset with verbal examples are presented with implications for practice and suggestions for future research.

Hackman and Oldham's Job Characteristic Model was applied to study of perceptions community music school faculty hold towards their job. The research questions addressed core job characteristics of skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback, critical psychological states (experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility, and knowledge of results); personal and work outcomes of satisfaction and motivation; need for professional growth. The results were compared to the national norms for nine different job families provided by Oldham, Hackman, and Stepina. Thirty-three schools, all members of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, located in every geographical region of the United States, yielded 437 faculty responses (64% return rate). Of the core job characteristics, dealing with others and autonomy received the highest ratings; feedback and task significance received the lowest ratings. Of the psychological states, experienced responsibility yielded the highest rating and experienced meaningfulness yielded the lowest ratings. Of the personal/work outcomes, personal development and colleague relations received the highest ratings; pay satisfaction and overall general satisfaction received the lowest ratings. A comparison to the professional job family norms, using a one-sample ttest, found significant differences in 16 out of the 18 variables measured by the Job Characteristic Model. Strong positive feelings for growth combined with less than strong feelings for the core job dimensions yielded a low motivating potential score of 96.18.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between personality traits and job satisfaction among music teachers. The research problems were 1. to investigate the areas of job satisfaction of music teachers; 2. to investigate the patterns of personality traits that were common among music teachers; 3. to determine whether relationships existed between the areas in which the music teachers showed job satisfaction/dissatisfaction and their personality profiles.