This study examined perceptions of effective, urban, elementary general music teachers concerning effective teaching and pre-service preparation for urban, elementary general music classrooms. The study was conducted in two phases: survey and interview. Survey phase participants were experienced, urban, elementary general music teachers from different geographical areas of the United States, who had been identified as effective teachers by music teacher educators or music supervisors. Interview phase participants comprised a subset of survey participants who achieved high levels of potential cross-cultural adaptability on the Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory (Kelley & Meyers, 1995). A comprehensive interview instrument was administered to each participant in a collective case study research design. From the gathered data, 162 themes emerged from coded passages, with 100 themes comprising commonalities among the six interview participants. In addition to specific traits, beliefs, and strategies, the following four meta-themes emerged from an examination of commonalities: flexibility, cultural knowledge and skills, caring and responsive attitude, and musical knowledge and music teaching skills. From these meta-themes, a model of effective, urban, elementary general music teaching was generated. Findings and implications of the study were also discussed, and recommendations were made for future research.

This paper explores concepts and theories in the tradition of critical pedagogy as they relate to teaching practices in contemporary American urban public schooling. Objectives for critical pedagogies are discussed and applied to various aspects of teaching and education, including urban schools and school systems as problematical institutions; establishing a healthy classroom climate and learning community; creating a learning partnership with students; posing-problems for study; generating ideas through collaborative dialogue; guiding inquiry and critical thinking; providing ongoing and authentic assessment; and the imperatives of ethical values, ideology, and multiple perspectives in critical teaching praxis. Critical educational scholarship informs teaching and learning in schools to provide liberating opportunities to achieve critical and academic literacies. Theories of liberation, freedom, democracy, justice, power, oppression, transformation, community-building, humanization, authority, dialogue, agency, instructional ideology, social reproduction, standards, curriculum, culture, learning, thinking, questioning, literacy, assessment, and pedagogy are explored from critical perspectives and discussed as they are brought to bear on classroom teaching and learning in urban K-12 schools. / Urban Education

Preparedness, efficacy, and commitment to a teaching career are important products of the teacher preparation process. Yet research on how the context of field experiences influences the development of these products is limited. The purpose of this study is firstly to confirm the existence of hypothesized differences between urban and suburban field placements and secondly to investigate the relationship between individual components of these contextualized field experiences and the outcomes of preparedness, efficacy, and commitment. Field experiences are examined through the lens of Bandura's (1997) sources of teacher efficacy belief development (mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, emotional arousal) and their interactions with student teaching contextual influences. The results suggest that urban-based student teachers have a qualitatively different experience from their suburban-based counterparts. Although the study did not find significant differences in resultant teacher efficacy, or preparedness for assuming fulltime teaching responsibilities, urban-based teachers report less long-term teaching commitment, but are more likely to be seeking an initial placement in an urban school. Regression analyses were performed to identify those components of the field experience and individual student characteristics that predict preparedness, efficacy and commitment. Location and on-site school contextual variables (school climate, school poverty) play an integral role in prediction of teaching efficacy. While long-term teaching commitment was most strongly predicted by emotional interpretations of the experience (satisfaction, stress, confidence) together with feeling supported by the field supervisor, intentions regarding teaching location were more dependent on support and encouragement received from mentor teachers in those locations, and viewing the mentor as a good career model. The findings of this study have important implications for teacher training since the results confirm that student teachers have very different experiences based on field site location and that these experiences do contribute differentially to the development of preparedness, efficacy and commitment. / Educational Psychology