Implementation of a Signature Pedagogy in an Online Course for Music Teachers

This paper presents the implementation of the signature pedagogy at a university by the means of online learning used for music education as a teaching strategy. Based on the literature review, the gap in research was stated to cover learning strategies in music education, which would allow students to take a more active role in gaining knowledge in accordance with personal needs. Due to the shifting the educational process to the online way in the emergency situation COVID-19 pandemic, the relevance of online courses which will satisfy future music teachers’ educational goals extremely increased. The comparative analysis of music education standards in USA, European countries and Russia let us determine the set of teachers’ professional activities in general school music class. The main contribution was the design of a small private online course based on the signature pedagogy, which was delivered by the set of lectures, collaborative work in the professional field, and discussion of the learning experience. This course was implemented at Kazan Federal University. The experimental work used a questionnaire of students’ self-perception of their professional readiness, along with structural equation modeling based on estimation of the results of assessment of students’ musical skills and online activity. The obtained results proved the effectiveness of the signature pedagogy online course which provided learning activities according to the specific features of music teacher professional practice.