Challenges for Music Studies in Class Teacher Education in Finland

This study explores student teachers’ conceptions of music studies and of themselves as music educators. Theoretical background is based on a self-efficacy theory. The target group consists of 256 Finnish student teachers, future primary school teachers, from the universities of Helsinki, Oulu and Joensuu. The results show that only 76% of Finnish student teachers feel they succeed in music studies and 41% have decided not to teach school music in the future. Almost half of the target group (45%) regards music education at the university as inadequate. Thus, a part of music training in class teacher education is quite ineffective and should be reshaped. At the end of this paper, there are four recommendations to amend the situation.