Social and professional influences on undergraduate music education majors' initial inservice placement decisions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which specific social and professional factors may influence undergraduate preservice music education majors' decisions about an initial inservice teaching placement. A twenty-eight item survey was constructed and administered to 129 students from five different universities in the United States. The subjects responded using a five-point Likert-type scale to indicate the degree of influence each item had on their decisions about an initial teaching placement. The results were separated into two different categories. professional factors and social factors. Overall, the data revealed that professional factors received higher mean score ratings than social factors. This suggests that professional factors may be more influential on where subjects may choose to teach than social factors. The item "Opportunities for professional or musical growth" received the highest mean score among factors in both categories. The "Racial/ethnic make-up of the student population" received the lowest mean score among factors in both categories. The item "Quality of life in the community" received the highest mean score among factors in the social category. Further data analysis and implications of the study are also presented.