Feedback in the instrumental music lesson: A qualitative study

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of feedback in teaching with particular emphasis on its effect on learner performance, motivation, and self-regulation. A critical account of feedback and applicable models highlight conceptual guidelines of how individual, relational, and environmental factors can impact on the utility of feedback as a performance changing device, and reasons for theory–practice disjunction. A qualitative methodology investigated 25 instrumental music teachers in Victoria, Australia, realizing the effect of studio teaching feedback on students from teachers’ perspectives and recollections of their studio teaching practice. Knowledge and skills, positive attribution, and music and relational qualities are reported through these reflections of feedback, feed-up, and feed-forward approaches to student engagement. The study highlights positive feedback encounters are typified by learner engagement and teacher–student relationality, contesting the traditional, behaviorist “feedback ritual” and teacher-centered approaches in the music lesson. The study offers implications for purposeful and structured learning opportunities, and cyclical engagement that builds impactful feedback episodes and feedback design that factors in the influence of context, culture, and differentiated relationships in learning. The study encourages educators to consider balance of “drill and thrill,” where feedback is embedded as an influential pedagogical/relational device, rather than discreet episodes of educators “telling” learners about their performance.