Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and practices of elementary music teachers using a researcher-created framework of social justice pedagogy in music education. The influences on elementary music teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding social justice in music education were also investigated. Survey data were gathered from a sample of elementary music teachers in Florida via an online survey questionnaire. Data analysis included grounded theory techniques for open-ended definitions of social justice, descriptive analyses for beliefs, attitudes, and practices scales, along with a Spearman correlation analysis among scales. Additionally, inferential analysis techniques were utilized to determine the effects of teacher characteristics (gender, race, teaching experience) and school context characteristics (school community setting, student race, student SES, teacher-student race and SES matches) on beliefs, attitudes, and practices.
Grounded theory analysis techniques resulted in categorizing participants by their definitions of social justice into nine distinct positions of engagement with social justice: dismisser, inquirer, skeptic, affiliate, denouncer, believer, ally, advocate, and activist. Based on responses to survey items, teachers, on average, aligned with a social justice pedagogy to a relatively high degree on all three scales (beliefs: M = 4.07; attitudes: M = 3.70; practices: M = 3.65). Effects of teacher and context characteristics were tested using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests of independent samples. A significant effect on all three scales was found for gender and teacher-student SES match. Posthoc testing determined a significant difference between those indicating they were unsure of their SES match with students and both of the other groups indicating yes and no. Students were determined to be the most influential factor on beliefs, attitudes, and practices of elementary music teachers. Implications for classroom and music teacher education practice and research are addressed in the final chapter.