Like Teacher, Like Student? Conceptions of Children From Traditional and Constructive Teachers Regarding the Teaching and Learning of String Instruments

Abstract

More and more studies are dealing with the association between teachers' and students' conceptions of learning and teaching and their actual practices in the classroom. Nevertheless, few studies have directly researched the influence of teachers' conceptions on those held by their students. Our primary objective was to analyze the influence of music teachers' conceptions on the ideas held by their students regarding learning and teaching. We interviewed 60 children: 30 with teachers who held traditional conceptions of teaching and learning and 30 with teachers who held constructive conceptions. Data were collected using a structured interview after viewing videos in which the actors depicted instrument lessons corresponding to the three conceptions of teaching and learning identified in previous studies -direct, interpretative and constructive. The first analysis (ANOVA) was quantitative and considered the choice of videos. The second analysis was qualitative (lexicometric analysis), based on the explanations for those choices. The results showed that students reflected the conceptions corresponding to their teachers' profiles. The explanations from students in the constructive group were longer and more elaborate, focusing on learning processes and conditions as well as on student autonomy, whereas the traditional group focused on outcomes and responding to the teacher's instructions.Key Words: children's conceptions of learning and instruction; conceptual change; constructivism; music conservatoires; music education; teachers' conceptions of learning and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Introduction Some of the most relevant factors in the change in teaching and learning practices are the conceptions held by educational agents regarding what happens in the classroom, what the goals of the activities are, expectations for the achievement of goals and the best ways to tackle tasks. This is even more important for supporting models such as those based on the constructivist approach, which transfer much of the control of learning to the student. As noted by Olson and Bruner (1996, p. 25) with reference to internalization of the learning focus:"What changes as we move from the simplest pedagogies to the most sophisticated, is the development of an increasingly internalist or insider's view of thinking, learning, and knowing. Externalist theories focus on what an adult can do to foster learning -a view that makes up the bulk of traditional educational psychology. Internalist theories, on the other hand, focus on what children can do, or what they think they are doing, and how learning can be premised on those intentional states".Thus, implementing teaching strategies that focus on the students themselves taking on more control of learning requires not only a change in teaching methodology but also that educationa...

Web-Searching To Learn: The Role of Internet Self-Efficacy in Pre-School Educators’ Conceptions and Approaches

“…Their high scores suggest that they perceived learning by web-searching as the conceptions of increasing knowledge, the application of information, and the acquisition of understanding and of new information. Previous studies concerning students" conceptions of learning in general had shown that students had more constructivist learning conceptions in more conventional learning environments (Leung, Wong & Wong, 2013;López-Íñiguez & Pozo, 2014). Although the focus of this study was pre-school educators" conceptions of learning by web-searching, the analysis results revealed similar findings to those of past studies about students" conceptions of learning in a different context.…”

“…However, the research focus on preschool teachers is still limited. Therefore, it is hypothesized in this study that preschool educators" conceptions of learning would show a relationship with the context of the learning, as suggested by Leung, Wong and Wong (2013) and López-Íñiguez and Pozo (2014). That is to say, conceptions of learning are considered to be contextually dependent, and therefore some variation is expected to be found between State of the literature  Some studies suggest that early year educators' positive views of web-based technology are essential for influencing teaching practices, while the educators themselves can play an important role in supporting and extending children's experiences with web-based technology.…”

How about equality and equity in higher music education? A theoretical framework for researching quality of music teaching and learning

“…In the same line, research in instrumental music instruction has shown that the beliefs and practices of constructivist teachers who focus on students' prior knowledge and motivations can have a positive impact on students' learning strategies, teaching and learning beliefs, studying autonomy, and sense of engagement in the classroom (López-Íñiguez & Pozo, 2014a;2014b;, all factors related to the quality of teaching and learning music. These results resonate with Johansen (2007), who emphasises the significance of systematically conducted research as a bottom-up activity -based on data collected from teachers' and students' experiences of teaching and learning processes within their specific subjectswhen establishing quality systems in higher music education.…”

Musical Learning and Teaching Conceptions as Sociocultural Productions in Classical, Flamenco, and Jazz Cultures

“…This method has been effective for analyzing open oral responses (Bécue, Lebart, & Rajadell, 1992) and inferring conceptions of the process of acquisition and knowledge transfer in both children and adults in specific fields of learning (Baccalá & de la Cruz, 2000;Scheuer et al, 2002;Scheuer, de la Cruz, Pozo, Echenique, & Márquez, 2009) and recently in the field of learning and teaching music (López-Íñiguez & Pozo, 2014b;Marín et al, 2013). The lexicometrical procedure enables us to determine the most representative answers from participants according to statistical criteria and provides more inductive access to the participant's actual discourse than would certain types of content analysis in which the categories are set by the researchers' theoretical framework, leading to circular reasoning.…”

“…Nevertheless, it enables more in-depth analysis than would have been possible by simple observation (López-Íñiguez & Pozo, 2014b). For each question, we apply a two-step analysis, which we shall describe in detail, because lexicometry has not often been used in research into cultural psychology (for an in-depth description, see Bécue-Bertaut, 2008); & Lebart & Salem, 1998).…”