A large segment of society is either preparing to enter the work force, or is already engaged in some chosen line of work. Preparing to enter the work force takes a considerable amount of time and effort. The decision to follow one career path over countless others may, on the surface, appear to be discretely individual. But when viewed from a sociological perspective, occupational choices are implicitly and explicitly reached through a consensus of contributing factors. Consequently, an occupational identity is not how an individual describes a personal work-related self, but is rather dialectic. It is the merging, albeit, negotiation of viewpoints which causes persons to view themselves in relationship with how others think of them. It is expected that students newly enrolled in music education degree programs will, with time, replace erroneous lay conceptions of music teaching with those presented in curricula and espoused by significant role models. However, the professional socialization process, characteristic of music education degree programs, has not always been successful in transforming students’ personal perspectives of music teaching. This transformation process is critical toward the development of occupational identities that are congruent with school music teaching positions. There has been an established line of research in music education that examines who school music teachers are from a sociological perspective. When pursuing this literature, however, it became evident that, over time, the term identity had been used under many different guises, incorporating mixed perspectives from among the social sciences. The studies that have dealt with occupational identity have done so for different purposes, employing different theories and methodologies. While any of these previous research protocols may be useful for particular purposes, the reality is that the terms identity and occupational identity have become interchangeable. The term identity is sometimes used to denote self-concept or role concept without being clear about what these mean or how or if they are different from occupational identity. The underlying issue here, and a principle concern for music education, is whether or not music education degree programs are guiding preservice music teachers toward an occupational identity that matches with the occupation. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the field of occupational identity by developing a researcher-designed measurement tool for occupational identity in music education. This study focused solely on preservice music teachers, their perceptions and demonstrable behaviors, associated with the changes that might occur over the course of their professional preparation. The data in this investigation, subjected to principal components analysis, resulted in a 5-component solution rotated to simple structure using oblique Oblimin rotation. Thirty-five items from a pool of 106 with component loadings >.35 explained 57% of the total variance. Reliability estimates using Cronbach’s alpha were .93 for all 35 items and ranged from .92 to .66 for the five components.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc699995 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Rewolinski, Christine |
| Contributors | Emmanuel, Donna T., Rohwer, Debbie Ann, 1966-, Taylor, Donald Mount, 1961- |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Rewolinski, Christine, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. |
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