Learning a musical instrument is a complex process that involves cognitive, physical, environmental, and motivational factors. When adolescent students first learn a musical instrument, they can demonstrate a fixed or growth mindset (or a mixture of both) when it comes to their beliefs about their skills. Research indicates that adolescents who receive mindset interventions increase academic performance and improvements in their overall mental health and well-being. Music education researchers have found that many musicians lack the mental strategies to improve competency beliefs, but there is scant research on growth mindset interventions in music classrooms. Among bowed string educators and musicians, vibrato is considered to be a skill with both mental and physical challenges. The purpose of the study was to examine the experiences of eighth grade students who receive a growth mindset intervention while learning vibrato in a heterogeneous string classroom.
The participants were a sample of eighth grade students from the researcher’s classroom who were learning vibrato for the first time. All students completed a mindset inventory quiz to determine whether they have a fixed or growth mindset orientation. The entire class participated in research-based mini-lessons, class discussions, journaling in the Growth Mindset Workbook for Teens (Schleider et al., 2021), supplemental goal and reflection activities specific to vibrato skills, and video reflection to give students a different format for reflection alongside vibrato instruction. Although descriptive data was gathered from the whole class, a sample of seven participants was selected to examine students’ lived experiences in-depth. To focus on the students’ perspectives and lived experiences, data was collected and analyzed through the lens of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. The participants were selected using maximum variation sampling to represent a variety of perspectives: mindset scores, instrument, ethnicity, and gender. Data collection from the study included teacher observation (written journaling), student interviews, journal samples (mix of media recording and written), as well as pre- and post-intervention mindset surveys.
While the participants displayed a mix of mindsets about their vibrato throughout the study, many of the students reported that mindset activities helped them improve their mindset and vibrato learning experience. The researcher found that consistent use of both mental (particularly mindset) and physical strategies supported the acquisition of the challenging skill of vibrato. The class was generally more motivated to learn vibrato, less likely to give up when it was difficult, and applied vibrato to their music on their own when compared to previous classes. The results of the study support previous research that others can have an impact on students’ mindsets, particularly family, peers, and educators.
The study contributes to the limited research on growth mindset in the music classroom and provides implications for mindset training for young musicians. It also contributes to the limited body of research in string vibrato pedagogy and may provide more implications for the mental processes of learning vibrato.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/47931 |
| Date | 16 January 2024 |
| Creators | Koonce, Melissa A. |
| Contributors | Chappell, Elizabeth |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
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