From instructor to mentor: Psychological implications of teacher roles in community music education

The Community Music Education (CME) has become a major factor in expanding music education opportunities by focusing on engagement and inclusion, and not the technical expertise. Whereas the traditional roles of the instructor are based on the hierarchical authority and provision of corrections, the role of the mentor is based on collaboration and empowerment. This paper has explored the psychological implication of the instructor-mentor role change in CME and how the change impacts the psychological health of learners as well as the professional identity of the educators. The mixed-method design used was sequential explanatory using 174 participants who were employees in four CME organizations in the U.S. Midwest. The Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction (BNS) Scale, Psychological Sense of Community (PSoC-2) Scale were used to gather quantitative data. Semi-structured interviews comprising eight teachers were used to collect qualitative data. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare mentor-led and instructor-led programs, whereas hierarchical regression was used to examine predictors of community belonging. Mentor-led participants demonstrated significantly higher scores across all psychological measures: autonomy (M = 5.68 vs. 5.07, d = 0.78), competence (M = 5.58 vs. 4.99, d = 0.81), relatedness (M = 5.87 vs. 5.29, d = 0.88), and sense of community (M = 34.2 vs. 29.2, d = 1.36). The total explanation of community belonging was 44.8% in terms of psychological needs. The themes identified through qualitative analysis were as follows: improved psychological well-being of students, educator identity in shifts, and mastery climates growing. Mentor role is very influential in enhancing psychological outcomes in CME and transformation of the professional identity of educators. These results confirm the relevance of Self-Determination Theory to the situation of community music and justify the investment in mentorship training in order to have sustainable, psychologically empowering programs.