Preservice Music Educators’ Preparedness, Self-Efficacy, and Commitment to Incorporate Popular Music

The purpose of the study was to examine preservice music teachers’ degree of preparedness, self-efficacy, and commitment to incorporating popular music into their P-12 music classrooms, as well as the relationship among the constructs in popular music teaching. Preservice music educators (N = 81) from 23 music education programs in the United States completed a researcher-constructed questionnaire to rate their preparedness, self-efficacy, and commitment to incorporate popular music. Participants reported a moderate degree of preparedness to teach popular music and moderate popular music teaching self-efficacy. Moreover, participants rated their commitment to incorporating popular music relatively high. Correlation analyses revealed significant and positive correlations between preparedness and self-efficacy, as well as preparedness and commitment. In addition, a positive correlation was found between teachers’ self-efficacy for popular music teaching and their commitment to incorporating popular music. Additional findings include significant correlations between preservice educators’ preparedness to teach various musical genres and their self-efficacy.