Measuring pre-service music teachers' creative identities: a cross-cultural comparison of the United States and Singapore

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the creative musical identities of pre-service music education students in the United States and Singapore. The Creative Identity in Music (CIM) measure was utilized with both US and Singapore pre-service music teacher populations (n = 274). Items of the CIM relate to music-making activities often associated with creativity in music education in the literature, including composition, improvisation and popular music performance. Results suggest, similar to findings of previous research, that while both populations are similar in their degree of creative music-making self-efficacy and are similarly willing to allow for creativity in the classroom, Singaporean pre-service music teachers value the areas of creative identity and the use of popular music listening/performing within the learning environment to a significantly greater extent (p < 0.0001) than their US counterparts.