Weekend Research: How Do Music Teachers Spend Class Time?
I had a conversation recently with a colleague about how to keep pacing moving throughout a lesson. This friend was getting “stuck” on activities, and wasn’t always able to finish everything on the lesson plan. This is something many of us can relate to! If we know quick pacing is key to student engagement and to maximizing learning, what stops us from moving lessons along? Why do we get bogged down?
I might be tempted to say students talk too much and they get off task. However, if I look at who does most of the talking, it’s probably not the students. It’s probably me.
I say that after reading research, and conducting my own research in the classroom. Let’s look at some studies that have addressed music teacher talking. At the end, we’ll discuss what we can do about it.
Framing the Conversation:
The point of this isn’t to make us feel bad about talking. The point is that it’s fun to read research studies, and conveniently, we can control our own talking easier than we can control other people’s.
We’ll look at four research studies, their results, and how we might move forward based on the research
Comparison of the National Standards for Music Education and Elementary Music Specialists' Use of Class Time(Orman, 2002)
Orman, 2002
The study
Voluntary National Standards for Music Education
(Episode 24 about standards)
30 elementary general music teachers were videoed teaching grades 1 - 6
Class time was analyzed for teacher time and student time, and broken down by the specific type of activity
Results:
Teachers spent the most time talking (46%), followed by modeling (21%)
Modeling defined as the teacher doing something musical.
About half that modeling was the teacher modeling alone, and half the modeling was the teacher modeling with students doing something as well.
Students spent the most time listening to the teacher (57%) as the teacher talked or modeled
Other activities students did were each less than 10% of the total class time
All nine standards were addressed in the teaching
The most used standards were reading notation and writing notation. The least used standards were creative tasks or decision-making tasks
In earlier grades students spent more time singing than in later grades. In later grades students spent more time playing instruments
Improvisation was used in grades 1 - 3 but not in grades 4 - 6
Standards of understanding music in relation to history and culture / the relationship between music, art, and other disciplines were used in grades 3 - 6 but not in grades 1 - 3
Boler Notes:
There is a natural shift we would expect to see in terms of what activities students do in each grade. In this specific study, students change the actions they take in music class, but the teacher is still talking a lot. That said, in this study, teachers spoke the least in 2nd grade (34% mean of class time) and the most in 3rd grade (55%).
Self-Reported versus Observed Classroom Activities in Elementary General Music (Wang & Sogin, 1997)
Wang & Sogin, 1997
The Study:
45 elementary general music teachers filled out a questionnaire (how much time in a lesson do you think your students spend singing, moving, talking about music, reading music, etc.)
Of those teachers, 19 lessons were analyzed for student activities and teacher behavior
Student activities: reading, listening, singing, describing, playing, creating, and moving
Teacher behaviors: Talking or modeling, and providing academic or social reinforcement
The Results:
Teachers were spending much less time on the activities than they thought they were. Instead, they were talking.
Talking can be giving directions, but it can also be “lecturing,” or “chatting”
Student activities: mostly moving, followed by singing, then playing. The least amount of time was given to creating
There was some crossover of time, however. When teachers were talking, students weren’t doing engaged in a musical task. When teachers were modeling, students were more likely to be doing something musical.
This makes sense - when we model, often we’re doing a simultaneous imitation activity or an echo imitation activity
Boler notes:
Teachers gave low amounts of social approval. However, the teachers who did include higher amounts of social approval were the same ones who gave higher amounts of creative time. What does this mean to us, given what we know about social and emotional learning, and how that’s connected to creative tasks? Difficult to say with this sample size.
Perceptions of Time Spent in Teacher Talk: A Comparison Among Self-Estimates, Peer Estimates, and Actual Time
Nápoles & Vázquez-Ramos (2013)
The study
32 choir teachers taught a choir rehearsal which was videoed, then estimated the amount of time they spent talking.
The videos were analyzed for the amount of time spent talking
Participants watched the videos with a stopwatch and tracked their own time, then compared it with their earlier estimates
The teachers did the same process a second time, leading a videoed rehearsal, estimating their time, and going back to time it.
The results
In the second rehearsal, teachers cut the amount of time they spent talking in half.
We can’t say it lead to more effective teaching because the study didn’t track that.
Awareness and self-monitoring seems to be an effective strategy to decreasing the amount of teacher talk
Time Use in Instrumental Rehearsals: A Comparison of Experienced, Novice, and Student Teachers
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Framing the study
It makes sense for us to talk to give directions. To an extent, there will always be teacher talking if the teacher has the physical ability to talk
It may also make sense for creative tasks to be used less often than strictly performance tasks like singing or moving.
Quick Wins:
If you can model it instead of speaking, choose to model.
Write directions instead of repeating the same thing over and over
Establish routines
Point out positive behavior
Ask a student to lead, explain, or demonstrate
Think through the teaching process before you stand in front of students
