Elementary music and classroom teachers' time -use: A comparison by grade level, time of day, and day of the week

This study investigated time-use of elementary music teachers and elementary classroom teachers to determine: (1) whether there was a relationship between grade level, time of day, and day of the week and teachers' time-use in teaching, monitoring, and non-curricular, and (2) whether ethnicity, training, and years of experience affect teacher time-use. Sixty-nine music teachers and 55 classroom teachers participated. ^ A MANOVA was used to examine the hypothesized relationship. ANOVA results were significant for time spent teaching, monitoring, and non-curricular. An independent t test revealed a significance difference (t (302) = 5.20, p < .001) between the two groups of teachers. A significant difference was found for teaching, t (302) = 5.20, p < .001: music teachers spent more time actively teaching than did classroom teachers. There was a significant difference for monitoring (t (302) = 13.62, p < .001): classroom teachers allocated more time to monitoring than did music teachers. A significant difference was also found for non-curricular (t (302) = 7.03, p < .001): music teachers spent more time in this category of activities than did classroom teachers. ^ Analyses of the activities subsumed under the major categories indicated significant differences between elementary music teachers and elementary classroom teachers, overall, in subject matter (p < .001), discussion (p < .05), school-wide activities (p < .001), seatwork (p < .001), giving directions (p < .001), changing activities (p < .001), lunch (p < .05), planning (p < .001) and interruption (p < .001). Analyses of the relationship and ethnicity, training, degree, experience indicated significant difference for main effect, ethnicity (F(2, 116) = 4.22, p < .017). Time-use for black non-Hispanic teachers was higher than time-use for those who were Hispanic and white non-Hispanic. ^ Analyses of time-use by grade showed no increase for either group as grade level increased. A statistically significant Wilks Lambda ( F (1,294) = .917 p < .013) was found for the independent variable day of the week. ANOVA indicated that elementary classroom teachers monitored more on Thursdays and Fridays: music teachers allocated more time to non-curricular activities on Fridays. ^