Multicultural Music: My Curiosity

• Me’Haley Babich
• Posted 1/10/22
• 0 comments

Multicultural Music:

The Modern-Day Wonder in the Music Classroom

Part 3: My Curiosity

I was curious about the effect of teacher training on general music teachers’ willingness to use multicultural music in their classrooms. Part two described the current research on general music teacher training Part 2: The Research. Below, I describe how I researched whether their music education training influences their attitudes toward including multicultural music in their classrooms.

The two most common ways of gathering data for multicultural music in the classroom are quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative research uses surveys and other forms of self-reporting data from teachers and students to understand the frequency and correlation of specific, measurable outcomes.

Qualitative data takes a deeper, more individualized approach to obtain data. Obtaining information is typically done through one-on-one interviews with participants. The researcher can analyze data given by the participant and then verify their hypothesis through other means.

Because using multicultural music in the classroom is left primarily up to the educator, I used a survey and quantitative means to understand if teachers’ attitude toward multicultural music was affected by the amount of training in that area. The following is a description of the method and data collected throughout this study.

The purpose of this study was to examine music teachers’ attitudes toward multicultural music education and determine if there is a correlation between the level of training in multicultural music they received and their attitude toward the use of multicultural music in the classroom. Results from this research could offer educators evidence-based data to provide to school administrators when seeking multicultural music education professional development opportunities.

I modeled my research after similar studies that used surveys and had research questions comparable to those that guided this research study. The survey tool used for this research is the Music Specialist’s Multicultural Music Education Survey created by Gerald Peterson in 2005 for his doctoral dissertation. This survey used a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree,” to collect numerical data for each question.

My survey had 24 questions that measured music teachers’ attitudes, practices, and implementation of multicultural music education in the classroom. I also added a ten questions on demographics producing 34 questions for the entire survey.

Before contacting any potential participants, I received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to conduct my research. Participants were a random sampling of music teachers that volunteered to complete the research survey. I sent the survey and the ten-question demographics section electronically to music educators across the country. I also posted information about this research study on music educator online platforms to reach more potential participants.

I collected the data from surveys from March-July 2019 and had 81 teachers respond. I organized the data by demographic information such as years of experience, area taught, and level of education attained.

Discover what I learned in Multicultural Music: The Modern-Day Wonder in the Music Classroom Part 4: My Discoveries.

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Multicultural Music:
The Modern-Day Wonder in the Music Classroom

Article Series

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: The Research
Part 3: My Curiosity
Part 4: My Discoveries
Part 5: Resources to Get You Started