Intention-based Piano Pedagogy

Bastiaan van der Waals

This research focuses on the guidance of students of piano methodology ("piano pedagogy") in acquiring didactic skills. More specifically, it aims to support them in understanding and applying research-based educational principles in their internship lessons. Recent scientific research on motor control and motor skill learning offers opportunities for evaluating current practices in piano pedagogy and coming up with innovative teaching approaches. Based on an extensive review of research results, I have formulated educational principles for achieving pianistic quality. I argue that mental auditory representations of intended musical outcomes ("musical intentions") iniate and steer musical motor control processes. Furthermore, I have summarized several research-supported teaching strategies that promote motor skill learning and presented examples of their practical application in piano pedagogy. I have applied several interventions aimed at enhancing conveyance of these educational principles to students of piano methodology. In the first place, I have created extensive study materials (booklets, videos, slide presentations) that both explain and show practical applications of these principles in piano pedagogy. Furthermore, I have introduced peer-to-peer learning: students observe and evaluate their own and each other's internship lessons. Results of this research show that further improvement of the methodology course is required in order to achieve its goals. Both the study material and the peer-learning opportunities have shown to be valuable additions. However, students still exhibit a lack of creativity in finding relevant teaching strategies within their internship lessons. I have formulated several additional interventions for further improvement.

Home

1. Introduction

2. Research contextualisation

3. Research methodology

4. Results

5. Conclusions

6. Directions for future improvement

Acknowledgements

References

Appendices

Thesis and syllabus in PDF

Video fragments

Acknowledgements

Many people have supported me in performing this research, in various ways, for which I owe them a lot. In the first place, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Adri de Vugt and dr. Robert Harris, my supervisors, for their critical and supportive comments and the generous amounts of time and effort they spent on reading my writings. They carefully pointed out the essential flaws in my drafts and showed me relevant directions for improvement. I also wish to thank the students of piano methodology, who provided me with video recordings of their internship lessons and participated in the internship discussions: Mieke, Laura, Carlos, Lucinda, Petra, Sam and Stijn. Their open-minded attitude towards teaching has been remarkable. Many thanks to my colleagues who read drafts of the syllabus and provided me with valuable additions to it: Anne-Christie, Christianne, Laura, Mijntje, Constança and Tim. I hope they will remain involved in the further development of the piano methodology course. I wish to express my gratitude to Steven Faber and Marc Pauwels, both teachers of piano methodology in Dutch conservatories, for critically observing the recordings of internship lessons and sharing their ideas with me. Also, I would like to thank dr. Paul Craenen for his comments during the Master Circle meetings, and dr. Luc Nijs, for suggesting me to let students observe and evaluate their internship lessons by means of the observation sheet, which ended up being a crucial intervention in this research. I express my appreciation to Graham Flett for his lessons on writing and research skills and for proof-reading parts of this thesis. I should not forget to thank dr. Rebecca Schaefer for providing me with scientific articles on musical imagination, dr. Susan Williams for proof-reading the chapter on the contextualisation of my research and em. prof. dr. Arend Huussen for proof-reading both my thesis and the syllabus. Finally, thanks and bear hugs to my beloved family members, Elsbeth, Hetty and Margot, for putting up with me babbling about brain areas, ant bridges and predictive processing.

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