Evaluating satisfaction, effectiveness, and emerging trends in music teacher education: Insights from pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and university administrators in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region / Fang Lin

Fang , Lin (2025) Evaluating satisfaction, effectiveness, and emerging trends in music teacher education: Insights from pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and university administrators in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region / Fang Lin. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaya.

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Abstract

As the significance of music education is being increasingly recognized, more and more researchers and practitioners are developing themselves professionally by studying music education in various forms. In today’s China, new contradictions and challenges have emerged in this period of art education reform. A summary of existing research indicates that there are still problems in the development of pre-service music teacher education: curriculum, theory and practice, integration of music disciplines and cooperation between schools. However, there is a shortage of empirical research on preservice music teacher education in China. This thesis investigates challenges of preservice music teacher education in China’s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region by exploring how to better connect university preparation and music graduates with actual classroom teaching and society’s needs. This study employed convergent mixed methods research design featuring a questionnaire for 421 pre-service teachers on curriculum satisfaction and interviews with 15 in-service teachers and three university administrators. The findings indicate that pre-service music teachers have a moderate level of satisfaction with curriculum content and design and value music courses over theoretical education courses. In-service music teachers believe that practical music skills training was valuable coursework but that pedagogy was not practical. Enhancing teaching practices, establishing clear goals and standards and encouraging reflective thinking could improve program effectiveness. Administrators advocated the application of educational technologies, praxis thinking and collaboration between universities and local schools to address need to develop key competencies. Several issues were found: 1) the conventional teaching styles of university lecturers; 2) a lack of connection between music education disciplines; 3) insufficient collaboration between universities, society and schools; 4) the curriculum is lagging behind basic education reform; 5) there are not enough practice mentors; and 6) pre-service music teachers are unclear about teacher education goals and standards. Recommendations centre on increasing university-school partnerships for more practical experiences, balancing musical and pedagogical components, training professional mentor teams for teaching practice and placing preservice music teacher education into an experiential continuum to prepare future generations of music teachers.

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