Improving Student Teachers Expressiveness of Non-verbal and Verbal Instructions through Mentoring

Abstract

Teaching instrumental music ensembles with credible music expression has been a challenging task for music educators. The non-verbal and verbal instructions was proposed and highlighted by previous researchers, and music educators in solving the problems. It was mentioned that the combination of expressive voice, movements and metaphorical languages, are tools to inspired musicians music interpretation and expression. This research employed a purposeful sampling where a final year music student teacher who is actively involved with instrumental music activities was selected to be the protégé. The mentor provides articles and demonstrated the non-verbal and verbal instructions in ensuring the protégé’s understanding and practices of the required skills. In addition, teaching observations, feedback and discussions in the manner of instruction was carried out by the mentor. The qualitative methodologies engaged for data collections were field notes, observation, and semi-structured interviews. The protégé’s teaching was observed by his mentor and the instrumental music professor from the university on site. Following the mentoring, interviews were conducted with mentee (protégé), three members of the wind orchestra, as well as the observer (instrumental music professor). Result of this case study justified that mentoring is able to assist the protégé’s to convincingly apply non-verbal and verbal instructions in his teaching, contributing to credible music interpretation and expression of the wind orchestra he conducted