Researchers have identified high levels of stress among music education students, but we know very little about how students manage this stress and how emotional competence skills might be utilized within stress coping mechanisms for this population. Through this qualitative study, we sought to understand the stress coping strategies of eight music education majors through the lens of emotional competence as outlined by Saarni. We identified several sources of participants’ stress: general life stress, schedule, performance expectations, and coursework. Student coping strategies included awareness of stress, an attitude of pushing through, self-care, and seeking support. Through coding and utilization of the theoretical framework, we concluded that all eight of Saarni’s emotional competence skills were evident in the data as a whole, but not for each individual participant. Minimal evidence was found for half of the skills and for some students they were nonexistent, thus indicating a need for growth in emotional competency. Gaining an understanding of how music education majors cope with their stress could be a key step toward understanding how to better support students throughout their degree programs and as they transition into the field of music education.

研究人员已经确定音乐教育学生的压力水平很高，但我们对学生如何管理这种压力以及如何在该人群的压力应对机制中利用情绪能力技能知之甚少。通过这项定性研究，我们试图通过 Saarni 概述的情绪能力的视角来了解八位音乐教育专业学生的压力应对策略。我们确定了参与者压力的几个来源：一般生活压力、日程安排、绩效期望和课程作业。学生应对策略包括压力意识、坚持不懈的态度、自我照顾和寻求支持。通过对理论框架的编码和利用，我们得出结论，萨尔尼的所有八项情感能力技能在整个数据中都是显而易见的，但不是针对每个参与者。发现一半的技能的证据很少，而对于一些学生来说，这些技能根本不存在，因此表明需要提高情感能力。了解音乐教育专业的学生如何应对压力可能是了解如何在整个学位课程中以及在他们过渡到音乐教育领域时更好地支持学生的关键一步。