Gail Berenson is Professor of Piano and Chair of the Keyboard Division at Ohio University. She maintains an active performing career, presenting solo, two-piano and a wide range of chamber music recitals. As a result of her distinguished work as a pedagogue, along with her reputation as an expert on musician wellness issues, she is much in demand as a performer, clinician, lecturer, adjudicator, author, reviewer and pedagogy consultant. She has performed and lectured in over twenty-five states, as well as Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel and Canada. She is a member of the Editorial Committee of The American Music Teacher, a contributing editor to Piano & Keyboard, focusing on the subjects of musician wellness and has authored a chapter entitled "Music Medicine and Today's Piano Teachers," for the third edition of James Lyke's book, Creative Piano Teaching. She has served on the MTNA National Convention Steering Committee as Piano Chair and continues as a member of the MTNA Pedagogy Committee. She has also held several national posts with the National Conference on Piano Pedagogy and the World PianoÊPedagogy Conference, in which she currently serves as a member of the Pianists' Committee on Technique and Health. A past president of the Ohio Music Teachers Association, she holds MTNA's Master Certificate in piano and piano pedagogy.
Gail Berenson
School of Music
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
gberenson1@ohiou.edu
740.593.4233
I still have fond memories of our family vacations to Miami Beach, Florida. My sister, my parents and I had a great time, staying in a lovely hotel located on the ocean front, with the usual amenities, including several swimming pools. One event tarnishes this memory and remains vivid to this day. It was my brief exposure to swimming lessons. My mother, believing it important for us to know how to swim, decided to enroll my sister and me in the swimming lessons offered by the hotel. The instructor, arrogant and egotistical, guaranteed my parents that he could teach us to swim in absolutely no more than five lessons! His approach was high-pressured, pushing us to attempt skills before we felt ready to try them and displaying a demeanor that suggested a total lack of concern for our feelings. Without listing every detail, the result was that after enduring one lesson, I quit. To this day, I refuse to go into the water. My sister made it through the five lessons, and although she did learn to swim, she rarely goes swimming.
It is ironic that an event that happened decades ago, designed to encourage a love of the water, has had the exact opposite effect and continues to affect my life today. The swimming instructor, hired by the hotel, exerted a powerful influence on my future feelings toward water activities. This personal story provides a revealing illustration of the enormous responsibility teachers bear while introducing students to an activity or skill. These initial experiences can influence a student's future feelings toward an activity for years to come. Think of the many "Dear Abby" letters that have been published in daily newspapers around the country describing unhappy piano lesson experiences that have turned people off to musical enjoyment forever.
What is a piano teacher's primary responsibility? The answer appears to be self evident - to teach students how play the piano. While this may be an accurate response, it does not acknowledge two of the most important things we do.
Motivating a student is a challenge and must be uniquely tailored to each student. Where some students will work hard for extrinsic rewards such as stars or stickers, others are more likely to practice in preparation for competitions or recitals. Some want to keep up with their peers, who are also taking piano lessons, while others want to please their parents or teacher. Getting students to reward themselves intrinsically is the ultimate goal. We strive to inspire all of our students to work hard because they want to achieve their best and become better musicians.
The learning environment plays a large role in establishing an intrinsic reward system. If students feel their ideas are respected, they are more likely to begin taking responsibility for their own learning. Self esteem, acceptance, success, status and independence are five basic psychological needs which we all possess. Not every lesson will fulfill all of these needs, but one must always be met Ð the teacher's acceptance of that student, regardless of the student's behavior or performance. Every student must feel valued as an individual.
To avoid the student feeling under attack, it is crucial that we select our words carefully. Offering constructive criticism in a way that builds upon a student's present knowledge promotes feelings of success and self-worth. Students must be able to trust their teacher to feel totally secure, so all comments must be accurate and honest. Although the performance product is highly prized, the needs of the student must come first. It is possible to provide a candid, constructive appraisal of a student's work if one also recognizes effort. Even when a student is not playing well, effort and progress can be rewarded. Commenting in a non-judgmental, non- confrontational manner allows the teacher to offer feedback without the student feeling belittled. The key is differentiating between product and effort; building on the student's strengths, student and teacher can then work together to improve the product.
A student plays through a composition at a lesson and then gazes up at the teacher eagerly, or perhaps not so eagerly, awaiting his/her comments. The teacher's next response is pivotal. This initial feedback can be beneficial, supportive and constructive or can make the student feel inadequate, untalented and a failure. A teacher's feedback can heavily influence a student's enthusiasm for learning and can preclude the willingness to remain open to exploring new ideas. Thoughtless feedback can create hurtful feelings and loss of self esteem that can have devastating psychological effects on a piano student of any age or level of skill. This makes it all the more important for us to maintain an awareness of how well we are communicating with our students, without which important information may go unheard or needlessly rejected out of defensiveness.
Helping students learn how to verbalize and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their own performances is one way to encourage a more pro-active approach to learning. Students, in a collaborative effort with their teacher, can begin to constructively assess their performance and then determine ways to improve it. The challenge for teachers is to provide enough guidance while simultaneously encouraging students to think for themselves and discover solutions on their own. Encouraging students to learn through discovery, by using an appropriate balance of direct and indirect comments, is a vital strategy for creating a learning environment that will be conducive to imaginative problem solving, consistent musical growth and the cultivation of an independent, enthusiastic piano student.
Ned A. Flanders and Edmund J. Amidon, in The Role of the Teacher in the Classroom, have provided an instrument that can assist teachers in categorizing what goes on within a lesson. Using a tape or video cassette recorder, teachers are able to graph their comments, determining what percentage are direct or indirect. This serves as an objective way to monitor and assess a teaching performance. Interaction analysis categorizes verbal responses into the areas of teacher talk (divided into indirect and direct influence) and student talk (in a piano lesson this may include a student's performance, either self-initiated or in response to a request from the teacher). The indirect categories in the teacher's role include accepting the student's feelings, offering praise and encouragement, accepting and using the ideas of the student, and asking questions. Direct categories include lecturing (in a piano lesson this can include a playing demonstration by the teacher), giving directions, offering constructive criticism, and justifying authority. A final category is identified as silence or confusion. By critiquing one's teaching in each of these categories, one can become student and teacher at the same time thereby creating self-analysis and awareness of one's teaching personality, technique and effectiveness.
Designed initially for use by classroom teachers, these categories can be just as beneficial and easily utilized by the typical piano teacher, whether teaching in group or in an individual lesson format. According to Amidon/Flanders,
".....the system is meant to be used as an in-service training device for teachers. It may be employed by a teacher either as he observes someone else teach or as he categorizes a tape recording of his own classroom behavior. In either case the method is the same."1Categories for Interaction Analysis
Teachers can categorize the student or teacher talk/performance that is taking place in frequent, regular increments (Amidon/Flanders recommend 3 second intervals). Doing it frequently makes it easy to determine a pattern.
Striving for a flexible balance between indirect and direct teaching enables the instructor to respond to the unique personality and learning style of the student. It also allows the teacher to shift the balance (more direct, less direct) by assessing where the student is in the learning process and meeting the specific and current needs of the student. More general comments and a higher ratio of indirect teacher responses are evident in the early learning stages, promoting a gestalt type of thinking that encourages students to formulate their own concept of a composition. As a student reaches the polishing stage in working with a composition, teacher feedback may become very specific and quite direct as tiny details are inserted into the overall structure the student has constructed for the piece. Continuous awareness of the studentÕs attitude, preparedness and progress will help the instructor monitor his/her success in achieving the appropriate balance for that student at any given time.
Although indirect teaching may encourage the student to take a more active role in the lesson, it can create frustration and hostility if used all of the time, with students becoming desperate for specific information from the teacher. Artist training has a long tradition of direct, authoritarian teaching, with some students thriving in this environment, a larger percentage may be able to do what is asked but will not be able to figure out why, or be able to transfer and apply this information to other compositions. Structuring one's teaching as 100% direct (autocratic) or 100% indirect (laissez-faire) is inadvisable. Neither extreme is indicative of good teaching.
Applying the technique of interaction analysis will challenge teachers to seek clearer ways to express themselves, to reevaluate the types of questions they ask, to observe whether they are truly hearing and building upon the student's responses to questions, to determine when to provide solutions to problems or when it might be best to simply offer clearer clues to allow for more student exploration, and to decide the best way to prioritize diagnosed musical and technical problems. While working to improve the final musical product, the teacher strives to achieve the most appropriate balance that will also bolster a student's independence and enthusiasm. The presence of many student-initiated responses in an analysis chart is a reflection that the student is taking an active role in the lesson. Viewing our teaching through this objective instrument can serve as an illuminating and instructive experience. Anything that encourages teachers to objectively assess their teaching is beneficial, for teachers and their students.
Below are several suggestions for establishing a healthy teaching environment and some techniques to facilitate constructive communication. Written for the 1988 National Conference on Piano Pedagogy and previously published in the 1988 Conference Proceedings, these are a series of challenges that can be used as a teaching check list.
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