Transition from Student to Teacher: Frameworks for Understanding Preservice Music Teacher Development

Abstract

Research on preservice music teacher development has the potential to inform music teacher preparation curricula in several significant ways and ultimately serve to enhance the profession at large. Investigations drawing from robust frameworks that theorize how preservice music teachers develop can help researchers clarify epistemological assumptions and terms, delimit research problems in a meaningful way, inform approaches for dealing with data, and aid in developing lines of research that are addressing problems in the field in a complementary manner. The goals of this article are to (a) discuss the value of a research framework and the several ways one can conceptualize a framework, (b) briefly present several frameworks for studying teacher development that have been generated in the context of general education, and (c) describe some unique aspects of music teaching and music teaching contexts that could inform theoretical frameworks of preservice music teacher development.