The Gap between What You Think You Know and What You Know: A Study on Early Childhood Pre-Service Teachers’ Self-Perceptions and Actual Understandings of Musical Knowledge

The Gap between What You Think You Know and What You Know: A Study on Early Childhood Pre-Service Teachers’ Self-Perceptions and Actual Understandings of Musical Knowledge

The purpose of this study is to compare early childhood pre-service teachers’ self-perceptions with their actual understandings of musical knowledge. 121 pre-service teachers in Korea participated in the study after taking a music education course. They completed a questionnaire that set out to measure their selfperceptions and actual understandings of musical knowledge. The results showed significant differences between pre-service teachers’ perceived knowledge and their actual level of understanding. The gap between self-perceptions and actual level of understandings of musical knowledge was not significantly different among the groups of participants with different periods of musical training except for timbre and dynamics. The results of this study were discussed in terms of what early childhood pre-service teachers still need, and how teacher education programs should prepare the teachers equipped with necessary knowledge in order for them to provide rich musical experiences for young children.