How do our professors teach playing musical instruments? Situation of effective practice strategies teaching in six music schools in Mexico

Abstract

This article presents the results of an exploratory study that aimed to determine the level of teaching of effective practice strategies by 84 instrument teachers in six university music schools in Mexico. Through the survey technique, teachers answered a questionnaire that included contextual questions as well as questions with Likert scales and multiple choice answers to identify some aspects related to their teaching, such as their level of commitment to teach effective practice strategies, the way they monitored the practice of their students, the level of satisfaction with their performance, their opinion concerning what resources would improve the teaching-learning process, the way they kept updated, as well as their teaching philosophy. The data were captured and analyzed with the help of the software Statistics Package for the Social Sciences, IBM SPSS 2.0. The results suggested surveyed teachers have a high level of commitment with their profession. However, some weaknesses were identified such as: deficiencies in teaching strategies in the dimension of control of execution and self-evaluation of practice, lack of effective monitoring of their students´ practice, as well as lack of interest to support their practicum on research results. In addition, results suggested institutions are not concern on promoting courses on pedagogy of the instrument. Some recommendations are provided in the discussion and conclusion sections.