TN Musician Vol. 71 No. 2

PARTICIPANTS
The survey was sent via email to the membership of the
Tennessee Music Education Association. Through this
pool of participants, 35 members responded. The largest
amount of music educators that responded to this survey
included elementary general music teachers (43%) and
high school or middle school band directors (43%). The
highest respondents had either less than five years of experience
in the school system (33%) or had 21 plus years
of experience (33%). The largest number of respondents
(56%) reported teaching middle school. When asked what
their highest level of education was, answers varied. The
most answers included Bachelor’s degree (26 %), Master’s
degree (23%), and a Master’s degree plus additional Graduate
credits (23%).
RESULTS
Through this survey, it was reported that a large amount
of these Tennessee Music Educators (97%) believe that
musical creativity is an essential goal of music education.
In addition, the same amount of music educators
expressed wanting to incorporate more musical creativity
in their classroom. A decent amount of the teachers
(63%) believed musical creativity to be important or
very important in their music classroom, but around half
(48%) of the participants only reported incorporating it
occasionally. When regarding professional development,
a large majority (75%) reported completing Orff Training.
This may be connected to the high amount of general music
teachers that responded to the survey.
When the teachers were asked to define musical creativity
the top three comments included: creating independent
music, musical decisions, and improvising. The
largest hindrances for the teachers were time, materials,
outside factors (e.g., field trips, testing), and personal
fear. When the participants were asked where they wanted
professional development focused on musical creativity
to come from, half of the participants reported wanting
their school district to offer this type of professional development.
It can be assumed that the teachers expressed
wanting the school district to offer the professional development
because of convenience for travel.
When asked if these music teachers felt like their music
education training prepared them to incorporate musical
creativity in their classroom, a little more than half (53%)
of the participants agreed. However, a smaller but still
significant portion of participants (27%) reported that
they disagreed or strongly disagreed that their music education
training prepared them to incorporate musical creativity.
Additionally, when asked if they considered themselves
to be musically creative, a large percentage (90%)
felt as if they were, but there was still a small portion
(10%) participants that did not feel musically creativity.
When asked if these Tennessee teachers were familiar
with the new Tennessee State Standards for Fine Arts
Education, a large percentage of teachers responded yes
(83%). However, only 50 percent of participants believed
that these new standards would be more effective in fostering
musical creativity in the music classroom.
DEFINITIONS AND ACTIVITIES FOR
MUSICAL CREATIVITY
At the beginning of the survey, I gave the participants
David Elliot’s (1995) definition of musical creativity from
his book, Music Matters, because I believed it would encourage
open responses about the topic. Often music educators
lean towards composition and improvisation to include
musical creativity in their classroom, but this does
not have to be the case. After defining musical creativity,
the teachers were then asked to give their own definitions.
APPENDIX A
Question 14: “How would you define musical
creativity?”
Creating independent music 39%
Making musical decisions 14%
Improvising 14%
Composing 11%
Expressing themselves musically 8%
Interpreting music 5%
Specific comments from Question 14:
• Participant 6: “Expressing their artistic and personal
vision...interpreting the music through their
own aesthetic sensibility”
• Participant 20: “Experience in which students create
unique melodies, rhythms, harmonies, or lyrics
to express themselves through music.”
• Participant 22: “Originating new musical ideas
through movement, singing, or instrument playing.”
• Participant 24: “The ability to produce original
musical concepts.”
Cognitive musical ability 5%
Arranging 3%
Tennessee Music Education Assocation | www.tnmea.org | 19