A Phenomenological Study of the Learning Issues and Teaching Strategies in Piano Teaching in China

Abstract

In China, many young piano learners below the pre-college level would take graded examinations to validate their learning outcomes, however, scholars and pedagogues acknowledge there is an existing discrepancy between grade achievement and actual playing abilities. The current study scrutinizes the learning issues of the students in this context and the teaching strategies applied by the teachers. This study employed a qualitative approach, and a semi-structured interview was conducted with twelve piano teachers, and lesson observations were conducted during their lessons with one of their students. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was carried out based on the interview data and the content analysis was conducted towards the observation data. The findings demonstrated that the students suffered from five aspects of learning issues, namely music reading, skill acquisition, memorization, interpretation, and performance anxiety. To resolve those issues, the teacher participants addressed 13 common teaching strategies. However, after the data triangulation it was found that there was inconsistency in monitoring of students’ learning progress in accordance with the strategies presented by the teachers; under the context of the graded examination preparation, memorization, interpretation, and performance anxiety were among the critical issues.