Professional isolation and the public school music teacher

Teacher isolation has been studied within general education for many years, beginning with Schoolteacher by Dan Lortie (1975). A review of the music education literature found no research that examines issues of professional isolation among public school music teachers. In this investigation, one hundred randomly selected Illinois public school music teachers were asked to respond to a series of statements designed to determine to what extent public school music teachers feel professional isolation and to discover its causes. Responses were collected using a 5-point Likert scale. Additional space was provided for open-ended comments. The survey was mailed to music teachers from around the state of Illinois, randomly selected from the total population of public school music teachers in Illinois. Data analysis revealed statistical significance between years of teaching experience and specific likely causes of feelings of professional isolation. These results and suggestions for future research are presented as an initial step toward enhancing the current state of knowledge about this important aspect of the music teaching experience.