Another Kind of Lesson: An Inside Investigation of Reconciling Classroom Music Pedagogy With Private Piano Teaching

Abstract

This study commenced with an interest to improve my teaching and understand how pitch, rhythm and music reading were taught in the general music classroom of the school where I taught piano. The purpose of this study was to investigate the teaching and learning experiences by reconciling classroom music pedagogy with private piano teaching using action research. Having had little communication with general classroom music teachers, the initial process therefore consisted of non-participant classroom observations, interviews with classroom music teachers and the collection of existing school documents. The study is divided into two phases. Phase 1 consists of eight 30-minute lessons and analyses the teaching and learning experiences for seven students ranging from Years 2 to 4. Here rhythm and pitch were taught through echo-singing, chanting rhythm in French time names and rhymes as observed in the music classroom. The focus was on singing and being able to reproduce what they played vocally before expecting students to read. Each piano lesson was videorecorded and later reviewed for further analysis and reflection notes. Phase 1 found that integration was difficult with the array of school activities and rehearsals interfering with the initial classroom observations. Furthermore, the expectations of students and parents made it challenging to consistently realise innovative teaching approaches in Phase 1. Due to a fortuitous circumstance at the school, I was asked to teach Year 2 classroom music beginning in Term 3. This change was significant, and marked the primary difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2. The second phase no longer observed the seven students but specifically focused on the learning experiences of three of the students who participated in Phase 1 and who were also in Year 2. I was therefore piano and classroom teacher to these three Year 2 students, and during Phase 2, able to observe and document the teaching and learning processes for both teaching contexts. The study found that students whose parents were present in the lesson tended to be more passive learners. Students who did not strategize pitch or rhythmic patterns during the imitation stage were unable to retain and reproduce more than two-bar musical or rhythmic phrases. Furthermore, singing in the piano lesson had positive effects on students’ performance on the piano. Those students who could sing were better able to play by ear and self-correct performance errors.