Looking at the ideal secondary school music teacher in Cyprus: teachers’ and students’ perspectives

What makes a great music teacher? What are those characteristics, qualities, personality traits, behaviours, attitudes, skills, knowledge, approaches that make him/her different from the average music teacher? The present study investigates the profile of the ideal music teacher through the lens of secondary school students and music teachers. 518 Cypriot students and 71 music teachers participated in the study, completing anonymous questionnaires with both closed and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that the characteristics of the ideal music teacher deemed more important for secondary school students fall mainly in the category of personality traits and student-teacher relationship, with pedagogical and subject knowledge following with much smaller percentages. On the other hand, music teachers’ highly valued the ideal music teacher’s musical skills, pedagogical knowledge and music teaching approaches/ practices. By building on the findings, the paper establishes recommendations for music teacher education and teacher effectiveness.