* Thinking As You Play: Teaching Piano in Individual and Group Lessons.

* Thinking As You Play: Teaching Piano in Individual and Group Lessons, by Sylvia Coats. Indiana University Press (601 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404), 2006. 163 pp. $24.95.

Thinking As You Play: Teaching Piano in Individual and Group Lessons is intended for piano teachers and college piano pedagogy students. It is a wonderful book for the experienced teacher who wants to take his or her teaching to the next level. Graduate pedagogy students or undergraduates who have completed at least one semester of pedagogy would also benefit greatly from this book. Because Sylvia Coats's intention is to focus on how to teach, rather than what to teach, familiarity with modern piano methods and materials before reading this book would provide needed context.

The book includes the following sections: a comprehensive introduction, which presents Coats's philosophy and provides an overview of the succeeding chapters; chapters on discovery learning, musical concepts and principles, designing a curriculum, communication and learning styles; and four chapters dealing with group teaching.

Coats's purpose is to assist teachers with the development of piano students who are independent and creative learners. Coats states, "piano students need to learn how to learn so that they can make intelligent decisions about music they are playing. The development of the critical thinking skills of conceptualizing, analyzing, evaluating and problem solving should be a major part of instruction." Her idea is that teachers should teach from a curriculum they have developed, rather than simply turning the pages of a method book and doing what comes next. Coats demonstrates how to accomplish this goal by first clearly defining basic musical concepts such as pitch, texture and physical technique. She then explains how these concepts can be generalized into broader principles. For example, the concepts of pitch and technique can be combined with the realization that "in stepwise motion, adjacent fingers ate played." From these beginnings, Coats suggests ways that teachers can form their own curriculum and provides a five-year model.

The four chapters on group teaching are a valuable resource. Coats provides an introduction to group teaching, a very interesting chapter on how groups grow and change over time, and a chapter on problem solving in group lessons. She concludes with a chapter about group dynamics. Both the chapters on group teaching and the preceding chapters are full of interesting references to psychological studies, learning theorists and other "nonpiano" resources. At the end of each chapter, she includes reference materials for further study.

This thoughtful and thought-provoking book is stuffed full of information that sometimes must be digested slowly. Coats illustrates her points with stories from her own teaching and the teaching of her pedagogy students. The many non-piano references provide valuable jumping-off points for further study. Meg Gray, Columbia, Missouri.

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