Introduction and rationale
The majority of early childhood generalist practitioners working in English settings receive little or no initial training in how to work in music with preschool children (Welch, Reference WELCH2021; Young, Reference YOUNG2007), a situation which is replicated in many countries (Bautista et al., Reference BAUTISTA, YEUNG, MCCLAREN and ILARI2024). In order to remedy this deficit in training, there have been many initiatives that seek to provide professional learning and development (henceforth PLD) in music through strategies ranging from the provision of resources, workshops, conference days and in situ mentoring. In the knowledge that longer-term, practice-based forms of PLD can be the most effective, early childhood music projects in the UK often incorporate placements for specialist early childhood music educators to work as mentors alongside generalist colleagues. It should be noted that in the UK such projects are mostly funded not from centralised state sources but by charities concerned to improve the provision of music for young children.
As a consequence, projects are typically localised, short-term and run by a wide range of organisations leading to considerable variability.
There is widespread agreement in the early childhood education literature that mentors can have a positive and lasting effect in improving education across all domains (see Elek et al., Reference ELEK, PAGE and EADIE2025 for a recent review). In music, an Australian study by Barrett & Zhukov (Reference BARRET and ZHUKOV2024) demonstrated that the positive effects of a music mentoring scheme for generalist teachers working in the early childhood school sector (4–7-year-olds) endured for 12 months. There is, however, also agreement in the general literature that in spite of the recognised value of the role, it is rarely examined in detail, nor are mentors routinely given training in how to mentor prior to their taking up the role (Elek et al., Reference ELEK, PAGE and EADIE2025). From our experience of the early childhood music education field in the UK, we know that little attention is given to the specific strategies, skills and knowledge the mentoring role requires to be effective. We were motivated, therefore, to find out how a group of mentors, who had contributed in varying capacities to a three-year project in the South West of England (SoundWaves, run by Take Art, Somerset), had understood and carried out their role. For that purpose, at the conclusion of the project, we invited the project team to attend a seminar day of focus group discussions. The day also fulfilled a second purpose as a learning day for the project team serving Take Art’s commitment to developing good practice in early years music across the region. The data we collected during that day inform this article.
For the music education sector in England, our focus on the topic of PLD in early childhood music is timely because there is likely to be an expansion of initiatives designed to improve early childhood music provision. The regional organisations, named Music Hubs, which have responsibility for supporting music education within designated geographic areas, have recently been required to include the early childhood age phase in their remit. Until 2024, the starting age for Music Hub responsibilities was 5 years. This expanded remit, while welcome, is likely to increase the need for PLD, which is well designed, efficient and cost-effective and will bring about lasting improvements to practice.
No discussion of PLD for the early childhood sector can proceed without first acknowledging the challenges the English sector faces which confound attempts to develop good quality PLD (Welch, Reference WELCH2021; Young, Reference YOUNG2007). The sector experiences profound difficulties of inadequate funding, poor staff retention and low qualification levels, added to which increasing commercialisation skews provision in the pursuit of profit (Thomson, Reference THOMSON2025). While daunting, these factors augment the need for the design of PLD to be flexible and tailored to a challenging and unstable environment if it is to be effective.
Early childhood music education in England
Early childhood provision in England takes place in a range of settings including nursery schools, private daycare, voluntary settings and childminders. Current early years practice emphasises play-based learning, child-led exploration and responsive adult-child interaction. Within this context, the Take Art project had adopted a generalist model in which music is integrated into everyday practice rather than delivered by a specialist music educator. The specialist model typically takes the form of a group session, provided for a group of children in a defined time slot in which the adult takes a strong lead. While an adult-guided group music time may be part of the everyday practice model, the generalist approach includes provision for child-initiated music play and responsive music play between practitioners and children in singing, using instruments and other sound-makers and movement/dance. These music play opportunities are integrated into the continuous provision of the setting. The pedagogical skills required of practitioners build on their general pedagogical knowledge and skills. They include knowing how to create environments conducive for music play and how to observe, notice and engage with children’s play to extend their experiences and learning (see also Nieuwmeijer et al., Reference NIEUWMEIJER, MARSHALL and VAN OERS2023). The music-specific skills required aim to be an extension of the informal musicianship that practitioners possess. That said, we have often found that many early childhood educators have musical skills acquired from a range of background experiences.
The SoundWaves project
The SoundWaves project, run by the regional arts organisation, Take Art, placed experienced early childhood music educators in early childhood settings across the South West region to work alongside generalist practitioners for a series of 10 extended visits (typically 3 hours). A full description of the project can be found in the report (Young, Reference YOUNG2025). In brief, the visiting music educator modelled the generalist version of practice, encouraging the setting practitioners to participate and gradually take over the active role. Each visit concluded with a meeting to reflect on the morning’s activity and develop the practitioners’ music pedagogical knowledge and understanding.
Defining mentoring
Reading widely across the background literature, the terms mentoring and coaching appear to be used interchangeably so that there is a lack of definitional clarity. Both are relational approaches to professional learning, with some agreement that mentoring, in comparison with coaching, is characterised by a broader focus on the mentee’s holistic development over time (see Thornton, Reference THORNTON2024). Coaching tends to be seen as a distinct method to help educators introduce effective practices in their settings with a focus on implementation that may be separate from, or integrated within, a mentoring relationship (Clarke et al., Reference CLARKE, MCLAUGHLIN, ASPDEN and RILEY2021; Schachter et al., Reference SCHACHTER, KNOCHE, LU, GOLDBERG, WERNICK, PIASTA and LANCASTER2025). Coaching is, therefore, more likely to be short-term and have a specific, practice-based purpose. Mentoring has been described as a more complex, multifaceted relationship characterised by leadership, guidance, inspiration, support, motivation and challenge (Rajuan et al., Reference RAJUAN, TUCHIN and ZUCKERMAN2011; Thornton, Reference THORNTON2024). Given that PLD in music can arouse practitioners’ feelings of anxiety about their musical competences, mentoring with its emphasis on relationship forming and holistic development would seem to be better suited to PLD in music. Certainly this conception of mentoring aligns with conceptions of the role described by the project team whom we introduce later in the article.
The theory of change underlying mentoring is that the mentor seeks to improve beliefs, knowledge and skills that lead to positive changes in practice and thus to enhanced musical experiences for children. Mentors aim to foster collaborative exchange, reflective discussion and knowledge generation appropriate to the children and context in which the mentee is working (Dunst et al., Reference DUNST, TRIVETTE and RAAB2013: Rush & Shelden, Reference RUSH and SHELDEN2020). Mentoring thus emphasises the importance of diagnosing individual practitioner’s current strengths and needs, and offering appropriate resources, content and pedagogical methods. Given the wide variability of early childhood practitioners’ prior experience and the range of settings in which they work, coupled with the instability of the sector we mentioned earlier, resourcefulness and adaptability on the part of the mentor, both curricular and interpersonal, are essential characteristics (Elek et al., Reference ELEK, PAGE and EADIE2025).
Literature review
Our search through the literature for what we might learn about mentoring in early childhood music revealed many studies that focus on professional development for early childhood educators in a wide range of domains, but hardly any that focus on music. These non-music studies are useful, albeit with limitations, in setting out general processes and procedures of PLD for early childhood educators. There are several meta-reviews of the literature, mostly focussing on the USA and its practice contexts, but nevertheless broadly informative (Artman-Meeker et al., Reference ARTMAN-MEEKER, FETTIG, BARTON, PENNEY and ZENG2015; Brunsek et al., Reference BRUNSEK, PERLMAN, MCMULLEN, FALENCHUK, FLETCHER, NOCITA, KAMKAR and SHAH2020; Elek & Page, Reference ELEK and PAGE2019; Kraft et al., Reference KRAFT, BLAZAR and HOGAN2018; Schachter et al., Reference SCHACHTER, KNOCHE, GOLDBERG and LU2024; Schachter et al., Reference SCHACHTER, KNOCHE, LU, GOLDBERG, WERNICK, PIASTA and LANCASTER2025). Despite, as we noted earlier, some lack of definitional clarity between coaching and mentoring in the meta-reviews, there is broad agreement, supported by ample evidence, that these modes of professional development have a positive influence on practice and children’s outcomes. They also arrive at a consensus regarding the components of effective PLD. Accumulated evidence suggests that action plans, support with content and resources, modelling, co-teaching, observation, reflection and feedback are key features (Snyder et al., Reference SNYDER, HEMMETER and FOX2022). However, significantly, there is little agreement about how PLD should be conducted (e.g. Brunsek et al., Reference BRUNSEK, PERLMAN, MCMULLEN, FALENCHUK, FLETCHER, NOCITA, KAMKAR and SHAH2020; Elek & Page, Reference ELEK and PAGE2019; Schachter et al., Reference SCHACHTER, KNOCHE, LU, GOLDBERG, WERNICK, PIASTA and LANCASTER2025). The critical features of successful mentoring in practice appear to remain elusive.
There are a few studies that have included mentoring in early childhood music education for non-specialist educators. Most aimed to introduce a particular pedagogical approach, for example, musical play (Nieuwmeijer et al., Reference NIEUWMEIJER, MARSHALL and VAN OERS2023), a Kodàly based curriculum (Ibbotson & See, Reference IBBOTSON and SEE2021) and elements of the Hong Kong music curriculum (Bautista et al., Reference BAUTISTA, HO, LEE and SUN2022, Reference BAUTISTA, TOH and WONG2018; Wong et al., Reference WONG, BAUTISTA, HO and KONG2023). The mentoring approach was tailored to the pedagogical approach, more akin, therefore, to coaching and its focus on implementation into practice. We found only one mentoring programme in Australia that aimed to introduce a range of musical activities that could be interwoven into everyday classroom practice rather than a defined approach (Barret & Zhukov, Reference BARRET and ZHUKOV2024).
However, looking closely at these mentoring in music education studies, the mentees were qualified teachers working in the first years of schooling (including kindergarten), for children aged 4 years and older. No studies described in situ mentoring with practitioners who may have minimal qualifications and work with children younger than 4 years in the variety of settings that characterises the early childhood sector in England. This important distinction in qualification, professional role and context is emphasised by Lenzo who designed an online training scheme in music for this earliest age phase sector (Lenzo, Reference LENZO2014). She stressed the need for trainers to possess knowledge and skills of both age and context-appropriate models of musical practice, warning that, from her experience, this is often not the case. We found accounts of one project, the Baby Song project, which was carefully attuned to introduce age-appropriate models of practice and aimed to increase the quality and quantity of singing to babies and toddlers by daycare practitioners. However, this programme relied on an intensive programme of regular meetings for reflective discussion rather than in-place, individualised mentoring (Young, Reference YOUNG2017; Young et al., Reference YOUNG, GOOUCH and POWELL2022). Indeed, our fruitless search for any closely relevant studies that employed mentoring suggests that little has changed since Gruenhagen wrote, in 2009, that literature which focuses on PLD in preschool music is almost ‘non-existent’ (Gruenhagen, Reference GRUENHAGEN and GRUENHAGEN2009).
So we cast the net wider, hoping to find examples at the primary level (5 to 11 years) of mentoring in music for generalist teachers which might be informative. However, the majority of studies looked at aspects of PLD for music specialists (Bautista et al., Reference BAUTISTA, YAU and WONG2017; Blair, Reference BLAIR2008; Conway, Reference CONWAY2015; Koner & Eros, Reference KONER and EROS2018; Krueger, Reference KRUEGER and KRUEGER2003; Snell & Burton, Reference SNELL and BURTON2024) with only a handful aimed at generalists (e.g. West, Reference WEST2024; Zhukov & Barrett, Reference ZHUKOV and BARRETT2025); a shortfall also noted by Welch (Reference WELCH2021).
Given the paucity of recent literature on the topic of music mentoring for generalist educators, we turned back to the writing on music consultancy, a short-lived initiative from the late 1980s and early 1990s. A small number of University-based training courses were established in England with the aim of equipping primary specialist music educators with the skills to mentor their generalist colleagues. This approach came to be known as music consultancy (Allen, Reference ALLEN1988, Reference ALLEN1989; Kemp, Reference KEMP1984; Kemp & Freeman, Reference KEMP and FREEMAN1988; Smith, Reference SMITH1987; Young, Reference YOUNG1992). The introduction of music consultancy was motivated by the impending National Curriculum in England for primary schools, which required all teachers to include music in their generalist practice rather than either delegate to a specialist teacher or simply neglect the subject (DES, 1992). It was recognised that the music consultancy role would demand a distinct set of skills, both interpersonal and curricular. Integrated into these courses was a significant shift to a model of practice that could be taught by generalist teachers within continuous classroom-based provision, often as individual or group activity. It was not demanding, therefore, of specialist performance skills nor isolated in a whole class, music lesson occupying a defined timetabled slot. Music consultancy courses also aimed to equip participants with the interpersonal skills to support colleagues in changing their practice, such as building confidence in their musical identity and pedagogical competence for classroom-embedded activities. The music consultancy approach has long since languished, but we suggest there could be advantages in recalling its principles and approaches.
Finally, we introduce a current discussion paper by Conway & Stanley (Reference CONWAY and STANLEY2025) which raises what we consider to be valuable points based on their long-term experience of PLD in music at preschool and primary levels in the USA. They explain that the general mentoring literature typically lists core features of mentoring and, moreover, that these features tend to have been reproduced and consolidated both in training materials and as frameworks for various studies. Attempts to identify key strategies and methods fall into these typical lists of ‘what works’. However they are now revising their opinion and consider that there is greater need to account for the specific contexts and complexities of practitioners’ learning (ibid; see also Barrett et al., Reference BARRETT, FLYNN, BROWN and WELCH2019; Barret et al., Reference BARRET, ZHUKOV and WELCH2019). In other words, they recommend a shift to an educator-centred approach which is flexible to educators’ needs, feelings, motivations and practice situations (also Korthagen, Reference KORTHAGEN2017). Conway and Stanley acknowledge the importance of identifying the ‘what works’ methods and strategies of PLD but they emphasise the need to give greater consideration to how educators learn and change their music practice (ibid).
The seminar day
We were interested to find out what a group of expert early childhood music educators knew and understood about the processes and strategies of mentoring. These music educators had all been involved in the SoundWaves project. In addition to collecting data for evaluation purposes during the placements, the project concluded with a seminar day. The day brought together 19 members of the project (3 men and 16 women). The team members had between them been involved in placements of 10 weeks in 17 settings in differing capacities, including mentor, mentee, centre manager and project leader, scattered across the South West England region during the 3-year lifespan of the project. As is typical of the early childhood sector, particularly for freelance music educators, the team members had experience of multiple roles, both within the project and in their prior and parallel work – as project leaders, as mentors and mentees, as advisory teachers, early childhood practitioners, qualified teachers working in the early childhood sector and childcare managers. As is also typical, their qualification and experience backgrounds were varied. Ten were qualified teachers, of whom 4 had gained further postgraduate degrees, 6 possessed early childhood qualifications and 3 had community music backgrounds. The project provided the purpose and the financial means to bring this group together, in person, but we anticipated, indeed encouraged, the seminar participants to draw on their wider experiences beyond this most recent project.
The aim was to gain insight into the processes of PLD so that we might be able to identify how mentoring could be improved in future work. The purpose of the day was made explicit to the group by posing the question: how can we most effectively support early years settings to develop their music practice in the South West? The launching question was intentionally broad and did not mention ‘mentoring’ in order to avoid biasing the project members towards simply affirming mentoring as the most effective method. It left the door open in case other forms of support, for example, conference days or online training, were considered equally effective or perhaps more effective than mentoring.
Seminar participants took part in a sequence of group discussions which were orientated by set questions. Our plan for the seminar day was to begin with reflecting on the personal, extrapolate to the general and then apply to some particular, albeit imaginary, situations. Organised first into 3 focus groups, participants were asked to reflect on their own past experiences of learning to work in music with young children, to extract and identify the processes of PLD, and to evaluate what they themselves had found most useful and why. The purpose was to attune them to a focus on professional learning and to identify a range of possible methods. Participants then formed into 5 smaller groups, with changed membership, to discuss the processes of mentoring during the project placements. We had engineered the groups to ensure that the members differed in length of early years educator experience and whether they had specialist music or generalist backgrounds. Finally, the whole group were introduced to 5 imaginary scenarios that they might encounter in a mentoring role. The scenarios were written and illustrated as posters, pinned around the room. The individual members of the group circulated to read the scenarios and considered how, as mentors, they would respond and act. As they circulated, they discussed informally with one another and shared their thoughts. The scenarios were fictionalised, disguised versions of practitioners, settings and events similar to those encountered on the project placements. For example, one imaginary practitioner was newly qualified and lacked confidence, another was over-assured and unwilling to listen to advice and another was an enthusiastic singer but had difficulty in vocal pitching.
Given that there were 19 participating members contributing to a whole day of focus group and whole group discussions, the seminar provided a generous quantity of data which informs this article. Detailed records were kept of all discussions. The two sets of focus group conversations were scribed by independent note takers. Following the focus group discussions, each scribe presented a summary agreed by their group to the whole group and other participants were invited to add comments. These summarising and commenting sessions were audio recorded and later transcribed using Microsoft Word. One whole group discussion, preceding the scenario task, was facilitated by the authors and sought to pull out the key points that were starting to gel from the discussions up to that stage in the day. These key points were recorded on a flip chart.
The assembled data comprised the detailed notes from the focus groups scribed by independent note takers, audio recordings and their transcription, key points generated by the whole group and recorded on flip charts, additional field notes jotted during the day by the two facilitators and individual notes generated by the imagined scenarios and willingly given to us. The data collected on the seminar day was supplemented by our observations of the project work in action (in our respective roles as project lead and project evaluator) recorded in field notebooks during visits to the project placements throughout the duration of the project.
Consent procedures
Participants signed consent forms at the start of the day, covered by Take Art’s ethical guidelines for gathering data and the safeguarding policy. Both authors are affiliated with the Centre for Research in Early Childhood, Birmingham, UK and abide by the ethical guidelines for research issued by the centre (Bertram et al., Reference BERTRAM, PASCAL, LYNDON, FORMOSINHO, GAYWOOD, GRAY, KOUTOULAS, LOIZOU, VANDENBROEK and WHALLEY2025). Participants were made aware that the discussions would be recorded and for what purpose the recordings would be used.
General findings
The assembled data were carefully reviewed by both authors. We had asked our seminar team first to reflect on multiple aspects of their own experiences and then to analyse those experiences, drawing them into issues, themes and key points as the day progressed. By this method, the seminar day started to crystallise the processes of mentoring, its pros and cons, generated from the varied experiences and perspectives of the whole team. The next stage was for the two of us to look at the seminar day analysis through a lens based on our review of the literature, and in particular the elements and components of effective mentoring as identified by the meta reviews. Because music always introduces the added complication of musical confidence and identity, we drew in the music consultancy literature, with its emphasis on balancing the interpersonal and the curricular. How did the project team’s accounts of mentoring from different angles (personal experience, project experience, application to imaginary situations) compare?
The general and overall finding was that while the project team of specialist music educators could highlight certain aspects of the mentoring role, in particular the need to foster a positive musical identity among their mentees (arguably the most important aspect), they were less able to elucidate the processes and methods of mentoring practice. The discussions revealed that, broadly speaking, group members possessed idiosyncratic pedagogical content knowledge and that they were not easily able to convert their implicit pedagogical skills and knowledge into explicit versions that they could impart to mentees.
Our review of the seminar day discussions revealed reasons that could explain our overall findings. One straightforward reason that stood out was that lead music educators in the team had rarely been recipients of mentoring or in-place training and so had no prior personal experience on which to draw. There were some exceptions in that 3 of the team had undertaken, or were currently undertaking, a certificate course in early childhood music education which included some in-place mentoring. They were able to reflect on those experiences and extract certain aspects. However, even those who had undergone this course did not find it easy to identify the processes and methods of PLD from their own experiences and how they might translate into their own mentoring practice with non-specialist colleagues. This suggests – anticipating our major conclusion – that mentoring skills cannot be left to chance but need to be deliberately articulated and trained.
Analysis and discussion of focus group questions
Focus Question 1: reflecting on the personal: professional routes to becoming an early childhood music educator
We first asked the seminar participants to reflect on their own background experiences of learning to become an early childhood music educator. The responses to this question illuminate a key reason why the group experienced difficulty in framing the content of mentoring and so we present the outcomes of these discussions in more detail.
The routes into becoming an early childhood music educator they described had followed mixed, ad hoc pathways. All had converted to early childhood practice from another field of practice such as music performance, community music, music therapy, instrumental tuition or teaching music in primary and/or secondary schools. The conversion had taken place through self-selected training days, short courses and, in a few cases, undertaking one of the two qualification pathways in the UK at certificate and masters levels. In the absence of mandatory, regulated and standardised training qualifications to practise in early childhood music education (as is required to teach music in all other sectors of schooling), this idiosyncratic nature of acquiring expertise for early childhood music education is the norm. The field is characterised by distinctive approaches such as the established methods (Kodaly, Dalcroze, Orff), ‘branded’ commercial approaches (of which there are now many) and courses offered by self-appointed experts. All are operating in a marketised environment and are not subject to any kind of external quality control. There is, inevitably, a certain amount of vying for custom and influence among providers of training which results in an emphasis on distinctiveness rather than commonality, and on immediacy and attractiveness of application to practice rather than generalisable principles and underpinning theory. Moreover, most are approaches that are more suitable for specialist music educators, typically those who expect to take a strong lead in their early childhood music provision and who may in turn hope to market their work under the badge of a method, franchise or named approach. Broadly speaking, they are not generalist models of practice that are most suited to being embedded in the ongoing flow and continuous play provision typical of generalist early childhood practice. It had been noticeable (with reference to our field notes taken during the project) that some lead early childhood music educators experienced challenges in adapting to a generalist and play-centred model of practice that is a hallmark of the SoundWaves approach.
Focus Question 2: extrapolating to the general: mentoring processes
Our next focus group questions were designed to reveal understandings of the processes and methods of mentoring. Given that we had found broad agreement in the literature about the core components of mentoring, we took these as the framework for our analysis. The list we set out below draws substantially from a meta-review by Artman-Meeker and colleagues (Reference ARTMAN-MEEKER, FETTIG, BARTON, PENNEY and ZENG2015). The components are:
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• Relationships – an intentional focus on relationships, beliefs and attitudes
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• Action plans – use of longer-term and short-term action plans (setting goals between visits)
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• Resources – guidance with materials, song content, providing pedagogical content knowledge
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• Modelling – live modelling, direction to video modelling, role play (e.g. in training sessions)
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• Observation – structured opportunities for mentees to implement new approaches, practice of new skills
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• Reflection and feedback – opportunities for self-reflection, collaborative evaluation of progress
We looked through the collated data for evidence of these strategies. There were instances here and there, but little extended exposition of processes or the repertoire of methods that might be employed. We acknowledge that our question and structure of the seminar day might not have elicited this information, but we still think it is noteworthy that, apart from scattered mentions, there was little extended discussion of these processes and strategies. However, what emerged from this focus question yet again was the dominant concern with relationships and how to support anxieties and lack of confidence for music. In the words of one mentor, ‘I focus not on them [the practitioners] and their practice, but on children and starting with children’. Another suggested that activities that use resources provide ‘something to hide behind’ and ‘when they see the children love [the activity] it is a small win’. Both comments suggest ways to deflect the focus from the practitioners’ potential anxieties about their own musical competences.
We take these dominant concerns to be indicative of the major challenge in mentoring music with non-specialist practitioners and the first hurdles that a mentor and mentee must negotiate. ‘There must be trust first’, said one mentor, ‘before they will show any vulnerability’. It should not, therefore, be a surprise; indeed, it should be welcomed, that this was a central theme of discussions.
Focus Question 3: scenarios: applications to (imagined) practice
We hoped our final imaginary scenarios, each designed to capture a commonly occurring ‘real-world’ situation, would prompt thinking about the application of strategies to achieve changes in beliefs and practices. The discussions revealed a continued concern with how to form relationships that would enable the mentoring to proceed constructively. However, there was also some discussion about resources, in particular around song content and pedagogical content knowledge for singing. This also points to a frequent situation encountered by mentors in which generalist practitioners experience difficulty in voice pitching. The group shared the views that some core knowledge about children’s singing development and suitable song content can be illuminating for practitioners and reap benefits for their practice. We now look in more detail at the two aspects of mentoring that stood out in the discussions.
Relationships: changing beliefs and attitudes
‘One of my key roles is affirming people’s musical identity because one of the first things people often say to me is “but I’m not musical”. You know. 90 percent of the meetings I had with people that was literally the first thing that comes up. So sitting down with that person and talking about their musical biographies and how - you know - how music is featured in their lives, how they use music in their lives, what their musical childhood was like. Just having that conversation helping them to understand that actually, yes, music is actually part of your life even if you don’t recognise it. I think it’s a really important place to start’. (mentor)
Music faces not only the general systemic barriers to professional development in the early childhood sector mentioned in the introductory section but, as is well recognised, additional barriers specific to music (Welch, Reference WELCH2021). These include the low value accorded to music in the curriculum, entrenched ideas about the nature of practice and low confidence for music among practitioners. The adult-led, group singing of nursery favourites is a mainstay of early childhood practice. The generalist model of practice we introduced early in the article, as advocated by Take Art, consists of much more. Therefore, a first task in the project was to change attitudes and assumed ideas of practice coupled with the musical confidence factor. Of all the different modes of musical activity that might be provided for young children, group music requires musical performance skills, and yet, paradoxically, is the most commonplace. So while change in beliefs about practice is required, the shift, once appreciated, is usually achieved smoothly because a mode of responsive musicality is required rather than potentially more daunting performance skills. There is often a moment, as one practitioner put it, when ‘the penny drops’, and they realise that music can be provided for as a playful, child-centred activity calling for generic pedagogical skills in much the same way as they are providing for other curriculum areas (Young, Reference YOUNG2025). Dogani likewise emphasises the combination of reflective discussion alongside immersion in playful music-making with children, as the means to shift assumptions and attitudes and to overcome practitioners’ fears (Dogani, Reference DOGANI2008).
Discovering musical abilities and building on strengths was understood by the focus group participants as the starting point for mentoring, often requiring some early observations and diagnosis of what each practitioner needed to develop their practice, alongside sensitive and affirming conversations. Building relational trust and the difficult, sensitive work required to deal with identity and emotions were at the forefront of the focus group discussions. It is, as one remarked,‘very difficult to unpick beliefs and feelings’ and suggested this might be achieved through ‘conversations around what music is, and are children musical?’
Resources: pedagogical knowledge and skills
There were a few specific topics, most notably singing, which generated discussion around the pedagogical content knowledge which mentors might impart to their mentees if the situation required. The problem of how to support practitioners with singing skills (a widespread issue as described by Knigge et al., Reference KNIGGE, DANBOLT, HAGEN, HAUKENES and NGUYEN2025) prompted some sharing of ideas about what knowledge might be useful to mentees: for example, understanding children’s singing development and song material appropriate for developing voices. As one mentor explained, reviewing video or audio recordings and then ‘drawing attention to the pitch matching – bringing their focus to the children and what the children are capable of in terms of pitch . . . so instead let’s focus on a song that only has 2 or 3 pitches – and doing it from the point of view of teaching the children’. In another discussion, the group mentioned the importance of language, terminology and making knowledge explicit: ‘it [theory] gives you a language’ and ‘a rationale to be able to explain to others’. However, scanning across the data as a whole, there were only a few instances where specific pedagogical content knowledge or how to instruct mentees in pedagogical knowledge and skills were discussed.
This absence could be explained by lack of awareness that giving relevant knowledge and instructing in skills might be part of the mentoring role, perhaps as a result of uncertainty about the level of authority and leadership invested in the professionalism of the role. One mentor described her efforts with mentees as ‘creat[ing] a conversation rather than telling’. Equally, the value placed on creating a positive, trusting and collaborative relationship and the importance of ‘getting them all on board’ as the same mentor explained, may mitigate against the shift in relationship to one who instructs and sets expectations. Yet Kraft and colleagues, after analysing 60 studies of mentoring for kindergarten and elementary teachers (in general curriculum areas), found that those studies where teachers had been provided with content and defined expectations, such as resources, action plans and practice guides, had resulted in greater changes in practice (Kraft et al., Reference KRAFT, BLAZAR and HOGAN2018). This suggests that the value of mentors providing practitioners with explicit advice about implementation deserves emphasis in any preparation for the mentoring role.
Conclusion
Although this study is small-scale and regional, we consider our group of seminar participants to be representative of early childhood music sector and that therefore our findings may have wider relevance. We can suggest, with some confidence, wider applicability to the UK and provisionally to other countries where early childhood music is provided by generalist practitioners. We found that our seminar day participants had accumulated some understanding of the aims and processes of mentoring but that there were inconsistencies, gaps and limitations to that understanding. The group revealed greatest awareness of the need to create positive relationships in order to address musical identity and accompanying low confidence. This is encouraging because relationship forming is the first, crucial stage in music mentoring. Building confidence goes hand-in-hand with the assurances that accompany the shift to a continuous provision, generalist model of early childhood music practice and the realisation that this model is less demanding of specialist music skills. However, we discovered that beyond what we might describe as the baseline aspects of mentoring, the types of facilitation strategies likely to promote changes in practice were not comprehensively appreciated and therefore not routinely incorporated. Calling up and learning from the principles and methods of music consultancy could have advantages. Equally, we suggest that the wider fields of mentoring in early childhood education and of music mentoring in the primary sector offer information about strategies and processes that can be adapted to mentoring generalist practitioners in early childhood music education.
Mentoring adults may not come easily to those who are used to working with children. Many exemplary early childhood music educators have accumulated pedagogical knowledge that remains implicit and intuitively musical, and they may not be able to analyse and communicate the principles and processes of practice (Weimar, Reference WEIMAR2019). Equally, given the varied professional learning routes that typically characterise the background of early childhood music educators, they often lack a sufficiently broad repertoire of pedagogical knowledge in order to be able to select and adapt for their mentees. Mentors need to be able to diagnose what the mentees need; otherwise, they may rely on modelling how they work and imparting only what they know from experience. Cloning is not effective in helping mentees develop practice attuned to their own strengths, needs and situations, as Conway and Stanley state (Reference CONWAY and STANLEY2025). Thus, being an effective mentor, we argue, needs skills, knowledge and attitudes that require deliberate training and ideally ongoing development and reflection, as Weimar also proposes (Reference WEIMAR2020). Evidence to support that proposition can be found in a comparative study by Evertson & Smithey (Reference EVERTSON and SMITHEY2000) located in general primary practice. Experienced teachers acting as mentors who had been trained were found to be more effective in improving the practice of their mentees over an extended period than equally experienced, but untrained, teacher-mentors (Evertson & Smithey, Reference EVERTSON and SMITHEY2000).
Our review of the wider literature revealed that the mentoring of generalist early childhood practitioners in music, particularly in settings providing education and care for children from birth to four years, is an under-researched area. While there are some music education mentoring programmes, mainly in the US, that include initial training of mentors, these are aimed at specialist music educators in the older age phases of education (described in Greene et al., Reference GREENE, KOERNER and WILSON2020). In the general early childhood educational literature, the value of in-service mentoring has been well-documented but lacks detail informed by insights about how mentees learn and change their practice. We concur with Conway and Holcomb, who, as long ago as 2008, wrote that the music profession needed a larger research base on the training of mentors to inform mentor programme designers and policy makers (Conway & Holcomb, Reference CONWAY and HOLCOMB2008).
This study has highlighted the importance of preparing mentors to carry out their role and of ensuring they have the knowledge and skills that mentoring requires. Such programmes would include providing time for mentors to reflect on their personal backgrounds, capabilities and attitudes, learn skills for interpersonal exchanges, strengthen their knowledge about mentoring methods and convert implicit pedagogical content knowledge into explicit, accessible forms that are flexible for their mentees’ needs and contexts. Who mentors the mentors is a crucial question.
Acknowledgements
We thank all the project team for their contributions to the project. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.
Financial support
Funding for the project was provided by Youth Music, with support from Paul Hamlyn Foundation, regional music education hubs and music organisations.
Competing interests
Jane Parker is employed by Take Art, Somerset, UK. Susan Young has no competing interests.
Author biographies
Susan Young is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Early Childhood, Birmingham, UK and was, prior to retirement, principal lecturer specialising in music education and childhood studies at Exeter University, UK. She holds qualifications in piano performance, musicology, education and biological anthropology and a PhD focused on early childhood music education. She has authored and co-authored several books and has published numerous articles.
Jane Parker is the Early Childhood Music Educator at Take Art, a National Portfolio Organisation funded by Arts Council England. She contributes to the SoundWaves Early Childhood Music programme, funded by Youth Music, and teaches on the Trinity College London Certificate for Music Educators: Early Childhood at the Centre for Research in Early Childhood. She holds a BMus (University of Sheffield), a PGCE (University of Leeds), and an MA in Early Years Music Education.
