Dolloff, L. (2014). Evoking Beliefs About Music Teaching And Learning.

GEMS
(Gender, Education, Music, & Society), 7(5), 23-28.

Dolloff conducted a very interesting experiment that examines drawings done by

university students on the idea of teacher images. This requires students to think critically about
what their goals are as a music educator and what it means to be a teacher.
Since a picture can communicate simultaneously on many levels, drawings are useful
not only as iconic images, but also as layered paintings that hide or combine other social,
cultural, and personal images. This weighs heavily on the concept that a picture is worth a
thousand words, and I completely agree. Subconsciously we show a lot more through our
drawings that we dont intentionally draw or even notice until after weve drawn it. I love
Dolloffs idea of conducting research through such an individually unique medium such as this.
In her experiment, 150 students were asked to draw a picture of the perfect teacher.
After analyzing the drawings, Dolloff noticed that there were a lot of common themes within the
photos. This is where you start to see stereotypes emerge. Its these stereotypes that form the
basis of belief. I find it very interesting the degree to which stereotypes play a role when it
comes to music educators. This is mostly evident in gender, where most elementary teachers
were drawn as female, and most band conductors were drawn as male. These stereotypes cause
limitations to what music educators can be, and can often have a negative impact on their own
teacher identity.
The paper supplied four examples of drawings, some by undergraduate students and some
by music teachers themselves. The images had many common themes such as a big smile, big
heart, big ears, and radiation to show excitement. Some also had unique aspects, such as a Class
News list, showing that the teacher has a genuine interest in the students lives.
What I would love to see the author do is reconnect with the undergraduate students who
drew some of the photos, and ask them to draw another one after theyve graduated. I would be
interested to see if their photos changed, and if they did, what caused them to change?
Something that frustrated me was a portion of the paper where Roberts (1991) said that
students "lack any on-going construction of their identities as teacher. This I can personally
attest against. While currently in school studying music and working towards becoming a music
teacher, I am using every opportunity on the way to learn and make myself a better teacher. In
the short time I have spent in an undergraduate music program, I have been blessed to work with
so many talented music educators, and I have learned a great deal from each one. Its these
people who are constantly changing my idea of the perfect teacher because every day I take
away something new and add it to my own bag of tricks. In fact I could argue the opposite:

being a student as a musician is actually increasing the construction of my teacher identity

because of the teachers that I am exposed to.
Apart from that one difference of opinion, I love the idea behind Dolloffs experiment. I
think its extremely unique what she is doing. Because music is so personal, what better way to
find primary data than to have students hand draw photos for you themselves? A picture is worth
a thousand words, and I think that Dolloff had a great idea to examine the pictures of what will
be the music educators of tomorrow.