It is accepted that the learning curve to be climbed at the beginning months of one’s teaching career is steep with many problems and challenges (Roulston, Legette, Trotman & Womack, 2005). This could be even worse for student teachers in their very first attempts to teach during their teaching practice period in their undergraduate studies. Student teachers are expected, in a magical way, to acquire full responsibility of a bunch of children in a classroom who they hardly know. And this is even harder for the generalist student teacher teaching in a primary school, where s/he is called to teach Maths, Language, Science, Art, Physical Education, Music and all the other subjects of the primary school curriculum, having received minimal subject knowledge in most of them. Beginning to teach in a primary school is by definition very demanding. Beginning to teach, between others, the subject of Music when you have not received adequate training is scary for many student teachers. Teaching practice is a crucial part of any teacher preparation program as it gives the opportunity to student teachers, through the integration of theory and practice, to begin formulating a model of effective teaching (Posner, 2005). Since it is the time when student teachers’ training and pedagogical knowledge and skills are first put into practice, they need the greatest support from their University supervisors and mentors. Learning to teach is not as simplistic as putting in action teaching ideas collected in the undergraduate studies or selecting from a stock of activities gathered in the university courses. Student teachers need to be given the opportunity to be engaged in inquiry with more experienced professionals and become critical thinkers in order to be able to take into consideration the various variables that may determine the organization of a lesson plan and the complexity and contextual nature of teaching (Perry & Power, 2004). They need to interact with other beginner teachers as well as with experienced teachers who will offer them assistance and suggestions (Conway, 2006). In this paper I seek to explore ways that may support generalist student teachers in their first attempts to teach Music in primary school during their teaching practice period. More specifically, the study investigates the application of the “collaborative inquiry” model (Ainscow, 1999) in combination with the use of video as a tool for self-reflection, in a generalist student –teachers’ teaching practice context.

This paper reports on an attempt to try out the model of collaborative inquiry in a student teachers’ teaching practice context. According to this model, a practicing teacher collaborates with an outsider (researcher/ colleague/ academic) acting as a “critical friend”, aiming at improving teaching practice. In this study, the researcher in the role of a “critical friend” instead of a supervisor in Music, worked together with volunteer student teachers doing their teaching practice in Cypriot primary schools. The collaboration involved the preparation of their music lessons-plans, observation of all the lessons taught, discussion, video exerpts review of the taught lessons, self evaluation, evaluation and feedback by the researcher. At the end of the teaching practice period the researcher interviewed the student teachers, investigating their feelings regarding the collaboration and possible implications this approach could have in student- teacher education in general.

The findings suggest that the collaborative inquiry approach to student teacher educationin combination with the use of video, especially in a field like Music where student- teachers often have low confidence and musical abilities, can turn out to be very valuable for various reasons: Firstly, the student teachers have a continuous support and feedback and they are motivated to continually reflect on their preparation and teaching. In addition, they have the opportunity to identify their habits, behaviors and effective and non effective teaching practices as well as habits and behaviors of their students that they are often completely unaware of. And these realizations can be useful for student teachers not only in teaching Music but in the teaching of other subjects as well.