The Effects of Teacher Background, Teacher Preparation, and Support on Attitudes and Expectations of K-12 Urban Music Educators

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of personal and professional background factors, teacher preparation, and support on urban music teacher disposition. Specifically, the study aimed to examine the status of K-12 urban music education; verify the psychometric appropriateness of the researcher-created survey instrument; analyze whether and how teacher disposition varied as a function of background match/mismatch, teacher preparation, and support; and determine what combination of factors best predicted positive teacher Attitudes and high teacher Expectations. The "Culturally Relevant Teaching Questionnaire" was administered to K-12 public school music educators (N = 447) from 17 American metropolitan areas. Results indicated that most teachers mismatched with their students in terms of race/ethnicity, childhood socioeconomic status, and childhood urbanicity. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the four intended dispositional constructs were adequately represented by the survey items. A MANOVA suggested that differences existed in teacher Attitudes and Expectations based on teacher race/ethnicity match with school and music populations, socioeconomic status match, urbanicity match, Teacher Quality Indicators (TQI), preparation, and support. Multiple regressions were completed separately for each outcome variable. SES match and support were significant predictors of Implicitly Prejudiced Attitudes; Urbanicity Match, TQI, and Preparation were significant predictors of Culturally Relevant Attitudes about both Teaching and Music; SES match also predicted Culturally Relevant Attitudes about Teaching. Race/Ethnicity Match with Music Students, SES Match, Preparation, and Support were significant predictors of Expectations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]