The purpose of this study was to evaluate music teacher professional development (PD) practice and policy in the United States between 1993 and 2012. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) spanning these 20 years, I examined music teacher PD participation by topic, intensity, relevance, and format; music teachers’ top PD priorities; and the reach of certain PD-supportive policies. I assessed these descriptive results against a set of broadly agreed-on criteria for “effective” PD: content specificity, relevance, voluntariness/autonomy, social interaction, and sustained duration. Findings revealed a mixed record. Commendable improvements in content-specific PD access were undercut by deficiencies in social interaction, voluntariness/autonomy, sustained duration, and relevance. School policy, as reported by teachers, was grossly inadequate, with only one of the nine PD-supportive measures appearing on SASS reaching a majority of teachers in any given survey year. Implications for policy, practice, and scholarship are presented.

Teacher-credentialing policy debates often center on questions of whether traditional or alternative pathways to teacher certification better position future teachers for success. Given the growing number of teachers entering the profession via alternative pathways, we sought to compare the self-efficacy of alternatively and traditionally certified music teachers using a sample from Texas (n = 143). Our findings indicated that traditionally and alternatively certified music teachers reported comparable levels of self-efficacy. We also found that, regardless of certification pathway, teachers with 10 or fewer years of experience reported lower self-efficacy than teachers with 11 or more years of experience. We conclude that alternative pathways to certification may offer a viable entry point into the profession and may be particularly advantageous in diversifying the teacher pool and addressing areas of music teacher shortages. We also offer recommendations for cultivating high self-efficacy in preservice teachers, irrespective of certification pathway, as well as avenues for future study of the alternative pathway.

The purpose of this study was to explore why and how a prototypically “effective” teacher professional development (PD) effort, reciprocal peer coaching (RPC), fell short. Despite RPC’s conformity with long-espoused best practices in PD—content-specificity, extended duration, collaboration, inquiry, and self-direction—only two in eight music teachers who began the 5-month coaching and observation trajectory completed it. We used instrumental case study analysis to understand teachers’ decisions to continue in or prematurely withdraw from RPC. Findings revealed motivational factors such as collaboration and affirmative support, growth-in-practice learning, and content relevance were, for the majority of participants, overcome by demotivational factors related to participants’ perceived lack of agency in shaping their work context and the incoherence and insufficiency of their policy environments. We advance implications for PD providers, researchers, and policymakers.

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Short-term or “one shot” professional development experiences are sometimes deemed less effective because they lack mechanisms for deep and ongoing engagement. Using the music conference as an example, I outline a simple framework on how music teachers might nevertheless use short-term professional development experiences as an impetus for long-range and high-impact professional growth.