Singing Teachers Talk Too Much

Abstract

This paper draws on the reflective practice of teacher and student to identify the best pedagogical approaches used to facilitate the teaching and learning of singing. It draws on teacher and students observations at QCGU, collected during a project made possible through a GU Quality Teaching Grant in 2002. Ten students contracted to participate in the project, giving permission for their weekly studio lessons to be videotaped, committing to view the tape and write an observation log and report back to the teacher the following week. The role that both extrinsic and intrinsic feedback play in facilitating long term learning was noted. The relative priorities of implicit and explicit memory in the establishment of the singer's technique were defined. The effective acquisition of declarative knowledge or explicit memory delivered away from the studio in the pedagogy lectures was a significant conclusion. Greater use by the teacher of 'hands-on' physical guidance to assist the development of implicit memory and kinaesthetic awareness in the student was a deliberate change of teaching style. The teacher's security blanket of verbal explanation was abandoned in its traditional form, as a result of observation of student reactions during the project and correlation with research beginning to emerge on the real effectiveness of verbal instruction.

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