Kody Myhra April 23, 2022
Hello everyone, boy has it been a while! I have been super busy lately with my final semester of college, but today I am going to share my research that I've been conducting this past semester for Millikin University's Celebration of Scholarship! Below shows my findings and research on how private instructors can aid in student persistence in music.
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I began teaching as a Private Music Instructor in the Fall of 2021 through the Millikin Community Arts Academy. I currently have three students of varying ages, one in fourth grade, one in sixth grade, and one is a junior in high school. I have loved all of my experiences with these kids, and they are a joy to have as music students.
Having such a wide age gap between students, I began to notice a trend. I kept asking myself: “why do these students take music lessons? Is there a reason or outside factor that causes them to want to take lessons? Why do they want to take lessons with ME?” These questions lead me down a rabbit hole of even more questions and curiosities, that finally lead to me wondering “how can I help them continue their path in music?” Music programs all over the United States are being shut down in schools, and children are not getting the education they need to be a successful musician. As a private music instructor, this is an epidemic.
I want to see children succeed in the music field, there is so much more to music than just blowing air into a trumpet and playing. There are learning benefits, the combination of school subjects and brain stimulation. When I heard about a local school near Decatur, IL wanting to get rid of their programs, I knew that as an instructor, I had to do whatever I could to get students to fight for music in schools. I had to find out what I can do to aid in student persistence in music. And that’s exactly what I did.
I narrowed down my research and findings into the six bullets shown below:
What is motivation?
Types of motivation
Motivation factors in students
Why is motivation hard to possess?
How instructors can instill motivation
Why it is important
After conducting my research, I found that all my questions and thoughts had been answered. There has not been a whole lot of research regarding these topics, but the things I found were very clear and accurate to the concepts I have experienced in my own teaching of private music lessons.
The first thing I had to look up what is the definition of motivation. Motivation is defined as:
With this definition in mind, I was able to conclude one of the questions I had specifically for my clarinet students, being: “do my students have motivation?” The fact that most students want to show up and put in the work to engage and move forward in music shows that they do have some sort of motivational factor pushing them to engage in lessons.
After knowing the definition of motivation, I wanted to know if there were different types of motivation. It seems to me, that in my own teachings, I found that some students were driven by different factors than others. That is when I found that there are two types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic.
Extrinsic motivation is a type of motivation that is driven by an external reward. Some extrinsic motivational tactics I've used in my lessons are sticker charts, certificates, and fun activities in reward to good musical growth and development.
Intrinsic motivation is motivation driven by an internal force. This means that the student has the drive, consistency, and want to do music for a reason of their choice. We want to begin to shift younger students towards the intrinsic motivation style because it ensures that student engagement is built into the learning process, and thus showing instructors that students begin to show more desire, discipline and dedication towards music in general.
Like every argument, there are two sides to every coin. In this case, both extrinsic and intrinsic motivating patterns have both positive and negative effects, but it all depends on how the student is using these motivational patterns.
Some negative effects for extrinsic motivation include the dependence of rewards for self validation and a lack of passion. Both of these can cause students to depend on physical rewards every time they achieve something, but unfortunately life is not like that. A good example of this is participation awards in sports or extracurriculars.
Some negative effects of intrinsic motivation include the lack of defining an end goal and lacking passion and empathy towards making music. If a students lacks positive emotion towards music, then an intrinsic motivating style is most likely not going to work. Likewise, if a student is not given an end goal to meet in their practice or daily applications, then the positive emotion may also be hindered. Having a lack of structure in lessons can easily cause this negative feeling and make students unaware of what they want to accomplish.
I have asked my students why they like to continue taking lessons. I got a variety of responses, some of them including “it is fun”, “its a de-stressor” and “it stimulates my brain and takes it away from other things for a little while.”After receiving these answers from my students, I realized that since there was a wide gap in age between them, that I wanted to know if different motivational factors depended on age.
Looking into this more, I found that younger students tend to lean more on an extrinsic motivational path, while older students lean more intrinsically. As a younger student, after playing music for a few years, you begin to shift more towards the intrinsic motivational pattern. Students continue to see their worth and love for music the more they are exposed to it. As an older student, intrinsic motivation is a primary force, but I find that sometimes extrinsic motivators can still be used. A good example of this is my use of sticker charts in lessons. For my younger students, they like to see their progress and get another sticker on the chart every lesson. For my older students, it is a sign of their progress, and a mental note that they are on the right track and doing a good job. Another main motivating factor for older students is competition and career or job goals.
I also began to look into motivational factors amongst all ages of students. The chart here shows a survey that was done among fourth through sixth graders by Veronica Sichivitsa. The survey was given by means of finding reason for student music participation. In order, the list shows the importance of different factors in students lives in how they affect their musicianship. The order of these subjects is as follows: parental musicianship and supporting music, self-concept of musical ability, value of music, academic integration, social integration, musical intentions, and previous musical experience.
Looking at the M value for each subject shows how much students voted for each concept. Votes were casted on a number scale from 1-5, where 1 meant Strongly Disagree and 5 meant strongly agree. The top three outcomes, in order, for what motivates students most were Self-Concept of Music Ability, Value of Music, and Parental Musicianship/Support.
While there are a ton of different motivating factors for students, motivation and persistence is still such a hard thing to possess. But why? The Music Educator’s National Conference (now currently known as NAfME) had written two books covering the strategies and application of music teaching to students. They concluded that there were four factors playing into student's motivation patterns and the reason why keeping motivation high is so difficult: Choice and preference, intensity, persistence, and quality.
Choice and preference effects where students put their energy. Students will always
very in attention span, which sometimes, causes them to let their mind wander somewhere else during individual lessons. This is one reason why it is important to maintain a positive environment within lessons, because getting mad or upset at students for being off track for a few minutes can slowly create a negative relationship with music.
Intensity regards the degree in which a student becomes involved with an activity. Some students prefer to practice a lot, and other students find that they don't like practicing. The ultimate goal is for students to try hard at what they do, and like doing it. This varying intensity level is an indicator of a students motivational level.
Persistence is how long a student puts their effort towards a certain goal. When a student shows more interest in music than any other activities at school, it is a sign of high motivation. If a student were to put sports or other extracurricular activities before music, their motivational level may be at a lower rate than those who prefer music.
Lastly, quality is one of the most important applications there is when speaking of student music motivation. The quality of their lessons, the quality of the music they play, the quality they put into learning different things can all impact how student views music, and whether or not they want to continue with it.
With all those points in mind, I compiled a list of different ways I could instill motivation within my students. I found that dividing them by age would be most beneficial to their extrinsic/intrinsic needs:
For elementary students, we want to work towards a goal of moving to an intrinsic motivation style. At this beginners age, students are more likely to drop band or not continue the music education due to their lack of the four strategies and applications we looked at before. We don't want to allow discouragement or negative talk in the space we teach, as this could greatly contribute to the want to quit. We must take body size and measurements into account when teaching, knowing that students will grow into the instrument at a later time. This is when developing good musical habits is most vital.
For middle school age students, or students that have been playing for 2 to 4 years, providing performance opportunities can be one of the most beneficial events. Middle school age students are at the age where competition begins to mean something more to them, and sometimes, competition can provide that extrinsic motivational feeling, for example receiving metals at solo and ensemble or certificates for playing well. Another great
way to instill motivation at this age is creating fun games and activities for students to engage in during lessons. I like to incorporate other music into my lessons, like listening to orchestras on Spotify, and allowing students to bring in their own music to listen to. This is also a great age to start introducing the practice log into their daily routine. Practice logs are a sign of progress, and are good to speak about in weekly lessons. Young students are going to grasp onto the teachers approval, so it is important to instill these positive boundaries and communications now.
For high school age students, or students that have been playing for 5+ years, we still like to incorporate practice logs and competitions into our playing and preparation in lessons. At this age, students begin to discover their future and career goals, and if music is in their future, we begin to look at more concepts and techniques geared towards that. We also like to enforce positive self talk and constructive criticism within lessons. One thing that I found to be helpful in enforcing this positive self talk is recording our playing. Recording and listening back to our playing gives us a physical and aural concept of what we sound like in that moment, and we can reflect based on what we see/hear. Reminding students that music is interpretive is also another huge concept that high school aged students need to hear. There is no right or wrong answer to music interpretation, and being in high school, we begin to dive into that concept.
For college age students, the largest motivational factor is self-confidence. Knowing that students have the musical ability to continue their education and music at a higher caliber is a very intrinsic way of motivating oneself.
Looking more at a “what can I do” viewpoint, it is important that we take all factors into consideration. Including cultural and background encompassing music is important to not only learn about musical history, but keep these cultures ingrained in our music education system. Everybody comes from a different background, and that is why it is important to address these different concepts.
It is also important to address the arts as an important and essential core subject in schools. Music not only provides another subject for students to learn, but engages their mind in many different subjects as well. For example, students learn to speak different languages when learning music that is written in Italian, German, French, and more, students learn subdivision and dividing of beats in mixed meters, from a math standpoint, and, as mentioned before, reading on the history of different composers and pieces of music ties into what they learn in different history classes, and gives them a world history view.
Practicing music and playing music also teaches students about consistency. Consistency is a core concept in practicing music, which in turn will make students better at playing and more motivated to create a consistent schedule for practicing. A few things that I thought of in regards to instilling motivation in students are like assigning fun music, taking studio trips/field trips, Studio community service projects like playing at coffee shops or playing at the town’s retirement facility, and putting on recitals/solo competitions.
As a teacher, I want to see my students thrive. I want their love for music to blossom, no matter if they want to pursue it as a career or not. Music is such a big part of school for a lot of students, and it is important to me as a private music instructor that we continue to encourage and strengthen student motivation and persistence in the music field.
To see the full presentation and bibliography, visit: https://view.genial.ly/625c4ebf7d85d70019790a17/dossier-music-motivation-in-students
Thank you for listening and reading! If you would like to reach me, please feel free to contact me via email at kmyhra@millikin.edu, or visit my website and socials! I am always willing to answer questions and engage in conversation regarding this subject and music in general. Happy Practicing! (and in this case, Happy Teaching😁)
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