What's new in pedagogy research? (Professional Resources).(Brief Article)

As a pedagogy professor, I often include sessions in class where the students take turns teaching each other a certain concept or skill. I have wondered if this was an effective and efficient use of precious class time, since it was always somewhat artificial, and the "guinea pig" often was much brighter or denser than the average child. A recent study entitled "Preservice Music Teachers' Conceptions of Teaching Effectiveness, Microteaching Experiences, and Teaching Performance" (1) by Abby Butler investigated the effectiveness of two, short teaching experiences. Before the microteaching, each of the fifteen undergraduate music education majors received instruction about how to make a concept map. This concept map was a representation of how the student organized and stored knowledge from a particular area. Researchers call this "cognitive schemata" and believe that:

 
      The cognitive schemata of experts are more complex, interconnected, and 
   accessible.... Furthermore, cognitive structures exhibiting a greater 
   degree of organization have been associated with teachers' abilities to 
   respond more effectively to unexpected questions and answers during 
   instruction....  to demonstrate greater capacity for reflective thinking 
   ..., and to perform more effectively during student teaching. (2) 

The student teachers each made a concept map on the topic of "effective teaching." Insert 1 shows one student's preteaching map . (3)

The next stage of the experiment began with the microteaching experiences. Each student rote taught a short portion of a song to their peers, and then they taught the same song to a thirty-five-voice children's choir. After these teaching experiences, the student teachers viewed a videotape of their teaching and wrote an evaluation. The teachers then completed a second concept map on effective teaching and were interviewed by the researcher. During this thirty-minute interview, they were asked to reflect on their microteaching experiences, their two concept maps and whether they felt their concepts had been changed by the experience. The interviews indicated that the participants generally found the experience beneficial and worthwhile. Many of them believed the microteaching experience had directly influenced their thinking about teaching. They generally perceived "... the peer teachings as harder, stating their peers were more critical and judgmental." (4) The field setting also was seen as important and intimidating, but necessary in developing their identity as a teacher.

In the "Discussion" section of the publication, the researcher addressed several questions, including:

1. What is the nature of preservice music education teachers' thinking about effective teaching as measured through the use of concept mapping? Overall, the students' maps were fairly simplistic, but logical. An analysis of the maps indicated the students saw an effective teacher in terms of a "persona," a ...