This article presents findings from a study into the value of a pre-service teacher production as a form of professional development, from both the technical and personal development perspectives.
Thirty pre-service secondary Arts teachers participated in the production. Through focus-group interviews, participants indicated the benefits of building technical understanding as well as personal benefits of engaging in an ensemble experience.
All spoke of the potential transferability of what they learned to their future teaching practice.
Given that Arts teachers are expected to facilitate extracurricular activities as part of their professional work, this article advocates the importance of examining ways in which rich experiences such as the production examined here should be formally embedded into pre-service teacher training courses.