“He Cares About All of Us”: nine middle school chorus students’ lived experiences with teachers as carers
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Abstract
Music educators value positive, caring relationships with their students. In large ensemble classes, however, music teachers have historically prioritized the needs of the group over the needs of individuals, making it difficult for music teachers to give students the individual attention often associated with caring relationships. If students do not feel that their needs are met, they may not believe their music teachers care for them. Noddings’s (2013) care ethics served as the theoretical framework for this study. The purpose of this study was to understand how middle school chorus students perceive their chorus teachers as carers and what actions, if any, they believe their chorus teachers take to make students feel cared for as individuals. I engaged in hermeneutic phenomenology to examine the essence of caring relationships in middle school chorus from the perspective of the students. I conducted semi-structured interviews with three eighth grade chorus students from each of three middle schools for a total of nine student participants. I analyzed the data using in vivo coding to prioritize students’ thoughts and beliefs about the ways in which their chorus teachers demonstrated care. Once the data were coded, I themed codes phenomenologically using “Caring is…” as a sentence starter.
The middle school chorus students in this study felt cared for when their chorus teachers created positive classroom environments by including and welcoming all students, providing a social space, supporting student safety, and encouraging teamwork and participation; listened and addressed individual needs; taught effectively; demonstrated certain personality traits, such as being fun, kind, and enthusiastic; and deepened connections with students over time. I determined that in many instances, the behaviors students identified as caring were group-oriented behaviors, suggesting that individual participants felt cared for by their chorus teachers when caring behaviors were demonstrated toward the group rather than between a teacher and individual student. Additionally, none of the participants described feeling that their teacher did not care about them, further indicating that individual students in this study felt cared for despite the large group setting of a middle school chorus. Although there may be benefits to prioritizing caring interactions with individual students when possible, findings from this study suggest that middle school chorus students perceive group-oriented behaviors, such as establishing a positive classroom environment, engaging in high quality instruction, and presenting a kind and humorous demeanor, to be ways in which their teacher demonstrate care.
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2025