4. Communication styles with children prepares and allows candidates to understand their profession’s responsibilities.

Davis (2009) stated that school practice is a precipitous leap from university music method classes to student teaching, and music teacher candidates must be willing to accept the expertise and examples offered by the music mentors. Support from experienced teachers is crucial for the development of candidate teachers. Researchers in music education (Conway and Garlock, 2002; Conway and Zerman, 2004; DeLorenzo, 1992; Haack, 2003; Kreuger, 1996) consistently report that candidate music teachers share feelings of being overwhelmed by the duties and responsibilities of teaching such as daily lesson plans for multiple grade levels, classroom management, and unforeseen administrative tasks or after-school responsibilities.

Many international studies have shown that candidate teachers perceive their mentors to be one of their most important sources of support during school practice (Carter and Francis, 2001; Lindgren, 2005). Mentoring positively impacts their developing teaching competencies, and plays a key role in their socialization process and provides emotional and psychological support (Crasborn et al., 2011). Richter et al. (2013) categorized the goals of mentoring in three distinctive groups:

1. Instructional support; assistance with planning, advice on classroom management, instruction related advice, and feedback help with assessing students’ work.

2. Psychological support; building confidence, encouraging, helping to build self-esteem, listening, and enhancing self-reliance.

3. Being a role model when candidate teachers observe their mentor’s teaching.

These authors also note that although candidates complete many teaching hours during their own time at school, teaching practice enables their professional knowledge to reflect on their observations. This provides them the opportunity to analyze teaching from an external perspective. Empirical research has shown that candidate teachers draw conclusions for their own teaching from watching their mentors teach (Feinman-Nemser and Buchmann, 1987).

Role models whom candidate teachers admire will influence their teaching style. Candidate teachers tend to unconsciously imitate a teacher who they find inspirational or avoid imitating a teacher who uses a style that makes them uncomfortable. As a matter of fact, appointing mentors who are more open to communication with candidate teachers will increase practice efficiency.

Schon (1987) defines the mentor teacher as a friend criticizing and helping the candidate teacher to develop sensible thoughts. Braund (2001) describes the mentor teacher  as   a   reflective   practitioner   dealing  with  the  pedagogic problems of the candidates, and how they could adapt and improve within their future teaching conditions. Hopper (2001) considers the mentor teacher as an equal stakeholder working with the candidate’s teacher (Basturk, 2009). However, Shantz (1995) mentions the lack of congruency between what students are taught at the faculty and what they view and are expected to do in practice. The following quotations from candidate teachers showed their concerns about working between two institutions with incongruent views:

“Carefully select associates through interviews to see if their teaching style is ideal to what the university teaches…”

“Associates want carbon copies of themselves; some do not even know about new theories…”

“Select associate teachers that implement the teaching styles discussed at the faculty…”

Shantz (1995) wrote that associate teachers tend to see their role as providing experience where students enter their classrooms and deliver a program similar to the one they deliver. Shantz (1995) discussed the purposes and efficiency of education programs. She stressed that faculties and schools need to develop mutually beneficial partnerships to enable student teachers to learn about new teaching methodologies and encourage them to practice innovative methodologies.

National studies show that candidate teachers cannot receive enough help and guidance, and also cannot communicate effectively with mentor teachers. Candidate teachers were not aware of the significance of the mentor’s role because of their lengthier presence in the faculty and felt more responsible to their lecturers (Kiraz, 2002; Özbek and Aytekin, 2003; Çakır et al., 2010). Similarly, candidates believe that mentors do not provide sufficient instruction and suitable experiences and interactions for improvement (Hobson, 2002; Walkington, 2007). Uçar’s (2012) case study with school administrators, mentors, and teacher candidates revealed that school practices could not achieve their aim due to mentor teachers’ lack of present theoretical knowledge related to the “constructive learning approach”.

A review of literature about candidate teachers’ experiences suggests that many mentoring programs do not provide an effective induction for many music educators (Conway, 2001; Conway et al., 2002; Krueger (1999) discovered a lack of team teaching support and suggested that new teachers be given opportunities to team teach with an experienced teacher as a way of receiving supportive interaction and feedback while teaching.

Kiraz (2003) states that mentor teachers should avoid imposing teaching approaches on candidate teachers. Every teacher has his/her own teaching method. Teaching styles should not be identical; candidate teachers should  form  their  own  approaches  instead  of copying their mentors. “Reflective teaching” or “critical reflection” improves teaching (Fullan and Hargreves, 1991); observing and reflecting on one’s own teaching is important. Barlett (1990) discusses the fact that no other processes except reflective practice could best serve teachers’ needs to constantly improve their “teaching style” while asking themselves “what and why”. Studies show that reflective teaching skills should be developed within the communication between the mentor and candidate teachers, and high interaction models must be created for the training of a qualified teacher.

Özdemir and Çanakçı (2005) in a qualitative study, analyzed the candidate teachers’ point of view on the concepts of “teaching and learning” before and after taking the lesson “School practices I”. They emphasized that the teacher candidates gradually move away from the traditional teaching approach and embrace the contemporary understanding of teaching. For instance, a group of students highlighting that “teaching is transmitting knowledge” changed its definition to “teaching is guiding”. The teacher candidates would define the teaching process as lecturing in class, giving, and assessing homework. However, after their school practices, they define this course as a teacher activating/stimulating the student with various methods and techniques, dealing with all the students individually, and encouraging the students to think. Furthermore, students highlighted the importance of authority in teaching, at first relating this authority with marks; they shifted to emphasize the need for planning and creating good communication methods for the authorities.

In conclusion, life at school and the teaching scope of the mentor is exceedingly significant for candidates to form their own teaching style. The teacher’s attitude in class (such as the style of planning, teaching-learning process, measuring and assessing patterns, teaching belief and philosophy, and style of imparting professional knowledge) determines the teaching style of the candidate teacher.

According to Kaplan and Kies (1995), “teaching style” refers to “a teacher’s personal behaviours and media are merely used to transmit data or receive it from the learner”. Hein et al. (2012) definition of teaching styles is based on behaviours simulated by teacher–student interaction and may differ among teaching situations since teachers use several teaching styles to meet instructional and assessment objectives. Bibace et al. (1981 )see teaching styles in “a continuum where the most student-centred (facilitative) styles lie at one end, and the most teacher-centred style (assertive) lies at the other end”. Hoyt and Lee’s (2002) research shows that there is no one teaching style effective for all objectives and disciplines. Teachers have a dominant or preferred teaching style in which they will often mix elements of other styles. According to Grasha (2002), almost all teachers possess a blend of all five teaching styles.

The expert teacher style has the traditional teacher features, gives importance to transmitting knowledge, and determines the content, materials and timing. Continuous usage of this teaching style will negatively affect the students’ questioning ability. The formal authority teacher style has the traditional teacher features, is not flexible, and the classroom routines are essential. Students are not provided with opportunities for creative and versatile thinking. The teacher has a specific status among the students.

The personal model teacher style acts as a model instead of dictating how students should think. It encourages the students to observe, teaches by example and works together to lead the learner. The facilitator teacher style is flexible in interactions with the students, presents choices, and leads the way. It allows the students to take responsibility, creates cooperative learning occasions, and acts as an active listener. The delegator teacher style creates a student-centred teaching environment, struggles to develop student potential, and contributes to the students’ perception of themselves as independent learners; it gives the students duties and responsibilities. However, it has been proved in studies that teachers prefer more than one style while teaching.

Grasha (1994) examined how the five styles were distributed among various academic disciplines. He reported that those teaching in the arts/music/theatre disciplines use the personal model style more often than other disciplines. Research showed that Turkish music teachers preferred the expert/facilitative/personal/model teaching styles compare to other teaching styles (Demir, 2015). In the group of expert/facilitative/personal model teaching styles “teachers are in the role of designing opportunities for learning that emphasize collaborative and self-directed experiences” (Grasha, 1994). This style also requires supervision of students, and teachers play a central role in designing activities. Teachers must develop good interpersonal relationships with students and teach them how to work closely together. Students must be willing to take the initiative and accept responsibilities. The least preferred teaching styles among Turkish music teachers were the expert/ facilitative/delegative teaching styles. Grasha (2002) stated that teachers with expert/facilitative/ delegative teaching styles create a more effective teaching environment because they enable the students to form their own learning achievements but teachers must be willing to give up some control over tasks.

A review of effective teaching and teaching styles shows that there are more differences in music teaching than a positive and clear teaching approach. Gumm (1993) revealed the lack of previous research about patterns of music teaching behaviours, and developed the Music Teaching Style Inventory to detect a diversity of music teaching styles, using a nationwide sample of choral music teachers. One hundred thirty four distinctive teaching  behaviours  were  identified  and, through factor analysis, eight factors were confirmed and designated as dimensions of music teaching styles. Of these eight factors, four are classified as teacher-directed and four as student-directed. The four teacher-directed styles are assertive teaching, nonverbal motivation, time efficiency, and positive learning environment. The four student-directed styles are group dynamics, music concept learning, artistic music performance and student independence.  

Gumm (2004) expanded his research to explore music teaching styles as perceived by students. Classroom interaction between teacher and students included in the areas of objective observations, teacher self-perception and student perception. Gumm pointed out that “students are daily participants in the music class and therefore would have a better grasp of the tone of the classroom”. The observer perception of classroom interaction was studied by Duke et al. (1998) and Henninger (2002). Blumberg (1980) stated that “how a person perceives the behaviour of another is much more important than the behaviour itself” (Crasborn et al., 2011).

From this perspective, the effectiveness of the mentor teacher’s behaviour can be determined by the candidate teacher’s perception. Candidate teachers enter the school with teaching knowledge gained through method courses and from their own experiences of being a learner. Such knowledge and their own experiences of school life enable candidate teachers to form their teaching styles before entering teaching practice.

Hence, the candidate teachers’ observations of their mentors’ lessons enable us to understand mentors’ teaching style through candidate perceptions. In particular, the research question would be “what correlation is there between candidate teachers’ perception of their mentor teachers’ teaching style and their preference of teaching style”. In this context, the research tries to answer the following questions:

1. Is there a correlation between the candidate music teachers’ teaching style preference and the mentor teachers’ perceived teaching styles?

2. Do the perceived teaching styles of the mentor teachers have a meaningful and determining effect on the teaching style preferences of the candidate music teachers?

The correlative investigation model, one of the most commonly applied models in the related literature, was used in the research (McMillan and Schumacher, 2006; Cohen et al., 2003; Sönmez and Alacapınar, 2011).

This model is used to determine the correlation between different variables in educational and social research (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2000; Beyhan, 2013) and aims to identify the existence or level of coordinated change between two or more variables (McMillan and Schumacher, 2006).

Participants

The subjects of the study were 218 candidate music teachers in their final year of pre-service music teacher education in the academic year 2015 to 2016. The sample was randomly drawn from the education faculties of fine arts music education departments of seven state universities in Turkey (Necmettin Erbakan University, Uludag University, NiÄŸde University, Dokuz Eylül University, Van Yüzüncü Yıl University, Karadeniz Teknik University and MuÄŸla Sıtkı Koçman University). Candidate music teachers filled out the Teaching Style inventory during their school practices. Five out of 218 questionnaires were not included as they were filled out improperly so the research dataset consisted of 213 students’ responses.

Data collection instrument

The teaching style inventory developed by Grasha (1996) and later translated and adapted to Turkish language by Üredi (2006 was used to understand the music candidate teachers’ own teaching style preferences and mentor teachers’ perceived teaching styles. Validity and reliability studies were conducted on 100 Turkish teachers. The inventory consisted of 40 items. There were five sub-dimensions with eight items each; expert teacher (1,6,11,16,21,26,31,36), authority teacher (2,7,12,17,22,27,32,37), personal model teacher (3,8,13,18,23,28,33,38), facilitator teacher (4,9,14,19,24,29,34,39), and representative teacher styles (5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40). Subjects were asked to rate their teaching styles on a five-point scale.

The Cronbach alpha value for the expert teacher style is 0.75, authority teacher style 0.76, personal model teacher style 0.83, facilitator teacher style 0.87, and representative teacher style 0.77. The internal consistency coefficient related to the entire teaching style scale is given as Cronbach alpha (0.9098), Spearman-Brown (.8770), and Guttman (.8755). The fact that the coefficient is high and meaningful at the 0.1 level shows that the internal consistency of the scale is high.

A personal information form was used to collect data and describe the sample about independent variables of the inventory. There were four questions about candidate teachers’ gender, high school they graduated from, current university, and the total number of students in classrooms at their practice school.

Analysis of the data

The dataset has been analyzed to identify the correlation between the teaching styles of mentor and candidate teachers. The Pearson moment’s correlation (simple linear correlation) has been computed.

Linear regression analysis (simple linear regression) was used to predict whether the teaching styles of the music teachers have a meaningful and determining effect on the creation of the candidate teachers’ own teaching styles.

A linear regression analysis was carried out to disclose how the mentor teacher’s teaching styles predicted that of the candidate teacher. The mentor teacher’s teaching styles were observed to have a purposeful role in determining students’ own teaching styles (R=0.875, R2=0.766). Table 3 shows that the perceived teaching styles of the mentor teacher were significant predictors of the   candidates’   preferred   teaching  styles   (F(1.211)= 692.606, p<0.05). The mentor teachers’ teaching styles express 76% of the point change in the candidates’ preferred teaching style preferences. The main predictor of the regression equation is the coefficient variable (B=1.767), and the suggestiveness test is the expressive predictor of the candidate teachers’ preferred teaching styles (p<0.05). According to the results of the regression analysis, the regression equation predicting the students’ preferred teaching styles is as follows:

ÖcKÖSP=(1,767xÖtUÖSP)+1,115

ÖcKÖSP= point for candidate music teachers’ preferred teaching style

ÖtUÖSP= point for mentor teachers’ perceived teaching style

The education faculty in the fine arts music education department of state universities in Turkey offer a 4-year music teaching degree program. Kalyoncu (2005) identified four proficiency areas—music domain knowledge, musical performance, method courses, and practical teaching experiences—that music students are required to excel at to teach music at schools.

In 1998, teacher education programs were revised to balance the theory and practice, which gave candidate teachers the opportunity to spend more time in classrooms observing and practice teaching. During the teaching practice period, mentor teachers’ roles are important in the candidate teachers’ professional development. Candidates have opportunities to observe mentor teachers’ teaching practices, and  later  are  given the responsibility to teach and explore how to apply theoretical and practical knowledge gained at their faculties.

Mentor teachers’ responsibilities to the candidate teachers’ guidance, and being a role model has already been mentioned (Schön, 1987; Braund, 2001; Hopper, 2001). It is believed that candidate teachers can shape their own teaching by observing mentors’ teaching. The mentor teacher’s behaviour in the classroom is a teaching model for the candidate teacher in aspects such as class management and organization, how to use materials, asking questions, assessments and evaluations, and interaction and communication with the children. Therefore, this study examined whether candidate and mentor teachers’ teaching styles are correlated. It was assumed that similarities between teaching styles enabled more effective mentoring and led to dynamic communication and guidance between candidate and mentor during the teaching practice.

Thus, the results of this study showed that the candidate teacher’s teaching style preference was associated with the mentor teacher’s teaching style. Moreover, mentor teachers’ perceived teaching styles happened to be a meaningful predictor of candidate teachers’ own teaching styles. Mentor teachers’ teaching behaviours, their teaching methods, communication skills, assessment and evaluation techniques, style of materials used, and classroom organization are believed to constitute a model for candidate teachers.

Many studies showed that the candidate teachers cannot receive sufficient guidance or establish effective communication links and some evidence showed that mentor teachers ignored most of the information taught at the faculties (Shantz, 1995; Kiraz, 2002; Kiraz, 2003; Özbek ve Aytekin, 2003; Uçar, 2012; Walkington, 2007; Hobson 2002). Smith (1994) and Benson (2008) claimed that mentoring was not beneficial for new music teachers compared to new teachers of other subjects. This study hypothesizes that since mentors’ and candidate teachers’ teaching styles are related, they should approve of and agree with the other’s teaching style. Consequently, mentoring would be more effective, as there is no conflict of teaching styles. However, mentoring of candidate music teachers still needs attention. Selection of mentors, in particular, needs consideration as candidates pointed out the importance of mentor teachers’ teaching styles, “Select associate teachers  that  implement  the  teaching

styles discussed at the faculty…”

This study also attempted to understand mentor teachers’ teaching style through the observational perceptions of candidate teachers. Blumberg (1980) and Gumms (2004) believe that perception of others’ behaviour is more important than the behaviour itself. Candidate teachers were participants of the music classes every day, therefore, they had a better understanding of the classroom’s tone. Demir (2015) carried out research about music teachers’ teaching styles by asking them about their own teaching styles; however, these results were dependent on candidate teachers’ perceptions to evaluate mentors’ teaching style.

Perception of the mentors’ responsibilities is often considered a master–apprentice relationship in the literature. Kiraz (2003) suggested that the mentor teacher should not impose his/her own teaching styles on the candidate teacher. Although research results found a correlation between two groups of teachers, it was limited to claiming that mentors had imposed their teaching styles on the candidate teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to refer to the candidate teachers once more after their teaching practice. This research was carried out before their actual teaching practice, and most candidates were still observing their mentor teachers in the classrooms. Özdemir and Çanakçı (2005) pointed out that the candidate teacher’s opinions and teaching style preferences may change after the teaching practice.

For candidate teachers, school experiences are an opportunity to watch mentor teachers, who are more experienced in teaching musical and theoretical skills in classroom environments, teaching. During this period, candidate teachers are expected to reach a synthesis between being able to teach music sufficiently in the future and evaluating the mentor teacher’s teaching style to find out his/her own teaching style. How a candidate wants to see himself/herself as a music teacher starts from the moment of teaching practice.

With this research, it can be concluded that candidate teachers’ own teaching style preference is associated with the mentor’s teaching style. The mentor teacher’s teaching style is a meaningful predictor of the candidate teacher’s preferred teaching  style. The selection of a mentor by a faculty lecturer is an important responsibility. The mentor’s teaching style matching the candidate teacher’s preferred teaching style may indicate effective collaboration and mentoring. Mentors’ teaching styles and those of candidate teachers should be re-evaluated after teaching practice.

Therefore, according to the research results it can be suggested that:

1. As the mentor teachers’ teaching styles predict the candidate teachers’ teaching styles, it is vital for mentor teachers to be informed about the research results at school. 

2. The lecturer at the faculty responsible from mentors must be careful and selective when appointing the mentor teacher in terms of their teaching styles and being an effective role model for the candidate teachers.

3. Observation and interview techniques are needed to collect data from music mentors about mentor practices at schools.

4. The Music Teaching Style Inventory developed by Gumm (1993) needs to be translated into Turkish and culturally and educationally adapted to measure Turkish music teachers’ teaching styles.

The author has not declared any conflict of interests.