"I've just got to survive right now." A phenomenological study of first year middle school choral educators
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First-year music educators often lack confidence in their abilities and feel unprepared to begin their first year of teaching. The development of each novice teacher's sense of identity, efficacy, classroom practices, and teaching pedagogies has been well documented. There is not much research about the very beginning experiences of first year music educators. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of beginning middle school choral music educators during the first nine weeks of their careers. Participants were five first-year middle school choral educators in Missouri. They discussed their classroom experiences in five semi-structured interviews during the first nine weeks of the 2023-2024 academic year. In addition to the interviews, I collected data in the forms of daily journals and lesson plans. I analyzed the qualitative interview data using interpretative phenomenological analysis. IPA is an approach to qualitative research "committed to the examination of how people make sense of their major life experiences" (Smith et al., 2022, p. 1). I selected this analytical method as it centers around both understanding experience at the individual case level and in its own terms. Four themes emerged from the data: Developing My Self-Trust, Putting Pedagogy into Practice, the Learning is Overwhelming, and Leaving Work at Work. Based on these findings, I suggested implications for music educator curricula including additional field experiences to provide opportunities to build self-trust and apply pedagogy, an extension of the student teaching semester, and further exploration of the work and life separation. Future researchers might consider examining the experiences of teachers during the beginning of their teaching careers and the transition between student teaching and the beginning of a music teacher's career.
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Ph. D.