Monday, June 20, 2011

Intrinsic Motivation

Welcome! I wanted to create this blog to answer questions I often hear and to get your feedback/ thoughts on so many important topics related to your student's motivation, practicing, goal setting, technique, and other resources to aid in their musical studies.

My Master's research was conducted on the topic of Performance Anxiety and Performance Achievement in high school student singers.  (I will discuss some of the hi-lights of this research in this post, and later talk specifically about performance anxiety in singers and how that differs from pianists.)
I found (ranked from the three top highest scoring factors to promote performance achievement and overcome anxiety) that many of these students were able to meet their performance goals when they were given individual attention (one-on-one tutoring), lots of positive feedback, (particularly encouragement) and thirdly when they sung music of their choice.  I was surprised to find that such factors as "video feedback" and/or "feedback" didn't score as highly in contributing factors that supported students towards their performance goals.  Thus, one-on-one private music instruction is an incredibly valuable investment in the life of your son/daughter.  It will help to offer specific positive encouragements to your child as you hear them playing/practicing, such as: "I really liked how you played that section so quietly.  It captured the feeling of a lullaby quite nicely."
    Individual song choice (though it scored third highest on my Likert Scale) seems to be one of the greatest motivating factors towards practicing for students.  It is important for them to be exposed to lots of styles, but they will learn musical concepts from any piece of music, so it is never wrong to allow them to play the music they enjoy.

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