Understandings
There are many theories about metacognitive learning, acquiring new skills, motivating and engaging students and becoming an expert that have great implications for the questions that will drive my research. Practice is an individual and often personal activity that people develop throughout their lives. Many habits of practice and persistence are developed in the early years of a student’s life. Looking at the community in which students learn to practice in middle school will give teachers feedback on what works best for each of them. I expect this to tie into research on student motivation, joy, student choice, and deliberate practice. I will expand upon these ideas and themes to discover how to support students in becoming great musicians and enjoying the process.
The Importance of Practice
Practice is specifically working towards a goal to accomplish a certain skill or task. This definition can be applied to fundamental parts of a specific skill as well as the overall desired activity or action.
I believe there is a gap in many students’ understandings of practice. Many of my students know what to do during a practice. But much like playing a piece of music, to be expressive you have to know “how” to play it (i.e. what to focus on?). What state of mind are you supposed to be in when you practice? What do you pay attention to? How do you know when you have mastered a piece of music? How do you know you need more work?
Playing music is challenging because whenever you are playing, you should be closely monitoring and adjusting the sounds that come out of your instrument. In the beginning stages of playing, a new student is focused usually on one or two things: playing the desired note and playing with a correct tone quality. During an interview recorded in the 1994 December issue of The Instrumentalist, Howie Smith, a prolific composer and saxophonist, talked about his first saxophone lessons. Speaking of his teacher, he said:
“I tried to play the way he did, and from that point on it was always a matter of listening to other saxophone players in order to know how a saxophone should sound. This wasn’t an abstract exercise because there were specific things I was trying to accomplish. The process is the same with a clarinet or any other instrument and it is the only way to learn how to play an instrument. The most important thing in music is the sound we produce. Students often think that music is just the stuff on the paper, but the only things on the paper are those symbols. It is up to us to interpret and make music out of these; until we do, there is no music.” (1994, p.16)
Unfortunately, students rarely get the opportunity to assess their own or each other’s playing with much depth during a class period. As a result, one of the most important skills of a musician – to be able to listen – gets shortchanged. Listening is a huge part of becoming a musician. By listening, students learn what to listen for and come to understand how a desired sound is produced. They then attempt to create the desired sounds on their own. Students need time to listen, think and analyze the sounds that they hear. Providing a reference or starting point to guide student’s listening can help to internalize the desired sound and melodies before the student attempts to play. If they have the correct tune in their head while they attempt to play, they can begin to assess their own playing. In addition, recording student’s individual practice and then reviewing the recording with a partner, mentor or teacher may teach students more about self-assessing their own playing and performance. Howie Smith talks about the benefit of listening to other players to develop a goal sound to work towards. He states,
“…by listening to many, many, many other players, you no longer have to flounder and hope you stumble across a "nice" sound - instead you can aim for a specific goal. In all things related to practice, being goal-centered will help you arrive much, much faster to your intended destination!” (1994, p.17)
This reinforces the importance of modeling a good sound for students to work towards in early lessons. I wondered if my students had examples or goals for their tone or instrumental voice. This pushed me to think deeper about how and what I emphasized in our rehearsals. If a beautiful tone is the desired overall goal, then I needed to be building upon the student’s skills and understanding of what a good sound sounds like.
The strategies and skills for listening and self-assessing take time for individuals to develop on their own. When they are built into the community norms of group rehearsal, I believe that student’s playing, growth and satisfaction will thrive. In Ethic of Excellence (2003), Ron Berger writes about creating a culture of craftsmanship, a concept translated very easily to student musicians. He notes:
“In carpentry there is no higher compliment builders give to each other than this: That guy is a craftsman. This one word says it all. It connotes someone who has integrity and knowledge, who is dedicated to his work and who is proud of what he does and who he is, someone who thinks carefully and does things well. I want a classroom full of craftsmen. I want students whose work is strong and accurate and beautiful. Students who are proud of what they do, proud of how they respect both themselves and others.” (p. 3)
Berger’s wishes for his students align with what I want my students to get out of being in band or orchestra. I want them to take pride in becoming musicians and in each other.
As a teacher, I see very different levels in student’s commitment to things like achieving good grades and citizenship, maintaining friends and relationships, or achieving a desired social status. It is fairly easy to identify key priorities in each student’s life. This is also true for any instrumental music student. Each student has a different level of experience, skill and desire to play their instrument, as well as different ideas of what practice looks like. This led me to wonder how I could get my students to practice more. I have yet to find a solution that consistently works for a majority of students. As I began this research, other more fruitful questions began to emerge. When and why are students motivated to practice? Do students like to practice individually? What does student practice look like? And ultimately, the question became not how I could "get" or "make" students practice, but how could I create a community of students who genuinely want to practice?
Middle school is a time of transition for students on many levels. As musicians progress and grow in their skill and ability, the number of hours one must put in to keep moving forward grows as well. When students understand that their progress and eventual success is dependent on the amount of focused time spent practicing, I hope that a sense of power, control and pride will begin to develop. The following pages will introduce the concept and framework of deliberate practice and discuss how teaching students to deliberately practice could positively affect many areas of their life where they use practice to improve performance.
How do people become experts? I will discuss the work of Malcolm Gladwell, Geoff Colvin, Mihaly Csikzentmihaly and others to explore this question. Learning to practice from an early age helps kids to internalize the idea that people aren’t just born talented, they work at it. I will also expand upon the ideas about innate ability/talent vs. effort and make an effort to discover how to teach students to learn and think that they can become great musicians.
The Importance of Practice
Practice is specifically working towards a goal to accomplish a certain skill or task. This definition can be applied to fundamental parts of a specific skill as well as the overall desired activity or action.
I believe there is a gap in my student’s current understanding of practice. Many of them know what to do during a practice but much like playing a piece of music, to be expressive you have to know “how” to play it (i.e. what to focus on?). What state of mind are you supposed to be in when you practice? How do you know when you have mastered a piece of music? How do you know you need more work? Students are used to receiving immediate feedback from teachers about their work and progress. Playing music is different in that whenever you are playing, you could and should be closely monitoring and adjusting the sounds that come out. In the beginning stages of playing, a new student is focused usually on one or two things: playing the desired note and playing with a correct tone quality. Students rarely get the opportunity to assess their own and each other’s playing. Recording student’s individual practice and then reviewing the recording with a partner, mentor or teacher may start to teach students more about self-assessing their own playing and performance.
As a teacher I see very different levels in students commitment to things like achieving good grades and citizenship, maintaining friends and relationships, or achieving a desired social status. It is fairly easy to identify key priorities in each student’s life. This is also very true for any instrumental music student. Each student has a different level of experience, skill and desire to play their instrument, as well as different ideas of what practice looks like.
For years, this led me to wonder, "How do I get my students to practice more?” I believe that every music director, teacher and coach has given this question much thought throughout his or her career. This question has kept me up at nights researching music, designing lesson plans, grading practice records. I have yet to find a solution that consistently works for a majority of students. After talking with colleagues and more students, more questions began to emerge. How do my students practice individually? Do students understand how to practice individually? What does student practice look like? And ultimately, the question is not so much how you can "get" or "make" students practice, but how can you create an environment and support structures where kids genuinely want to practice?
Deliberate Practice: what it is and what it isn't
Everyone has had experience with practice to some degree whether it’s music, sports, or an academic subject. What many of us have experienced as “practice” is far from what deliberate practice actually is. Throughout my education I have been told to go “study” or go “practice” and I have told my students this as well. But, what do students actually think and do when told to practice? When discussing what practice looks like, most students speak about reviewing previous material that they already understand. Music students may practice playing through an entire piece of music once or twice, but how often do they attempt new material on their own? How often do they work on a specific skill with the purpose of mastering or improving their expertise?
Within my own classroom, students approach practice in different ways and have different interpretations of what practicing means. Some of my students have specific routines they follow, while others consider practicing to be anytime they make a sound on their instrument. Beginning students usually focus on mastering basic skills and tasks, while more experienced students often have the awareness to focus on improving specific skills. Either way, it seems that many students do not have an existing framework to base their individual practice routines on. By teaching students how to develop and monitor their practice from the beginning of their experience with a new topic or skill, I hope to strengthen student's intrinsic motivation, connection to their instrument and development of skills.
The spark for my research came from studying expert practice more closely, specifically Kathleen Cushman’s work with students defining and studying deliberate practice. Cushman explored alongside students from across the country, what it takes to become an expert. The journey began with students identifying experts and analyzing what they did to get to their current level of expertise. Her students discovered that endless hours of practice went into an expert’s development contributing far more than innate talent did in professionals across many different fields.
Her students also looked at what cognitive researchers call deliberate practice; practice that leads to the desired result of increasing mastery. She states that deliberate practice is not the same as work, and it is not the same as play. Deliberate practice is also not the same as rote repetition. In her book, Fires in the Mind, she clearly defined the characteristics of deliberate practice as practice that:
● has an express purpose.
● demands attention and focus.
● involves conscious repetition or rehearsal
● is geared to the individual
● takes careful timing
● is not inherently enjoyable
● develops new skills and knowledge
● applies to new endeavors
These characteristics provided a firm grounding in what I aim to research within my classes. The statements, “Practice has an express purpose,” and “is geared to the individual” guided me in thinking about students’ abilities and motives behind learning to play an instrument and how, as a teacher, I might differentiate my instruction for each student. Why did they practice? Why did students pick band or orchestra as an elective class? What made these things worth practicing for? Students were facing these questions each time they practiced, and as a teacher I wanted to know what motivated them to practice. I see an opportunity to get to know my students and understand how I could help them achieve their goals, which connected with another of Cushman’s characteristics, “Practice takes careful timing”. This statement alludes to the importance of knowing when students are ready for a challenge and when they need extra support.
The statements, “Practice demands attention and focus” and “Practice involves conscious repetition or rehearsal” led to questions about how students approach playing a piece of music, the time they spend practicing and the practice strategies that they use. What were they listening for? When did they think something they played was good enough? Did students spend time working on their tone? Did they focus more on playing the correct melody? I will look into what students actually do when they practice and try to find ways to model and reinforce successful practice strategies. I hope that the focus on practice will help them come up with practice routines and music that matches their skill level and their interests. This led me to wonder how I could create and model an environment where kids were able to give music their full attention and focus. I will incorporate and emphasize these steps by discussing the research and benefits of deliberate practice and modeling deliberate practice techniques throughout our rehearsals. I will breakdown the music into small parts and demonstrate how to focus and master difficult passages building phrases one note at a time. Asking students to identify and discuss what is working for them following rehearsals will give me feedback on rehearsal strategies and experiences that the students feel are beneficial to them both as a class and individually.
The statement, “Practice is not inherently enjoyable” is an important one because it suggests that difficult or challenging practice is worth doing. Practice is about perfecting something that is currently out of our reach. If we only practiced what we were already good at there would be no growth in our skills and capabilities as musicians. I want to know what pushes students to endure the challenging and tough practices. Similarly, Anders Ericsson, who has also researched deliberate practice writes:
“A premise of our theoretical framework is that deliberate practice is not inherently enjoyable and that individuals are motivated to engage in it by its instrumental value in improving performance. Hence, interested individuals need to be engaging in the activity and motivated to improve performance before they begin deliberate practice.” (1993, p. 332)
This highlights the importance of “buy in” and motivating all students, regardless of their current musical ability, so that they feel motivated to practice and participate in class. Students need to feel that there is value in what they are putting effort into. I want my students to be able to practice perseverance in a supported environment where they feel part of a team. I will encourage students to push themselves and each other to play challenging music that they are interested in playing.
This idea connects with the remaining statements, “develops new skills and knowledge” and “applies to new endeavors”. Many of the skills and habits students learn from participating in band or a music ensemble can be applied to other areas of their lives. By having conversations and discussions with my classes and individual students, I hope I can increase their knowledge and skills related to their instrument and reinforce a successful process for learning something new. I will also model different approaches to learning a new piece of music. For example some students may feel more comfortable writing in note names or listening to a new piece a few times before attempting to play it for the first time. Other students might be able to just jump right in and sight-read the music. I will encourage students to experiment with how they approach a new piece of music and ask for their feedback about what they feel works best for them.
The characteristics outlined above will guide the basis of my research on deliberate practice. They will inform not only my data collection as I explore how students practice, but also the actions I take to create an environment more supportive of deliberate practice. Furthermore, by discussing and modeling these characteristics along the way with students, I hope that my students will learn meaningful practice strategies and habits that they will experiment with in their own playing.
With encouragement, Cushman's students learned to view practice as purposeful small steps that would eventually result in satisfying progress. Her students talked about many experiences that opened their eyes to how an understanding of deliberate practice could help them improve their skills and expertise more productively. One of Cushman’s students stated:
“I used to think practicing was like, take out my music and just play through it. But if you practice the passage wrong, you have to work harder to fix it later. So now I’m learning how to practice the right way. My teacher has me pick a certain point where it’s the hardest and play it the slowest I can without a mistake. Then I play the whole piece in that tempo. If I make the mistake again, I take that passage and work it little by little, and only then will he let me speed it up gradually.” (2010, p. 75)
I'm curious to learn more about my own students' practice processes, especially when attempting new or challenging music. Individual practice is something that everyone experiences and develops on their own. The way in which our minds and bodies process new information is completely dependent on the individual and his or her level of interest, previous experience, motivation, understanding and the finite control of our bodies. The process is unique for each individual and I wonder if there are identifiable commonalities and trends, which will make the practice process meaningful for each student.
The research done by Cushman hinges on the much larger work of Anders Ericsson, who has done research in many different fields looking at how deliberate practice has had an effect on experts. In his paper, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” (1993) he identifies a framework that explains expert performance as the end result of an individual's prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. The framework is broken down into three constraints including: resource, motivational and effort.
First, deliberate practice requires available time and energy for the individual as well as access to teachers, training material, and training facilities (the resource constraint). Second, engagement in deliberate practice is not inherently motivating. Performers consider it instrumental in achieving further improvements in performance (the motivational constraint).Finally, deliberate practice is an effortful activity that can be sustained only for a limited time each day during extended periods without leading to exhaustion (effort constraint). Ericsson (1993) found that to maximize gains from long-term practice, individuals must avoid exhaustion and limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis. They must also find support from sources such as parents, teachers, and educational institutions. I will work with students to find multiple supports to further enhance their learning. Students will work in small groups and pairs throughout the year as they develop their individual playing skills and technique. I will ask students to discuss the effectiveness of working in small groups and pairs versus working individually.
Although all individuals choose when they want to focus and develop their expertise in specific areas, I hope that my students are able to develop a love and motivation for active learning and engagement. It is my hope that when students leave my class they will be well prepared to continue developing deliberate practice habits that work for each of them. I believe that when individuals approach mastery of a skill, they have most likely spent a large amount of time with deliberate practice on their terms and therefore can make a decision on how much they want or need to practice in order to maintain the level they have achieved or to push on and grow further. I want my students to experience success with deliberate practice in music but also understand how the techniques can be applied to any skill or subject that they want to improve.
In the end, Ericsson concluded,
"Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning." (1993, p. 335)
In other words, talent is not a trait that people are born with. Talent is incubated and grown from the earliest stages and experiences in our life. What is interesting is that all of the experts share many common traits that led them to become experts in a certain discipline. We have many examples such as Tiger Woods in golf, Shawn White in snowboarding, The Beatles and their music. Besides the drive and motivation, these individuals all chose to stick with the activity they had chosen. In the end they all had racked up significantly high numbers of hours of practice. To be more specific, just the vast amount of time alone these experts spent deliberately practicing has played an enormous role in every one of their developments in their field.
Deliberate Practice and Motivation
C. E. Seashore, a pioneering researcher in music psychology, claimed, "Many a student becomes disgusted with music because he cannot learn by dull drudgery”. I want to cultivate an intrinsic motivation in my students to practice by avoiding dull drudgery and instead providing choice and autonomy. Below I discuss what the research says about these things and what they might look like in my class.
There must be a balance between deliberate practice and student’s satisfaction. Students must put in effort to get desired results, but they must also get satisfaction from their effort otherwise the work becomes meaningless. A student named Casey stated, “Practice involves working on something until you get it right” and “Practice is time spent acquiring a new skill or perfecting a new skill.” These words reveal that although students understand the importance and payoffs of practice and persistence, they also place value learning and playing correctly. When speaking about how she learned to play better one student said, “My practice method is just something I made up that worked, so I kept doing it. I could tell I was getting better so I kept at it.” She was clearly satisfied with her own playing and proud of the work she had put in to arrive at this level. She also expressed a level of confidence that I believe she will benefit from when attempting new or challenging material in the future.
I want my classroom to become a place where all of my students can experience satisfaction developing the character and perseverance that I see Casey building through her experience with practice. So, what motivates students to practice? I believe that Casey felt success with her playing for a variety of reasons. She has received meaningful feedback from her parents, private lesson and other students within the program. She has analyzed her own playing using video and audio recordings, and she has acknowledged her own growth from her first lesson to where she is now. She has grown tremendously as a musician over the past two years that I have known her, but what is even more impressive is the knowledge and confidence she has learned from understanding what practice can do.
How do we create an environment that encourages this intrinsic motivation and autonomy? Daniel Pink states,
“Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self” (2010, p. 225).
For music, this would involve developing a practice routine that is built around each individual’s goals and ability, and that allows individual choice. The limits of the student’s ability may be key to keeping students motivated and progressing at a pace that satisfies them.
Motivation 2.0 as described by Daniel Pink in his book Drive (2010) places value on choice, direction and how tasks get accomplished as a huge component of motivation. Motivation 2.0 differs from previous models of motivation, most notably the “Carrot and Stick” model, which offer positive extrinsic rewards for desired behavior and negative punishments for unwanted behaviors. Teachers and parents are sometimes frustrated by students not “putting enough effort into a task or assignment” when they’ve done just enough to get a passing grade and are satisfied. Students motivated by a grade are limited in what they could produce.
Pink’s concept about a “Motivation 2.0” is different in that it focuses on the autonomy, mastery and purpose involved in completing a task or learning a new skill. Motivation flourishes when people are allowed to complete tasks their way, have a balanced level of challenge vs. skill and have a personal connection to the task. In my classroom I focus on the growth my students show over time with their playing. I strive to create an environment where students thoroughly enjoy being. I map my lessons around challenging pieces of music and focus on learning how to fix or improve upon the difficult areas. Students have created their own routines and solutions for learning new material so I try to allow time every day for them to practice individually using their methods so I can give them feedback about their process.
Autonomy
Rehearsing music as an ensemble is a place where many people might think that a director needs to have total control of his or her players. This is true in most aspects of playing a piece of work together but individually the players need to have control of how they learn new music. A director can rehearse a specific measure of music over and over and still fail to get the desired sound out the group. However, making the group aware of the desired sound, the pitfalls they may encounter and then letting them work on the part for two to three minutes has almost always worked better for me than standard drill and rote teaching. Daniel Pink states that, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement” (2010, p. 110). I don’t want to control my students. I want them to be engaged.
Autonomy for teachers is allowing students to have control over how they learn. According to Pink, “To motivate students in this era, we don’t need better management, we need a renaissance of self direction” (2010, p. 92). We work everyday to become better teachers and spend hours in professional development over our careers to learn best teaching practices. However, often these practices are about managing students more effectively, rather than stepping back and giving students choice, so that they feel invested in their learning. Developing a sense of pride within a student ensemble is one of the greatest feelings I’ve had in my teaching career. Feeling that every student involved truly cares and takes pride in their own contribution to the group creates a group of students that truly value each other’s effort. They work hard for themselves, but they work harder for each other. Bringing autonomy into an ensemble setting will provide opportunity for students to take ownership in doing what they love.
One way to promote autonomy might be to create opportunities for students to exercise choice in creating something they are truly proud of. For example, creating a concert designed 100% by students might be one way to this; it may also lead to other positive community building interactions that end up effecting students motivation to practice. I wonder how students would feel if I gave them the freedom to choose what songs to perform and who to perform for? Giving students the opportunity to choose what they want to work on may lead to very strong implications for how teachers design class projects and curriculum. In a brief discussion with my students, they expressed interest in performing for senior citizens, tutoring younger students, and playing for a charity or school event outside of a traditional concert.
Mastery
Reading and playing music well is a skill that can always be improved upon. It is an activity that gets at the heart of mastery. To play a series of notes, the player first must understand what the notes are asking them to do. When to play, how long to play for, what pitch; all of these decisions/actions need to made to attempt to play. In the beginning, students focus on playing each of the notes for the desired length and at the correct pitch. At first these decisions/actions are made slowly and you can hear breaks in the students’ sounds as they play each note. As the student becomes more advanced, these breaks or space between notes become smaller and the music begins to sound smoother and the melodies become more connected as phrases. The decisions/actions process begins to happen almost instantly as students grow into better musicians. This allows for even more mastery to take place. Students are now able to focus on playing the series of notes faster, or with different dynamic contrasts. As students develop more creative control, they are able to express their interpretation of how the notes should sound. Progressing and growing as musicians, allows students to experience mastery.
Mastery is something people work towards when they want to get better and better at something that matters personally to them. Yet, as Pink notes, “Only engagement can produce mastery” (2010, p.111). I will talk with students about what motivates them in my classes and work to create a classroom culture that encourages all students to participate with a high level of focus. Pink says, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement”(2010, p.110). Ah Hah! Maybe my students are not engaging in my rehearsals because I am trying to control too much! What would happen if I let go of some of that control and gave students an opportunity to take control of how they experience class? Pink also talks about how companies motivate employees to be more engaged and productive in their work doing what he calls “Goldilocks tasks”,
“Goldilocks tasks, challenges that are not too hot and not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly simple. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom.” (2010, p. 119)
I believe this is true for students and that they experience this on a daily basis across all curriculums throughout their education. What if I could achieve a perfect balance of this for my students? Would the environment produce better work and more engagement from all students? I am excited to investigate what my students say about what motivates them to practice. I will work to find music that is both challenging for my students but also within their capability levels. Talking to students about what they find to be motivating in class will help me to work towards facilitating a rehearsal that is engaging for all students.
Carol Dweck has become an expert on student motivation and achievement. Pink summarizes one of her beliefs, “…what people believe shapes what people achieve. Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our abilities determine how we interpret our experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish” (2010, p.120). Dweck’s work explains the differences and advantages between developing a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Some believe that their success is based on innate ability; this is what she calls a “fixed theory of intelligence”. Others who believe success is the result of hard work and learning are said to have a “growth or incremental theory of intelligence”. This is important because Dweck (1999) found that students who develop a growth mindset are more likely to persevere and work hard even when they face challenges and setbacks. If students are taught how to develop this mindset about their own learning, perhaps it will help motivate students to work hard and persevere in all areas of their life when they encounter a challenging task. How do students feel about their ability to become something great? How can I shift student’s mindsets to truly value their own skills and talents, and see their abilities as works in progress?
One way to help students feel engaged and develop mastery is to help them set learning goals. Carol Dweck writes, “With a learning goal, students don’t have to feel that they are already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they’re smart” (1999, p. 17). I recently had seven new students join my advanced orchestra. These students had never touched an instrument before and were nervous about joining a class of advanced students. I explained to them that I had no expectations of them becoming an expert player by the end of the year, but if they tried hard to do the things I taught them and focus on their growth from the first day they would learn a ton. That was my goal for them, to focus on learning something everyday and not to worry about performing to a certain standard. I recently asked them how they were doing and all of them were very happy with how they had been doing in class. They eagerly wanted to demonstrate their new skills. Surprisingly, after only a few weeks all of them understood and could play quite well.
Purpose
Why do my students value playing their instruments? This last question is about purpose. As Csikszentmihalyi writes, “One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without a feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself” (1990, p.43). Learning how to become a meaningful piece of a music ensemble may be one of the first chances for students to experience something larger than themselves. Insuring that all students have a positive and meaningful experience within the ensemble is the number one priority I have for my students. What do students find meaningful about band or orchestra? What is it about music that makes it worth the effort?
Carol Dweck states that,
“Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something; that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.” (1999, p. 41)
Schools should be a place where all students find meaning and purpose to put in effort. I have had classes where one or two students go above and beyond all of the other students with the amount of effort they put into their playing. These students become the section leaders and experts of the group. They visualize and discuss playing throughout high school and college. These are proud students that have taken on the personal identity of a musician. How can I create a class where all students are willing to put in effort? I wonder if students will experience a greater sense of belonging and commitment to the group if they find success in their individual practice and receive feedback from each other consistently.
Deliberate Practice and Flow
Deliberate practice has many similarities to Flow. It is the feeling you get when you are so completely engaged in activity that it feels that it is the only thing that exists. This feeling can come in short intervals or it can be maintained for long periods of time. When I experience flow in my own practice everything else going on in my head seems to shut off or quiet down. I feel as if I am able to give 100% of my attention and effort to the task at hand. I am relaxed and comfortable, yet excited to work on the task in front of me. During one particular practice session I was so engaged in my playing that my lips began to drool. I didn’t notice until I was distracted by a wet spot I felt on my arm that had developed over time and seeped through my shirt. I was playing along with a practice CD focusing on playing my piece at a set tempo. I was completely zoned out on everything else, but completely zoned in on my playing. It took me years of playing and practicing to be able to create that deep concentration and engagement. I don’t expect my students to be able to experience this immediately but over time and with practice I believe I can set my classes up to experience periods of Flow.
Flow as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. Csíkszentmihályi and Rathunde (1990) identify the following ten factors as accompanying an experience of flow, but note that not all are needed for flow to be experienced:
· Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
· Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
· A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
· Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
· Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
· Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
· A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
· The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
· A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
· Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
When talking about deliberate practice and flow it is hard to discuss one without mentioning a similar trait to the other. I feel that most of the traits found in deliberate practice could lead to moments of flow. I also think that when a student is experiencing flow they are deeply engaged in deliberate practice so the discussion becomes a bit like determining which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can you experience deliberate practice without experiencing flow? Can you experience flow when you’re not practicing deliberately?
In my personal experience I feel that flow is a sensation or state a person reaches while engaging in deliberate practice. Both have clear goals, involve intense concentration and allow for direct and immediate feedback. There is a unique balance between the ability level and challenge for each individual that allows for a sense of autonomy over the situation or activity. The one difference would be that deliberate practice isn’t always intrinsically rewarding. Experiencing flow feels good, you’re in the zone, balanced, progressing. Sometimes it takes a long time and frustration to practice a difficult piece of music. But with patience, effort and feedback the difficult piece gets easier and pretty soon can be played perfectly with ease. This process tells you that you have grown, and now it is time for more challenging music
Continue to Setting Description...
BACK TO HOME
The Importance of Practice
Practice is specifically working towards a goal to accomplish a certain skill or task. This definition can be applied to fundamental parts of a specific skill as well as the overall desired activity or action.
I believe there is a gap in many students’ understandings of practice. Many of my students know what to do during a practice. But much like playing a piece of music, to be expressive you have to know “how” to play it (i.e. what to focus on?). What state of mind are you supposed to be in when you practice? What do you pay attention to? How do you know when you have mastered a piece of music? How do you know you need more work?
Playing music is challenging because whenever you are playing, you should be closely monitoring and adjusting the sounds that come out of your instrument. In the beginning stages of playing, a new student is focused usually on one or two things: playing the desired note and playing with a correct tone quality. During an interview recorded in the 1994 December issue of The Instrumentalist, Howie Smith, a prolific composer and saxophonist, talked about his first saxophone lessons. Speaking of his teacher, he said:
“I tried to play the way he did, and from that point on it was always a matter of listening to other saxophone players in order to know how a saxophone should sound. This wasn’t an abstract exercise because there were specific things I was trying to accomplish. The process is the same with a clarinet or any other instrument and it is the only way to learn how to play an instrument. The most important thing in music is the sound we produce. Students often think that music is just the stuff on the paper, but the only things on the paper are those symbols. It is up to us to interpret and make music out of these; until we do, there is no music.” (1994, p.16)
Unfortunately, students rarely get the opportunity to assess their own or each other’s playing with much depth during a class period. As a result, one of the most important skills of a musician – to be able to listen – gets shortchanged. Listening is a huge part of becoming a musician. By listening, students learn what to listen for and come to understand how a desired sound is produced. They then attempt to create the desired sounds on their own. Students need time to listen, think and analyze the sounds that they hear. Providing a reference or starting point to guide student’s listening can help to internalize the desired sound and melodies before the student attempts to play. If they have the correct tune in their head while they attempt to play, they can begin to assess their own playing. In addition, recording student’s individual practice and then reviewing the recording with a partner, mentor or teacher may teach students more about self-assessing their own playing and performance. Howie Smith talks about the benefit of listening to other players to develop a goal sound to work towards. He states,
“…by listening to many, many, many other players, you no longer have to flounder and hope you stumble across a "nice" sound - instead you can aim for a specific goal. In all things related to practice, being goal-centered will help you arrive much, much faster to your intended destination!” (1994, p.17)
This reinforces the importance of modeling a good sound for students to work towards in early lessons. I wondered if my students had examples or goals for their tone or instrumental voice. This pushed me to think deeper about how and what I emphasized in our rehearsals. If a beautiful tone is the desired overall goal, then I needed to be building upon the student’s skills and understanding of what a good sound sounds like.
The strategies and skills for listening and self-assessing take time for individuals to develop on their own. When they are built into the community norms of group rehearsal, I believe that student’s playing, growth and satisfaction will thrive. In Ethic of Excellence (2003), Ron Berger writes about creating a culture of craftsmanship, a concept translated very easily to student musicians. He notes:
“In carpentry there is no higher compliment builders give to each other than this: That guy is a craftsman. This one word says it all. It connotes someone who has integrity and knowledge, who is dedicated to his work and who is proud of what he does and who he is, someone who thinks carefully and does things well. I want a classroom full of craftsmen. I want students whose work is strong and accurate and beautiful. Students who are proud of what they do, proud of how they respect both themselves and others.” (p. 3)
Berger’s wishes for his students align with what I want my students to get out of being in band or orchestra. I want them to take pride in becoming musicians and in each other.
As a teacher, I see very different levels in student’s commitment to things like achieving good grades and citizenship, maintaining friends and relationships, or achieving a desired social status. It is fairly easy to identify key priorities in each student’s life. This is also true for any instrumental music student. Each student has a different level of experience, skill and desire to play their instrument, as well as different ideas of what practice looks like. This led me to wonder how I could get my students to practice more. I have yet to find a solution that consistently works for a majority of students. As I began this research, other more fruitful questions began to emerge. When and why are students motivated to practice? Do students like to practice individually? What does student practice look like? And ultimately, the question became not how I could "get" or "make" students practice, but how could I create a community of students who genuinely want to practice?
Middle school is a time of transition for students on many levels. As musicians progress and grow in their skill and ability, the number of hours one must put in to keep moving forward grows as well. When students understand that their progress and eventual success is dependent on the amount of focused time spent practicing, I hope that a sense of power, control and pride will begin to develop. The following pages will introduce the concept and framework of deliberate practice and discuss how teaching students to deliberately practice could positively affect many areas of their life where they use practice to improve performance.
How do people become experts? I will discuss the work of Malcolm Gladwell, Geoff Colvin, Mihaly Csikzentmihaly and others to explore this question. Learning to practice from an early age helps kids to internalize the idea that people aren’t just born talented, they work at it. I will also expand upon the ideas about innate ability/talent vs. effort and make an effort to discover how to teach students to learn and think that they can become great musicians.
The Importance of Practice
Practice is specifically working towards a goal to accomplish a certain skill or task. This definition can be applied to fundamental parts of a specific skill as well as the overall desired activity or action.
I believe there is a gap in my student’s current understanding of practice. Many of them know what to do during a practice but much like playing a piece of music, to be expressive you have to know “how” to play it (i.e. what to focus on?). What state of mind are you supposed to be in when you practice? How do you know when you have mastered a piece of music? How do you know you need more work? Students are used to receiving immediate feedback from teachers about their work and progress. Playing music is different in that whenever you are playing, you could and should be closely monitoring and adjusting the sounds that come out. In the beginning stages of playing, a new student is focused usually on one or two things: playing the desired note and playing with a correct tone quality. Students rarely get the opportunity to assess their own and each other’s playing. Recording student’s individual practice and then reviewing the recording with a partner, mentor or teacher may start to teach students more about self-assessing their own playing and performance.
As a teacher I see very different levels in students commitment to things like achieving good grades and citizenship, maintaining friends and relationships, or achieving a desired social status. It is fairly easy to identify key priorities in each student’s life. This is also very true for any instrumental music student. Each student has a different level of experience, skill and desire to play their instrument, as well as different ideas of what practice looks like.
For years, this led me to wonder, "How do I get my students to practice more?” I believe that every music director, teacher and coach has given this question much thought throughout his or her career. This question has kept me up at nights researching music, designing lesson plans, grading practice records. I have yet to find a solution that consistently works for a majority of students. After talking with colleagues and more students, more questions began to emerge. How do my students practice individually? Do students understand how to practice individually? What does student practice look like? And ultimately, the question is not so much how you can "get" or "make" students practice, but how can you create an environment and support structures where kids genuinely want to practice?
Deliberate Practice: what it is and what it isn't
Everyone has had experience with practice to some degree whether it’s music, sports, or an academic subject. What many of us have experienced as “practice” is far from what deliberate practice actually is. Throughout my education I have been told to go “study” or go “practice” and I have told my students this as well. But, what do students actually think and do when told to practice? When discussing what practice looks like, most students speak about reviewing previous material that they already understand. Music students may practice playing through an entire piece of music once or twice, but how often do they attempt new material on their own? How often do they work on a specific skill with the purpose of mastering or improving their expertise?
Within my own classroom, students approach practice in different ways and have different interpretations of what practicing means. Some of my students have specific routines they follow, while others consider practicing to be anytime they make a sound on their instrument. Beginning students usually focus on mastering basic skills and tasks, while more experienced students often have the awareness to focus on improving specific skills. Either way, it seems that many students do not have an existing framework to base their individual practice routines on. By teaching students how to develop and monitor their practice from the beginning of their experience with a new topic or skill, I hope to strengthen student's intrinsic motivation, connection to their instrument and development of skills.
The spark for my research came from studying expert practice more closely, specifically Kathleen Cushman’s work with students defining and studying deliberate practice. Cushman explored alongside students from across the country, what it takes to become an expert. The journey began with students identifying experts and analyzing what they did to get to their current level of expertise. Her students discovered that endless hours of practice went into an expert’s development contributing far more than innate talent did in professionals across many different fields.
Her students also looked at what cognitive researchers call deliberate practice; practice that leads to the desired result of increasing mastery. She states that deliberate practice is not the same as work, and it is not the same as play. Deliberate practice is also not the same as rote repetition. In her book, Fires in the Mind, she clearly defined the characteristics of deliberate practice as practice that:
● has an express purpose.
● demands attention and focus.
● involves conscious repetition or rehearsal
● is geared to the individual
● takes careful timing
● is not inherently enjoyable
● develops new skills and knowledge
● applies to new endeavors
These characteristics provided a firm grounding in what I aim to research within my classes. The statements, “Practice has an express purpose,” and “is geared to the individual” guided me in thinking about students’ abilities and motives behind learning to play an instrument and how, as a teacher, I might differentiate my instruction for each student. Why did they practice? Why did students pick band or orchestra as an elective class? What made these things worth practicing for? Students were facing these questions each time they practiced, and as a teacher I wanted to know what motivated them to practice. I see an opportunity to get to know my students and understand how I could help them achieve their goals, which connected with another of Cushman’s characteristics, “Practice takes careful timing”. This statement alludes to the importance of knowing when students are ready for a challenge and when they need extra support.
The statements, “Practice demands attention and focus” and “Practice involves conscious repetition or rehearsal” led to questions about how students approach playing a piece of music, the time they spend practicing and the practice strategies that they use. What were they listening for? When did they think something they played was good enough? Did students spend time working on their tone? Did they focus more on playing the correct melody? I will look into what students actually do when they practice and try to find ways to model and reinforce successful practice strategies. I hope that the focus on practice will help them come up with practice routines and music that matches their skill level and their interests. This led me to wonder how I could create and model an environment where kids were able to give music their full attention and focus. I will incorporate and emphasize these steps by discussing the research and benefits of deliberate practice and modeling deliberate practice techniques throughout our rehearsals. I will breakdown the music into small parts and demonstrate how to focus and master difficult passages building phrases one note at a time. Asking students to identify and discuss what is working for them following rehearsals will give me feedback on rehearsal strategies and experiences that the students feel are beneficial to them both as a class and individually.
The statement, “Practice is not inherently enjoyable” is an important one because it suggests that difficult or challenging practice is worth doing. Practice is about perfecting something that is currently out of our reach. If we only practiced what we were already good at there would be no growth in our skills and capabilities as musicians. I want to know what pushes students to endure the challenging and tough practices. Similarly, Anders Ericsson, who has also researched deliberate practice writes:
“A premise of our theoretical framework is that deliberate practice is not inherently enjoyable and that individuals are motivated to engage in it by its instrumental value in improving performance. Hence, interested individuals need to be engaging in the activity and motivated to improve performance before they begin deliberate practice.” (1993, p. 332)
This highlights the importance of “buy in” and motivating all students, regardless of their current musical ability, so that they feel motivated to practice and participate in class. Students need to feel that there is value in what they are putting effort into. I want my students to be able to practice perseverance in a supported environment where they feel part of a team. I will encourage students to push themselves and each other to play challenging music that they are interested in playing.
This idea connects with the remaining statements, “develops new skills and knowledge” and “applies to new endeavors”. Many of the skills and habits students learn from participating in band or a music ensemble can be applied to other areas of their lives. By having conversations and discussions with my classes and individual students, I hope I can increase their knowledge and skills related to their instrument and reinforce a successful process for learning something new. I will also model different approaches to learning a new piece of music. For example some students may feel more comfortable writing in note names or listening to a new piece a few times before attempting to play it for the first time. Other students might be able to just jump right in and sight-read the music. I will encourage students to experiment with how they approach a new piece of music and ask for their feedback about what they feel works best for them.
The characteristics outlined above will guide the basis of my research on deliberate practice. They will inform not only my data collection as I explore how students practice, but also the actions I take to create an environment more supportive of deliberate practice. Furthermore, by discussing and modeling these characteristics along the way with students, I hope that my students will learn meaningful practice strategies and habits that they will experiment with in their own playing.
With encouragement, Cushman's students learned to view practice as purposeful small steps that would eventually result in satisfying progress. Her students talked about many experiences that opened their eyes to how an understanding of deliberate practice could help them improve their skills and expertise more productively. One of Cushman’s students stated:
“I used to think practicing was like, take out my music and just play through it. But if you practice the passage wrong, you have to work harder to fix it later. So now I’m learning how to practice the right way. My teacher has me pick a certain point where it’s the hardest and play it the slowest I can without a mistake. Then I play the whole piece in that tempo. If I make the mistake again, I take that passage and work it little by little, and only then will he let me speed it up gradually.” (2010, p. 75)
I'm curious to learn more about my own students' practice processes, especially when attempting new or challenging music. Individual practice is something that everyone experiences and develops on their own. The way in which our minds and bodies process new information is completely dependent on the individual and his or her level of interest, previous experience, motivation, understanding and the finite control of our bodies. The process is unique for each individual and I wonder if there are identifiable commonalities and trends, which will make the practice process meaningful for each student.
The research done by Cushman hinges on the much larger work of Anders Ericsson, who has done research in many different fields looking at how deliberate practice has had an effect on experts. In his paper, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” (1993) he identifies a framework that explains expert performance as the end result of an individual's prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. The framework is broken down into three constraints including: resource, motivational and effort.
First, deliberate practice requires available time and energy for the individual as well as access to teachers, training material, and training facilities (the resource constraint). Second, engagement in deliberate practice is not inherently motivating. Performers consider it instrumental in achieving further improvements in performance (the motivational constraint).Finally, deliberate practice is an effortful activity that can be sustained only for a limited time each day during extended periods without leading to exhaustion (effort constraint). Ericsson (1993) found that to maximize gains from long-term practice, individuals must avoid exhaustion and limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis. They must also find support from sources such as parents, teachers, and educational institutions. I will work with students to find multiple supports to further enhance their learning. Students will work in small groups and pairs throughout the year as they develop their individual playing skills and technique. I will ask students to discuss the effectiveness of working in small groups and pairs versus working individually.
Although all individuals choose when they want to focus and develop their expertise in specific areas, I hope that my students are able to develop a love and motivation for active learning and engagement. It is my hope that when students leave my class they will be well prepared to continue developing deliberate practice habits that work for each of them. I believe that when individuals approach mastery of a skill, they have most likely spent a large amount of time with deliberate practice on their terms and therefore can make a decision on how much they want or need to practice in order to maintain the level they have achieved or to push on and grow further. I want my students to experience success with deliberate practice in music but also understand how the techniques can be applied to any skill or subject that they want to improve.
In the end, Ericsson concluded,
"Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning." (1993, p. 335)
In other words, talent is not a trait that people are born with. Talent is incubated and grown from the earliest stages and experiences in our life. What is interesting is that all of the experts share many common traits that led them to become experts in a certain discipline. We have many examples such as Tiger Woods in golf, Shawn White in snowboarding, The Beatles and their music. Besides the drive and motivation, these individuals all chose to stick with the activity they had chosen. In the end they all had racked up significantly high numbers of hours of practice. To be more specific, just the vast amount of time alone these experts spent deliberately practicing has played an enormous role in every one of their developments in their field.
Deliberate Practice and Motivation
C. E. Seashore, a pioneering researcher in music psychology, claimed, "Many a student becomes disgusted with music because he cannot learn by dull drudgery”. I want to cultivate an intrinsic motivation in my students to practice by avoiding dull drudgery and instead providing choice and autonomy. Below I discuss what the research says about these things and what they might look like in my class.
There must be a balance between deliberate practice and student’s satisfaction. Students must put in effort to get desired results, but they must also get satisfaction from their effort otherwise the work becomes meaningless. A student named Casey stated, “Practice involves working on something until you get it right” and “Practice is time spent acquiring a new skill or perfecting a new skill.” These words reveal that although students understand the importance and payoffs of practice and persistence, they also place value learning and playing correctly. When speaking about how she learned to play better one student said, “My practice method is just something I made up that worked, so I kept doing it. I could tell I was getting better so I kept at it.” She was clearly satisfied with her own playing and proud of the work she had put in to arrive at this level. She also expressed a level of confidence that I believe she will benefit from when attempting new or challenging material in the future.
I want my classroom to become a place where all of my students can experience satisfaction developing the character and perseverance that I see Casey building through her experience with practice. So, what motivates students to practice? I believe that Casey felt success with her playing for a variety of reasons. She has received meaningful feedback from her parents, private lesson and other students within the program. She has analyzed her own playing using video and audio recordings, and she has acknowledged her own growth from her first lesson to where she is now. She has grown tremendously as a musician over the past two years that I have known her, but what is even more impressive is the knowledge and confidence she has learned from understanding what practice can do.
How do we create an environment that encourages this intrinsic motivation and autonomy? Daniel Pink states,
“Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self” (2010, p. 225).
For music, this would involve developing a practice routine that is built around each individual’s goals and ability, and that allows individual choice. The limits of the student’s ability may be key to keeping students motivated and progressing at a pace that satisfies them.
Motivation 2.0 as described by Daniel Pink in his book Drive (2010) places value on choice, direction and how tasks get accomplished as a huge component of motivation. Motivation 2.0 differs from previous models of motivation, most notably the “Carrot and Stick” model, which offer positive extrinsic rewards for desired behavior and negative punishments for unwanted behaviors. Teachers and parents are sometimes frustrated by students not “putting enough effort into a task or assignment” when they’ve done just enough to get a passing grade and are satisfied. Students motivated by a grade are limited in what they could produce.
Pink’s concept about a “Motivation 2.0” is different in that it focuses on the autonomy, mastery and purpose involved in completing a task or learning a new skill. Motivation flourishes when people are allowed to complete tasks their way, have a balanced level of challenge vs. skill and have a personal connection to the task. In my classroom I focus on the growth my students show over time with their playing. I strive to create an environment where students thoroughly enjoy being. I map my lessons around challenging pieces of music and focus on learning how to fix or improve upon the difficult areas. Students have created their own routines and solutions for learning new material so I try to allow time every day for them to practice individually using their methods so I can give them feedback about their process.
Autonomy
Rehearsing music as an ensemble is a place where many people might think that a director needs to have total control of his or her players. This is true in most aspects of playing a piece of work together but individually the players need to have control of how they learn new music. A director can rehearse a specific measure of music over and over and still fail to get the desired sound out the group. However, making the group aware of the desired sound, the pitfalls they may encounter and then letting them work on the part for two to three minutes has almost always worked better for me than standard drill and rote teaching. Daniel Pink states that, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement” (2010, p. 110). I don’t want to control my students. I want them to be engaged.
Autonomy for teachers is allowing students to have control over how they learn. According to Pink, “To motivate students in this era, we don’t need better management, we need a renaissance of self direction” (2010, p. 92). We work everyday to become better teachers and spend hours in professional development over our careers to learn best teaching practices. However, often these practices are about managing students more effectively, rather than stepping back and giving students choice, so that they feel invested in their learning. Developing a sense of pride within a student ensemble is one of the greatest feelings I’ve had in my teaching career. Feeling that every student involved truly cares and takes pride in their own contribution to the group creates a group of students that truly value each other’s effort. They work hard for themselves, but they work harder for each other. Bringing autonomy into an ensemble setting will provide opportunity for students to take ownership in doing what they love.
One way to promote autonomy might be to create opportunities for students to exercise choice in creating something they are truly proud of. For example, creating a concert designed 100% by students might be one way to this; it may also lead to other positive community building interactions that end up effecting students motivation to practice. I wonder how students would feel if I gave them the freedom to choose what songs to perform and who to perform for? Giving students the opportunity to choose what they want to work on may lead to very strong implications for how teachers design class projects and curriculum. In a brief discussion with my students, they expressed interest in performing for senior citizens, tutoring younger students, and playing for a charity or school event outside of a traditional concert.
Mastery
Reading and playing music well is a skill that can always be improved upon. It is an activity that gets at the heart of mastery. To play a series of notes, the player first must understand what the notes are asking them to do. When to play, how long to play for, what pitch; all of these decisions/actions need to made to attempt to play. In the beginning, students focus on playing each of the notes for the desired length and at the correct pitch. At first these decisions/actions are made slowly and you can hear breaks in the students’ sounds as they play each note. As the student becomes more advanced, these breaks or space between notes become smaller and the music begins to sound smoother and the melodies become more connected as phrases. The decisions/actions process begins to happen almost instantly as students grow into better musicians. This allows for even more mastery to take place. Students are now able to focus on playing the series of notes faster, or with different dynamic contrasts. As students develop more creative control, they are able to express their interpretation of how the notes should sound. Progressing and growing as musicians, allows students to experience mastery.
Mastery is something people work towards when they want to get better and better at something that matters personally to them. Yet, as Pink notes, “Only engagement can produce mastery” (2010, p.111). I will talk with students about what motivates them in my classes and work to create a classroom culture that encourages all students to participate with a high level of focus. Pink says, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement”(2010, p.110). Ah Hah! Maybe my students are not engaging in my rehearsals because I am trying to control too much! What would happen if I let go of some of that control and gave students an opportunity to take control of how they experience class? Pink also talks about how companies motivate employees to be more engaged and productive in their work doing what he calls “Goldilocks tasks”,
“Goldilocks tasks, challenges that are not too hot and not too cold, neither overly difficult nor overly simple. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom.” (2010, p. 119)
I believe this is true for students and that they experience this on a daily basis across all curriculums throughout their education. What if I could achieve a perfect balance of this for my students? Would the environment produce better work and more engagement from all students? I am excited to investigate what my students say about what motivates them to practice. I will work to find music that is both challenging for my students but also within their capability levels. Talking to students about what they find to be motivating in class will help me to work towards facilitating a rehearsal that is engaging for all students.
Carol Dweck has become an expert on student motivation and achievement. Pink summarizes one of her beliefs, “…what people believe shapes what people achieve. Our beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our abilities determine how we interpret our experiences and can set the boundaries on what we accomplish” (2010, p.120). Dweck’s work explains the differences and advantages between developing a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Some believe that their success is based on innate ability; this is what she calls a “fixed theory of intelligence”. Others who believe success is the result of hard work and learning are said to have a “growth or incremental theory of intelligence”. This is important because Dweck (1999) found that students who develop a growth mindset are more likely to persevere and work hard even when they face challenges and setbacks. If students are taught how to develop this mindset about their own learning, perhaps it will help motivate students to work hard and persevere in all areas of their life when they encounter a challenging task. How do students feel about their ability to become something great? How can I shift student’s mindsets to truly value their own skills and talents, and see their abilities as works in progress?
One way to help students feel engaged and develop mastery is to help them set learning goals. Carol Dweck writes, “With a learning goal, students don’t have to feel that they are already good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they’re smart” (1999, p. 17). I recently had seven new students join my advanced orchestra. These students had never touched an instrument before and were nervous about joining a class of advanced students. I explained to them that I had no expectations of them becoming an expert player by the end of the year, but if they tried hard to do the things I taught them and focus on their growth from the first day they would learn a ton. That was my goal for them, to focus on learning something everyday and not to worry about performing to a certain standard. I recently asked them how they were doing and all of them were very happy with how they had been doing in class. They eagerly wanted to demonstrate their new skills. Surprisingly, after only a few weeks all of them understood and could play quite well.
Purpose
Why do my students value playing their instruments? This last question is about purpose. As Csikszentmihalyi writes, “One cannot lead a life that is truly excellent without a feeling that one belongs to something greater and more permanent than oneself” (1990, p.43). Learning how to become a meaningful piece of a music ensemble may be one of the first chances for students to experience something larger than themselves. Insuring that all students have a positive and meaningful experience within the ensemble is the number one priority I have for my students. What do students find meaningful about band or orchestra? What is it about music that makes it worth the effort?
Carol Dweck states that,
“Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something; that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.” (1999, p. 41)
Schools should be a place where all students find meaning and purpose to put in effort. I have had classes where one or two students go above and beyond all of the other students with the amount of effort they put into their playing. These students become the section leaders and experts of the group. They visualize and discuss playing throughout high school and college. These are proud students that have taken on the personal identity of a musician. How can I create a class where all students are willing to put in effort? I wonder if students will experience a greater sense of belonging and commitment to the group if they find success in their individual practice and receive feedback from each other consistently.
Deliberate Practice and Flow
Deliberate practice has many similarities to Flow. It is the feeling you get when you are so completely engaged in activity that it feels that it is the only thing that exists. This feeling can come in short intervals or it can be maintained for long periods of time. When I experience flow in my own practice everything else going on in my head seems to shut off or quiet down. I feel as if I am able to give 100% of my attention and effort to the task at hand. I am relaxed and comfortable, yet excited to work on the task in front of me. During one particular practice session I was so engaged in my playing that my lips began to drool. I didn’t notice until I was distracted by a wet spot I felt on my arm that had developed over time and seeped through my shirt. I was playing along with a practice CD focusing on playing my piece at a set tempo. I was completely zoned out on everything else, but completely zoned in on my playing. It took me years of playing and practicing to be able to create that deep concentration and engagement. I don’t expect my students to be able to experience this immediately but over time and with practice I believe I can set my classes up to experience periods of Flow.
Flow as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. Csíkszentmihályi and Rathunde (1990) identify the following ten factors as accompanying an experience of flow, but note that not all are needed for flow to be experienced:
· Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
· Concentrating, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
· A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
· Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
· Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
· Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
· A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
· The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
· A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
· Absorption into the activity, narrowing of the focus of awareness down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
When talking about deliberate practice and flow it is hard to discuss one without mentioning a similar trait to the other. I feel that most of the traits found in deliberate practice could lead to moments of flow. I also think that when a student is experiencing flow they are deeply engaged in deliberate practice so the discussion becomes a bit like determining which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can you experience deliberate practice without experiencing flow? Can you experience flow when you’re not practicing deliberately?
In my personal experience I feel that flow is a sensation or state a person reaches while engaging in deliberate practice. Both have clear goals, involve intense concentration and allow for direct and immediate feedback. There is a unique balance between the ability level and challenge for each individual that allows for a sense of autonomy over the situation or activity. The one difference would be that deliberate practice isn’t always intrinsically rewarding. Experiencing flow feels good, you’re in the zone, balanced, progressing. Sometimes it takes a long time and frustration to practice a difficult piece of music. But with patience, effort and feedback the difficult piece gets easier and pretty soon can be played perfectly with ease. This process tells you that you have grown, and now it is time for more challenging music
Continue to Setting Description...
BACK TO HOME