Abstracts
Abstract
We examined the effects of choices parents can make regarding their child’s piano lessons: age started, instruction method, taking exams, taking group lessons, sitting in on lessons, helping with home practice, giving rewards for practising. Parental choices were correlated with the following child variables regarding piano playing: autonomous motivation, interest in performance and creativity, interest in effortful practice, time spent practising, feeling of competence, and exam performance. We administered questionnaires to 173 piano students aged six to sixteen and their parents. The most beneficial predictors were: initiating lessons before age seven, sitting in on lessons, and helping with home practice.
Résumé
Nous avons examiné l’effet de diverses décisions que les parents peuvent prendre dans le cadre de l’apprentissage du piano de leurs enfants, par exemple au niveau de l’âge pour commencer cet apprentissage, la méthode d’enseignement, les examens, les cours de groupes, l’assistance aux cours, leur présence active lors des pratiques quotidiennes, et le fait de récompenser ces pratiques. Ces choix ont été mis en corrélation avec diverses variables se rapportant au jeu pianistique de l’enfant, c’est-à-dire à leur motivation personnelle, leur intérêt pour l’interprétation et la créativité, leur intérêt pour l’effort mis dans la pratique, le temps qui y est passé, leur sentiment d’habileté, et leur niveau de réussite aux examens. Nous avons soumis 173 élèves de piano, âgés de 6 à 16 ans, ainsi que leurs parents, à une série de questionnaires. Cette étude a permis de révéler certaines des décisions les plus bénéfiques, telles que commencer les leçons avant l’âge de 7 ans, assister aux cours, et aider aux pratiques quotidiennes.
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Appendices
Biographical notes
Gilles Comeau, Professor at the School of Music of the University of Ottawa, co-ordinates the piano pedagogy and the music education sectors. Dr. Comeau has been the beneficiary of many research grants, including a large grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to set up a research laboratory in piano pedagogy. As head of this infrastructure, he has established partnership with many other research laboratories and research institutes and set-up different multidisciplinary research groups that study various aspects of piano learning and piano teaching: music reading, motivation, physiological aspect of piano performance, piano-playing health injuries, video-mediated learning. He has written various scholarly research papers and his research findings have received coverage in popular media outlets (television, radio and newspapers). He has authored many books, including Piano Pedagogy: A Research and Information Guide; Comparing Dalcroze, Orff and Kodály; the five volume series Histoire illustrée de la musique pour les jeunes musiciens and over 20 education kits to be used by music and arts teachers.
Veronika Huta is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. She has a PhD in clinical psychology from McGill University. Her research is on the ways in which people pursue wellbeing (e.g., hedonia, eudaimonia); how these pursuits relate to well-being outcomes, parenting predictors, and personality correlates; and the identification of major domains of well-being (e.g. subjective well-being, meaning, vitality, functioning). She teaches courses in positive psychology and graduate statistics. She is a past president of the Royal Canadian Institute, and has previously co-organized a conference on eudaimonia.
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