Date of Award
1-1-1991
Document Type
Practicum
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
Child and Youth Care Administration
Advisor
Roberta Schomburg
Committee Member
Dr. Basilio Serrano
Keywords
audiotape cassettes, day care, early childhood education, inservice teacher education, music activities, teacher education
Abstract
This Practicum was designed to encourage child care workers to implement music activities in the early childhood classroom by providing an audio cassette training program. The primary goal was to provide in-service teacher training in the field of music and its related activities to child care workers, regardless of their musical background, during a time of the day conducted to learning and listening, nap time. The writer created and produced three audio tape cassettes with accompanying booklets, Music All Through the Day, Not Just for 20 Minutes on Friday, Music and the Early Childhood Curriculum, and Music with an Element. These were presented in on-site workshops to the director, teachers, and assistant teachers at the beginning of a three-month implementation period. Bi-monthly visits were made by the writer to supervise, assess, and receive feedback.
The writer designed and administered an interview with director and a questionnaire to the staff before a needs assessment, videotaped a typical morning session in each room of the three project schools to be used as an evaluation instrument along with personal observations, presented the tapes and booklets in workshop format, an observation checklist for music activities, and creative movement and an adaptive rating scale was administered pre- and post-implementation of the tapes to assess growth and change pre- and post-interviews and questionnaires were administered by monthly conferences to assess tape usage and feedback and an evaluation component was administered.
The results of the pre- and post-analysis of the evaluation of the cassette tape training indicated the training was worthwhile, especially when combined with on-site workshops. The staff developed confidence to use music, the tapes, and booklets provided skills and techniques applicable to their job, and 100% of the staff indicated support of the concept of utilizing audio cassettes for training during nap time supervision.