Students’ Social Perceptions of Humility and Arrogance Among Band Directors

Abstract

In this study, I build on growing research examining humility in musical contexts by investigating whether band students perceive humility to be a positive and desirable social quality or a social weakness among band directors. Middle school, high school, and undergraduate band students ( N = 117) evaluated the likability, knowledgeability, and preference for humble and arrogant band director targets by assessing recorded interviews with each director following a fictitious performance. The humble target demonstrated nonsuperiority and other-orientedness and acknowledged his room for growth in his interview, while the arrogant target spoke with a degree of self-importance, an inflated self-view, and a desire for credit and prestige in his interview. Results indicated that overall, participants expressed greater likability toward the humble director and overwhelmingly preferred him to the arrogant director (82.76%) but did not ascribe greater knowledgeability to either target. These differences were contingent on school level and whether participants were presented with the humble or arrogant target first. Findings support the pertinence of modeling humility in music teaching and refute the implicit premise that teachers who behave in an arrogant manner might appear more competent or capable among students.

The discrimination of college music teaching level based on wave equation

“…The four multi-classification methods have obtained good fitting effects, among which 1vs1 method has the highest accuracy, with an accuracy of 93.5% for 10 cross-validation and excellent operating efficiency. Without algorithm optimization, it can basically meet the application of college music teaching level evaluation [13][14][15][16][17]. Compared with traditional classification methods such as artificial fitting and neural network, this method makes full use of the characteristics of efficient learning of small samples to achieve efficient learning effect.…”

The influence of socioeconomic status, parents, peers, psychological needs, and task values on middle school student motivation for school music ensemble participation

“…As students come to view band or orchestra as interesting, enjoyable, important, and useful despite the costs—and as their social circumstances (e.g., teachers, peers, parents, socioeconomic status [SES]) reinforce those perceptions through variability in needs satisfaction—student motivation to continue studying and making music can be reignited or frustrated, resulting in continued enrollment over time or attrition from music studies. Exacerbating the issue, many music teachers adopt behavioristic or competitive approaches to motivating students, which may produce changes in students’ behavior in the near term, but also undermine students’ inherent interest in making or learning about music over their educational careers (Coppola, 2021).…”

Theme and Variations on a Virtue: Humility as a Multidimensional Construct for Musicians and Music Educators

“…As an other-report survey scale, 1 a music teacher might ask their students to evaluate their teacher’s musical humility using this scale privately and anonymously, which would help teachers understand the specific ways in which they might be properly or poorly embodying humility toward their students. Given that students overwhelmingly like and prefer humble teachers to arrogant teachers (Coppola, 2021a), this deeper understanding could meaningfully inform the positive social dynamics that music educators wish to develop with their students. The Musical Humility Scale could be used in more informal settings, as well—perhaps among members of a music group experiencing some internal group tensions (or merely seeking to maximize their social dynamics) or among community musicians who wish to prioritize a hospitable music environment (see Higgins, 2012).…”