Ages and stages: what do you see? Adolescents and college students. (Pedagogy Saturday VI).

Edward Adelson, moderator

A distinguished panel of three music educators and two child development experts were brought together during an afternoon panel discussion to react to a series of video clips of studio teachers interacting with adolescent and college-aged students.

The child development specialists--Judith Piercy from Ohio University and Kim Dolgin from Ohio Wesleyan University--had been asked to view the clips in advance. The music specialists--professors Gerald Fischbach from the University of Maryland, Barbara Honn from the University of Cincinnati and Sylvia Wang from Northwestern University--were viewing the taped examples of teaching for the first time. Taped examples were solicited from among the MTNA membership during the autumn that preceded Pedagogy Saturday, with a subset of these tapes forwarded to Piercy and Dolgin for their review. Input from these two developmental psychology experts led to a final list of four examples, or about twenty minutes of teaching on tape, for use during the panel discussion. The taped examples viewed during the session included group and individual teaching at the college and high school levels. The panel and the capacity audience examined the relationships exhibited on the tapes between the teacher and young adult student, and participated in a lively exchange of ideas.

What can teachers do to effectively connect with their adolescent students? The taped examples, the insightful comments of the panelists, and the helpful questions and thoughts of audience members suggested that there are some over-arching principles that can help guide teachers of young adults:

* Adolescents and young adults appear to thrive when they can have some ownership of the learning process. Effective teaching as viewed on the tapes seemed to empower the students to be active participants to arrive at conclusions about musical issues. Effective teaching of this age group often involves the kind of guidance that allows students to take ownership of questions and develop a personal understanding of issues.

* Students in this age group are extremely curious and seem to be most actively engaged when confronted with a large number of interesting possibilities for solving a musical or technical problem. Being overly restrictive about possible solutions to technical issues or musical interpretations can be perceived by the adolescent as stifling.

* Creative energy is born out of the attempts to get a passage right, working through, celebrating, and not on avoiding frustration, but rather using the passion and energy the student brings to his or her work as an opportunity for intense explorations of artistic issues. The heightened and intensified emotions associated with adolescence can in fact be channeled into productive, energetic learning when the teacher provides the space, encouragement and patience needed for the student to explore new challenges.

* Physical activities can, for this age group, really assist in bringing to the student a heightened awareness of musical and technical possibilities. Thus, moving to the music or gesturing can translate into a technically more proficient performance.

* Overly didactic or dogmatic teaching can frustrate the adolescent/young adult, resulting in a withdrawal from the task at hand, and thus an apparent loss of interest in the artistic product. Life, for the young adult, is a grand adventure to be shared with the teacher. Resentment often builds up as the student feels "taught at" rather than encouraged to become his or her own person.

The vivid musical examples viewed by the panelists and audience, the ability of the panelists to focus on the issues presented in the taped examples of motivating and assisting young adult students, and the very insightful audience commentary, all made for a session that productively glimpsed some of the ways teachers can take advantage of the remarkable energy and passion they confront when in the presence of their adolescent/young adult students.

Edward Adelson is professor of music and associate dean of the College of the Arts at The Ohio State University. A noted performer and teacher of the viola, he has given performances, clinics and workshops throughout North America and Europe.

Deborah Price, commentator

The participants of this afternoon panel presentation were treated to some excellent videos of teachers and their students. The mission outlined for the presentation according to our handout stated, "The [video] clips will demonstrate what has been described in the morning sessions, and serve as examples of `doing something right' pedagogically for these age groups." The comments given by the experts, Kim Dolgin and Judith Piercy, were insightful and instructive. What many of us recognize as good teaching is not always defended scientifically due to our lack of scientific (in this case psychological) knowledge and terminology. It was wonderful to hear the experts give definitions and reasoning to what we already interpreted as solid pedagogical skills demonstrated by the videos. I particularly found the clips of William Westney's teaching along with the expert commentary given following the viewing of the clips to fit the mission statement of the panel session.

The demonstration of Westney's class utilizing the action of passing a ball influenced by music and the demonstration of the class physically moving (dancing) to the music were both fun and intriguing. Dolgin commented that permitting the class "to do something silly together helps to bond the class.... This is something that is done frequently in military, fraternities and other organizations to bring people together." This transfers to ensemble study quite effectively. Commenting on this clip, Piercy used the terms "extraversion and "introversion" to describe who might be more successful when engaged in this activity. Piercy stated, "Extroverts will love this, and introverts will be fearful of this activity.... If you ask who wants to do this, most who probably want to do this will be extroverts." She also observed that one student who seemed less comfortable with the activity was of Asian background. This student's not feeling as comfortable in movement may have been culturally related. These all are good points teachers must consider when planning activities and their expectations of students participating in these activities.

The music pedagogy panelists seemed to be less in tune to the panel's mission. Their comments frequently were opinion-based regarding the effectiveness of the teaching shown on the video clips. They gave excellent observations but were less active in commenting on the concepts of "age appropriate" teaching. This supports my previous statement that teachers recognize effective teaching but are not always prepared to use terminology to support our understanding. All the more reason sessions similar to the presentations of Dolgin and Piercy, as well as those of the other guest panelists presented during Pedagogy Saturday VI, should be revisited in the future.

Deborah Price, M.M., M.A., serves on the faculties of Denison University, Cleveland Institute of Music, ASTA/OSU Midwest Conference and Capital University Suzuki Institute. She is president of Ohio OSTA and artistic director of Chamber Music Connection, Inc.

Bret P. Smith, commentator

"Reflective practice" is a term used in recent years to describe an aspect of professional growth in teaching. The term may be of recent vintage, but the notion that success as a teacher (and human being, for that matter) requires an attitude of sincere and objective self-evaluation goes back many years. This panel session varied the approach a bit by offering examples of others' teaching, and I found this to be a powerful incentive for me to reflect on my own teaching. If I didn't agree with something on the videotape, why? Might I do this myself occasionally? If there was an appealingly effective strategy, when and how could I use it?

It is difficult to assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of isolated teaching episodes because there is a vast amount of contextual detail that must inform such judgment. For example, the use of a teacher modeling approach may be very effective in the later stages of learning a piece, or for a relatively advanced student, but less appropriate for the early stages of learning, or for a student unable to discriminate fine details of musical nuance. It also is important to consider the different goals inherent in different activities, for example, the illustration of large musical gestures versus the refinement of speed or precision of technique. Finally, there is the tricky question of what teaching is. Is it defined solely by teacher activity, or is student learning an integral part of the cycle? In other words, can we truly say "teaching" has occurred if the student doesn't learn anything?

All this being said, I'd like to comment briefly on an area I see most of my undergraduate music education students struggle with a bit: the use of nonverbal teaching strategies. To some extent, such strategies were demonstrated in each of the videotaped examples. It is my belief that music teaching can be improved in just about every case by relying more on such strategies and reducing the amount of "teacher talk" in a lesson; there is considerable research evidence that this is the case. William Westney's video clearly showed the power of interpretive movement activities, vocalization, gestural modeling and use of proximity. Such strategies are probably as old as music teaching itself, but a modern systematic expression of some of them awaited the seminal work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. Dalcroze's Eurhythmics are probably most familiar to elementary school music teachers, but that was not their original intent--his ideas were first explored while he was professor of harmony at the Geneva Conservatoire. I believe his work deserves to be more widely known by teachers in many contexts. The power of a teacher model was illustrated in the two piano teaching excerpts. The first teacher frequently used a vocal model, and the second performed a segment after explicitly asking the student to concentrate on the differences in voicing between their two versions. Shinichi Suzuki clearly recognized the importance of "listen-and-play" interactions to development of musical sensitivity; it is strange to me to encounter individuals who seem to think it's somehow wrong to play for one's students. There may be rationales for such beliefs, but the weight of the evidence I've seen does not convince me. I want to see my college teacher interns, particularly in the elementary classroom, with an instrument in their hands.

I have a final comment about another dimension of difference between the examples, one with rather interesting philosophical implications. What is the nature of musical knowledge? Does it exist "out there," or as the possession of the teacher, and all a student needs to do is assimilate it? Or, in a variation on the Socratic method, are certain skills available within the student, in a nascent state, and simply need the teacher's guidance to emerge? Is knowledge acquired on one's own more valued than that which is given from without? Perhaps such questions are objectively unanswerable, but one develops a working hypothesis about such things, and this certainly affects teaching.

Bret P. Smith is assistant professor of string music education at the University of Maryland. He holds B.A. and B.M. degrees in systematic musicology from the University of Washington, and M. M. and Ph.D. degrees in music education from the University of Michigan.