One of the most persistent myths in education is that students have a “learning style.” This misunderstanding is so pervasive that most teachers believe that their students will learn best when materials are presented to them in a manner that matches their supposed modality (most commonly broken into visual, auditory, reading, and kinesthetic). Unfortunately, this … Continue reading You’re Not An Auditory Learner
I’ve written about “learning styles” a couple of times before, here and here. If you haven’t read them or it’s been too long ago, the gist of my argument is that music teachers and students need to abandon this idea of learning styles. The evidence doesn’t support that it’s actually true. Dr. Steven Novella recently … Continue reading Further Evidence Against Learning Styles
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a video demonstration by physicist Richard Smith where he shows how air doesn’t need to travel through a brass instrument in order for the normal acoustics of the instrument to work. While I find the science behind it and the creative thinking he used to create the … Continue reading Making 21st Century Connections to Brass Music
The idea of students having a “learning style” refers to a concept that that individuals differ on how the best learn, develop, and retain information. For example, someone who is considered to be a “visual” learner needs to see the information in some way, while an “aural” learner will want to hear it explained. On … Continue reading Learning Styles – How Can Teachers Best Help Students Learn
Frequently in online conversations, and sometimes in person, a discussion about teaching instrumental technique to music students gets broken down into two extreme ends. The more popular, exemplified by Arnold Jacobs’ so-called “song and wind” approach, is that when a musical goal is kept first and foremost in mind that instrumental technique will fix itself. … Continue reading A Review of Implicit and Explicit Learning Strategies in the Development of Motor Skills and its Application To Teaching Instrumental Technique
The idea of “meshing” a student’s learning style with the way one teaches is an old and common approach to pedagogy. As this idea goes, we should work out whether our student is an “analytical” type or a “creative” type and alter our instruction to fit the way our student learns best. Somewhat related to … Continue reading Learning Styles
It’s a busy time for me, with the semester just starting to wrap up, and I’ve much grading to do. There has been an interesting discussion going around in the horn blogosphere lately, which I’d like to comment briefly on before I get back to work. It seems to have started with Bruce Hembd’s series … Continue reading Embouchure Experiments Lead to Controversy
