Empirical Description of the Pace of Music Instruction

Abstract

The present study was designed to assess novice teachers* perceptions of timing in music instruction and to identify the aspects of timing that are associated with positive perceptions of instructional pacing. We selected eight 1-3-minute excerpts from teaching-practicum videotapes of four novice teachers teaching in a choral rehearsal, a band rehearsal, and two elementary music classrooms. Each teacher appeared in two excerpts that differed with regard to the pace of instruction depicted in each. Novice teachers (N = 44) viewed the videotaped excerpts and evaluated the pace of instruction along six semantic differential scales: fast—slow; appropriate—inappropriate; tense—relaxed; smooth-uneven; too fast-too slow; good-bad. Subjects discriminated among the faster and slower examples on five of the six evaluation dimensions, and among teachers on all six dimensions. Subjects rated the pace of instruction more positively when the rates of student performance episodes and teacher activity episodes were higher rather than lower, and when the mean durations of teacher and student activity were shorter rather than longer. These variables may function as operational measures of the pace of instruction in music performance.