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Title: Learning Characteristics of College Students: Implications for the Elementary Music Education Methods Class Author(s): Eve Harwood Source: Harwood, E. (1993, Spring). Learning characteristics of college students: Implications for the elementary music education methods class. The Quarterly, 4(1), pp. 13-‐19. (Reprinted with permission in Visions of Research in Music Education, 16(4), Autumn, 2010). Retrieved from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~vrme/

It is with pleasure that we inaugurate the reprint of the entire seven volumes of The

Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning. The journal began in 1990 as The

Quarterly. In 1992, with volume 3, the name changed to The Quarterly Journal of Music

Teaching and Learning and continued until 1997. The journal contained articles on issues

that were timely when they appeared and are now important for their historical relevance.

For many authors, it was their first major publication. Visions of Research in Music

Education will publish facsimiles of each issue as it originally appeared. Each article will be

a separate pdf file. Jason D. Vodicka has accepted my invitation to serve as guest editor for

the reprint project and will compose a new editorial to introduce each volume. Chad

Keilman is the production manager. I express deepest thanks to Richard Colwell for granting

VRME permission to re-publish The Quarterly in online format. He has graciously prepared

an introduction to the reprint series.

Learning Characteristics OfCollege Students:

11llplications For TheEberraemt.ar-y Music

Education Methods Class

By Eve Harw-oodUniversity of Illinois

II ow do undergraduates make senseof the world in general and ourclasses in particular? All of us

have casual thoughts on thesubject, based on intuition andpractical experience in teach-ing music education majors.But preparing a more objec-tive and coherent answer tothis question proved to be ahumbling task. Teachingpeople how to teach is whatwe do for a living, after all,and it was embarrassing toacknowledge that I knewmuch less about the under-graduates I taught than I ex-pect them to know about theschool-age children they arepreparing to teach.

The topic of undergraduateeducation and its reform is inthe academic air these days.In 1990, Tbe New York Timesreported on the Harvard As-sessment Seminar, stating that the seminar wascreated at a time of "growing public criticism ofthe quality of undergraduate teaching at

American colleges and universities."? TheCarnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Pro-fession and the Holmes Group," among oth-

ers, cite improving the qual-ity of instruction for under-graduate education majorsas a key component of edu-cational reform. At ourmost respected research in-stitutions, there have beenvisible attempts recently toidentify and reward out-standing teachers of under-graduates. Even theChronicle of Higher Educa-tion reports from time totime on the notion of con-sidering excellence inteaching undergraduates asa tenurable activity and ofcreating university positionsthat are tenured teachingposts. We are not the onlyones looking with new eyesat undergraduates and real-

izing that they offer a unique set of chal-lenges and rewards to their teachers.'

"[There are] sirni-larities among

Perry's notion ofthe committed

individual,Erickson's stageof identity, and

vvhat the HolmesGroup ... mightcall the fullyprofessional

teacher."

Eve Harwood is Assistant Professor of MusicEducation at the University of Illinois. Herresearch interests include children's musical

folklore, informal learn ins in music, and thedevelopment of preservice music teachers.

Volume IV, Number 1

General CharacteristicsConsider some general characteristics of

our student population. Who sits in the el-ementary methods class? By far the largestnumber are white females in their late teensor early twenties. This is not unique to mu-

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sic education, for demographic studies showthat the entire teaching profession is likely toremain white and female into the twenty-firstcentury. A recent article in the Journal ofTeacher Education reports that a study offreshmen expressing interest in teaching indi-cates that the typical teacher candidate is awhite female who is more interested in el-ementary than in secondary education andwho has a grade point average below themedian for all career choices.t

Support for these findings comes from anarticle in the Review of Research in Educatton/:in which the authors report that 80 percent ofelementary teachers are female. They alsopoint out that until the last decade, a dispro-portionate number of teachers were "high sta-tus" females who provided a hidden subsidyto education in the form of a bright and com-mitted work force, now gradually being with-drawn. As other careers open to women,fewer bright women are entering teaching.According to the article, "No single subject ismore central to the history of the teaching pro-fession than the changing role of women inAmerican society." (See box, next page.)

In addition, many college students findtheir early college years to be personally tu-multuous. Erickson, for example, describesthe college years as a moratorium, a neces-sary period of delay permitted by society tothose undergoing a crisis of identity. It is atime when "each youth must forge for him-self some central perspective and direction,some working unity, out of the effective rem-nants of his childhood and the hopes of an-ticipated adulthood.w A very revealing bookentitled Stories Parents Seldom Hear: CollegeStudents Write about Their Lives and Familiesbears testimony to this point) The book is acompilation of stories by 11 students enrolledin a writing course at Yale during the 1970s.As their writing teacher points out, "all thetales were written, consciously or uncon-sciously, for parents. It was as if these youngpeople wanted their parents to see them asindependent individuals before they couldstep into adulthood with confidence.rf So notonly is the "typical" methods student white,female, harried and hurried at school, and pos-sibly working part-time, she is also probablyundergoing an identity crisis.

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These are general characteristics. In addi-tion, we know some patterns of intellectualgrowth are taking place over the collegeyears. Two models, those of Perry andGilligan, seem congruent with my own ob-servations of students. I offer the latter view-point particularly because so many methodsstudents are female.

Perry and Methods StudentsPerry's model of intellectual development

is well known and will be reviewed onlybriefly here. His nine-stage model was basedon interviews conducted primarily with malecollege students. Two women were includedin the interview sample, but the judges whocoded the transcripts felt there was no differ-ence between the women and men and thatthe women's answers could be codified ac-cording to the nine-stage scale evident in themen's responses.?

According to Perry's model, young adultsmove from a dualistic perception of theworld to a multiplistic view, to a relativisticview, and finally to personal commitmentwithin the context of relativism. Students inthe first stage On Perry's sample, 75 percentof freshmen at Harvard and Radcliffe) exhibitan essentially dualistic view of the world.They expect college teachers to explain the"correct" or "right" answer to problems.They believe the learner's job is to identifyand memorize the right answers from the ex-planation; the teacher's is to make the expla-nation as clear as possible. Methods studentsat this stage want to know "the best way" toteach a rhythm pattern, or the best methodor text. They seem prepared to accept anyanswer from a college authority. If theteacher demurs, these students sometimesthen suggest that a particular approachseems best to them but look to the instructorfor confirmation. A more sophisticated but stilldualistic version of this position involves theassumption that a "right" answer exists, butthat the college teacher, rather than explainingit, demands that the student discover the an-swer. This unspoken contract suggests moreaction on the part of the learner and expectsthe professor to play fair in the sense of notobfuscating the correct answer.

Occasionally methods students become

The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning

very frustrated when the instructor does notanswer such questions as "Which methodwould you use? Which text do you think isbest?" The students assume that the teacherhas the answer but withholds it from themfor pedagogical reasons. At a certain point,they just want to stop the game.

From this dualistic set of perceptions ofright/wrong answers, Perry's model holdsthat students grow to accept multiple an-swers, the correctness of anyone of whichmay depend on context. All values, moraldecisions, and teaching choices are relative.The methods student who said to me oneday in the hall with some perplexity, "Youknow, when we were studying Kodaly Ithought it was really the way to go, but nowwe're doing Orff and I really enjoy it, too,"was, I think, arriving at this stage. She sim-ply needed some reassurance that it was allright to value two different teaching ap-proaches, some of the values of which are inconflict with each other. She is beginning to

Volume Iv, Number 1

see teaching as a set ofchoices, including peda-gogical ones, ratherthan a decision as toright and wrong formsof instruction.

Perry's third stage,commitment, is "an affir-mation of personal val-ues of choice in relativ-ism." It has been de-scribed as a consciousact or realization of iden-tity in responsibility; aprocess of orientation ofself in a relative world.This stage involves aleap of faith and takingresponsibility; it involvesidentity.lv Perry alsofound that many stu-dents experience a delaybefore reaching thisstage, and some, indeed,never do reach it.Avoidance of commit-ment may take the formof a retreat back into du-alist thinking, or of es-

cape. Students may reason that if all is rela-tive, then one can't act with certainty. Irre-sponsibility is the underlying stance of suchstudents. One writer describing this stage saysthat the leap from relativistic thinking to com-mitment is lonely, and therefore the role of amentor is particularly important at this time inlife.11

My suggestion is that our students may notachieve the third stage until they are teachingin the schools, but their college mentors maystill serve as useful models in memory. Inprofessional life, these new teachers mustmake choices of repertoire and teachingstyles and make the leap of faith to believein their choices, even though they realizetheir answers to any given problem are pro-visional. In a general sense, there are simi-larities among Perry's notion of the commit-ted individual, Erickson's stage of identity,and what the Holmes Group and other writ-ers might call the fully professional teacher.The committed individual, in Perry's terms, is

15

"Whatever we do in methods class, it had better be as powerful

an experience as we can make it, for we are competing with many

other demands on the student's attention and energy."

one who will display qualities of personalcommitment, will take responsibility forchoices, and will continue to consider alter-natives and contexts when making decisionsin the classroom.

Gilligan and Methods StudentsWe need to consider Gilligan's work also,

since our population is largely female, to seeto what extent female development is differ-ent from that of men. Gilligan's argument,set out In a Different Voice12 and elsewhere,is far too long to reproduce here. Gilliganmakes a convincing case that women's moraland intellectual development is significantlydifferent from that of men, despite thepremise of Perry's research team. In brief,Gilligan sees men as defining morality interms of rights, whereas women see it interms of caring and responsibility. Womenare also more likely to define themselves aspart of a web of relationships. Professionalwomen, when asked to describe themselves,used terms such as caring, responsible, andcompassionate, whereas men responded tothe same question by referring to themselvesas bright, successful, and fair. Part of achiev-ing "identity" for women, then, is learning tocare for themselves; that is, to bring a senseof their rights into balance with their devel-oped sense of responsibility.

Other ViewsIn addition to emotional and intellectual de-

velopment, our students are also on a con-tinuum of professional development frompreservice to student teacher to inservice pro-fessional. They are hardly novices when wesee them in our classes, particularly if methodsare taught separate from laboratory school ex-perience. A growing body of research litera-ture in education documents the characteristicsof novices and experts and the differences be-tween their perceptions of given teaching situ-ations.l> While a complete review of such re-search is not possible here, there is clearly adevelopment of perception, knowledge, and

16

skill as one progresses from novice to expertteacher. Expert teachers are committed toteaching, affirm that learning is possible inseemingly impossible settings, and know thatsome things work some of the time with somestudents. They are also skilled technicians. AsRubin puts it, the pedagogically intelligentteacher is expert at analyzing classroom eventsso as to do the right thing at the right time.l?This doesn't happen without reflection on ex-perience. While methods students can'tachieve this state, they can begin to reflectupon the teaching process.l>

To return to describing the methods stu-dent, we have a student who is white, fe-male, physically harried and hurried, possiblyemployed outside school, going through apersonal identity crisis, intellectually some-where along the Perry path from dualist torelativist to committed individual, intellectu-ally and morally somewhere on Gilligan'spath from defining oneself as responsible forothers and part of a web of social connec-tions, to acknowledging responsibility tooneself and having value apart from beingpart of a social fabric. Finally, this student isin the preservice stage of a teaching careerand developing the habit of reflecting uponknowledge and experience in order to some-day experience the fully committed profes-sional life where pedagogical intelligenceand teaching effectiveness flourish.

Putting Theory into Practice inUndergraduate Education

How does this person learn best, and whatdoes that suggest for methods teachers? First,it is clear that the methods class had better beas powerful an experience as we can make it,for we are competing with many other de-mands on the student's attention and energy.More than once my 3:00 p.m. Friday class hassaid, "Please don't make us think today."These students give every indication of beingthought out, emotionally wrung out, and justplain tired out. Second, if we want students todevelop intellectually from dualistic to relativis-


tic thinking, we need to do more than lectureon the subject. We will have to provide themwith models and activities that encouragethem to see teaching choices not as right orwrong but as a series of propositions linkingtheory and practice. For example, if one be-lieves A about music and B about the waychildren learn, then teaching practices X, Y,and Z are consistent and logical choices.Third, if we want students to develop the habitof reflection, we need to structure our classesso that they are required and encouraged toreflect on their experiences as music teachers,fledgling though they may be.

Beyond those rather general ptinciples, canmethods instructors link theory with practice?That is, given models by Perry, Erickson, andGilligan for how undergraduates develop, arecertain teaching practices consistent and logi-cal choices for use in the methods class?One set of affirmative answers is provided ina book called Passages in Teaching: Devel-opmental Crisis in the Teaching of Adoles-cents and Young Adults16 The author, a col-lege teacher of human developmental psy-chology, gives a familiar reason for writingthe book: "I have been intrigued over theyears by descriptions of identity crisis, byportrayals of moral development, intellectualdevelopment, faith development, and otheraspects of human development. The ques-tion has repeatedly nagged my teacher's curi-osity, 'How can 1 use what 1 know of humandevelopment as a teacher?' Sometimes Iwonder whether I don't leave my ownknowledge of intellectual and ethical devel-opment firmly at the door when 1 walk intomy classroom." 17

Gross presents a reasonable theoretical argu-ment for recommending certain kinds of col-lege teaching over others and illustrates hishypotheses with descriptions from his owncollege teaching. In sum, his suggestions forcollege teachers center on two concepts:

1) the developmenr of a community withinthe individual classroom, chiefly through thefrequent use of small group tasks; and2) the style of a course which he calls prob-lem-centered.

Gross refers in detail to Erickson, Perry, andKohlberg, and to examples from his ownteaching in supporting this thesis. Small-groupwork and centering instruction on problems to

Volume Iv, Number 1

be solved, rather than on information to beabsorbed, is consistent with what psycholo-gists tell us about intellectual and moral devel-opment of young adults. Gross also recom-mends frequent testing, shott individual quiz-zes, and longer group efforts. Part of creatinga community of trust, he suggests, is throughfrequent and timely feedback. Trust is alsostrengthened between teacher and studentsand among group members through frequentfeedback and in-class group problem solving,where individuals can express themselveswithout the time delay offered in mid-term orend-of-semester tests.

Gross is not alone in reminding us thatlarge-group lecture--even lecture with ques-tions to individual students or lecture plus dis-cussion and testing-is not the most powerfulteaching strategy we have, although it is prob-ably the one most typically associated withcollege teaching. Dewey's "We learn by do-ing," Whitehead's admonition against inertideas in education (ideas that are merely "re-ceived into the mind without being utilized ortested or thrown into fresh combinations=U')and the Holmes Group's position that trueteaching is interactive, not a one-way commu-nication from teacher to student, all expressthe notion that students at any age benefitfrom being confronted with problems or tasksto solve. Small-group tasks are a practicalmeans of requiring students to do somethingwith the ideas being presented them.

Gross gives several examples in his disci-pline, human psychology. In my own meth-ods teaching, 1 think more and more of"seatwork." When 1 taught grade-school math,lessons consisted of short teacher presenta-tions followed by seatwork, a way for studentsto put the presentation into practice somehow,and for me to gauge the depth of their under-standing. Seatwork in methods class mighttake the form of small groups deciding whichsong of five is unsuitable to teach by rote,solving a puzzle where each member has partof a scope and sequence chart and the grouphas to reconstruct the whole chart, or groupsdiscussing a short description of a teachingevent and identifying a particular musical con-cept or pupil behavior. These are some small-scale samples that represent Gross's smallgroup/active problem-solving.

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Empirical Observations of Un-dergraduate Education

Let me now review where we are in theargument so far. We have a description ofthe college undergraduate whose features in-clude intellectual and ethical growth patternsdefined by Erikson, Perry, and Gilligan.What do those growth patterns suggest forcollege teachers? I have offered one psychol-ogy teacher's answer: small-group work, fre-quent testing, and a problem-centered ratherthan information-giving course orientation.Frankly, I latched onto Gross's book withglee because he was one of the few writerswho seemed willing to make the leap fromtheoretical models to implications for collegepractice. The question follows: "Is he right?"Is there evidence to support Gross's hypoth-eses regarding the kinds of teaching that bestreflect undergraduates' intellectual growthpatterns?

An affirmative answer comes fromHarvard's recent empirical study of effectivecollege teaching; its stated purpose was toascertain conditions under which under-graduates do their best work. The study in-volved 365 students and 100 faculty and usedboth questionnaires and logs. The report,entitled "The Harvard Assessment Seminars:Explorations with Students and Faculty aboutTeaching, Learning and Student Life," re-ported the following:

1) College students do their best in coursesthat include frequent checkpoints. Quickturn-around time in receiving feedback frominstructors was important.2) Students do better when they study ingroups at least some of the time. In smallergroups, students spoke more often, askedmore questions, and were generally more en-gaged than in larger groups. Faculty wereadvised to set up study groups as a result ofthis assessment.3) Men and women contrast sharply in howthey study and what they expect from college.Women tend to value more highly adviserswho took the time to know them personally,while men like advisers who make directivesand concrete suggestions. Men's satisfactionwith college is tied to how well they do aca-demically, while women are influenced moreby personal relationships and informal en-counters with faculry.l?

The first two of these points bear remark-

18

able similarity to Gross's conclusions basedon the developmental psychology of college-age students: Students benefit from frequenttesting and from working in small groupsengaged in concrete tasks. The third findingsupports Gilligan's thesis that women's de-velopment is indeed different from men'sand suggests that the role of mentor is evenmore important for women than men. Forwomen students, individual conferences andinformal feedback outside of class may bejust as powerful, or more so, than events inthe music education methods class.

ConclusionIn summary, the authors discussed here

offer a number of concrete suggestions foreffective methods of teaching. Our instruc-tion should:

1. provide frequent feedback (either formalor informal) about students' understanding ofmaterial;2. consist of interactive teaching in whichstudents solve meaningful problems usinginformation presented in lectures and inprinted material;3. offer many opportunities for discussionand problem solving in small groups;4. provide opportunities to apply methodsknowledge to teaching schoolchildren;5. offer mentoring by professors, includingmodeling good music teaching and showingpersonal interest in students outside the class-room;6. provide shared discussion and analysis ofsimulated teaching, perhaps by videotape;7. require students to engage in reflection ontheir own teaching and learning.

This final suggestion is particularly importantbecause reflection is a habit good teacherscarry throughout life. In methods class, I amcontent if my students move from Perry's firststage to the second, from looking for the rightway to teach to finding merit in many ways ofteaching, depending on the context. In thelong run, however, students must realize thatnot all choices are equally effective in givensituations. Good teachers don't have the"right" answers, nor do they choose randomlyfrom a multiple set of answers, but rather theychoose specifically for given classroom events.They also engage in an active ongoing searchfor better solutions to the problems that con-front them. It is important that from the be-


ginning students cherish the search for solu-tions to teaching problems; that they see com-mitment to that search as part of what definesa mature teacher.

Notes1. New York Times. "Harvard Assessment Semi-nars," Mar. 5, 1990.2. Carnegie Task Force on Teaching as a Profes-sion: A Nation Prepared (Washington, D.C.:Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy,1986). Holmes Group, Tomorrow's Teachers (EastLansing, MI: Holmes Group Inc., 1986).3. Three recent titles attest to continuing nationalinterest in the state of undergraduate education.See Alexander Astin, What Matters in College?Four Critical Years Revisited (San Francisco:]ossey-Bass, 1992); Marcia Magolda, Knowing andReasoning in College: Gender-Related Patterns inStudents' Intellectual Development (San Francisco:]ossey-Bass, 1992); and Ernest Pascarella andPatrick Terenzini, How CollegeAffects Students:Findings and Insights from Twenty Years of Re-search (San Francisco: ]ossey-Bass, 1992).4. Ronald Opp, "Freshman Interest in Teaching:Recent Trends," Journal of Teacher Education 40no. 5 (Iuly/Aug. 1989),43-48.5. Michael Sedlak and Steven Schlossman, "WhoWill Teach? Historical Perspectives on the Chang-ing Appeal of Teaching as a Profession," in ErnstRothkopf ed., Review of Research in Education,Vol. 14 (Washington D.C.: AERA, 1987).6. Quoted in Francis Gross, Passages in Teaching:Developmental Crises in the Teaching of Adoles-cents and Young Adults (New York: DelacortePress, 1982), p. 16.7. Harriet Harvey, Stories Parents Seldom Hear:College Students l17riteabout Their Lives and Fami-lies (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982).8. ibid, Preface.9. William Perry, Forms of Intellectual and EthicalDevelopment in the College Years (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1968). For an introduc-tion to Perry applied in the music methods class,see Manny Brand, "Toward a Better Understand-ing of Undergraduate Music Education Majors:Perry's Perspective," CRMEBulletin No. 98 (Fall1988), 22-3l.10. Quoted by Gross, p. 85.11. Gross, p. 9l.12. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psycho-logical Theory and Women's Development (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). An-other view of women's experience of learning isoffered by Mary Belenky et al. in Women's Waysof Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, andMind (USA: Basic Books, 1986). This book pre-sents a female counterpart to Perry's descriptionof male students' development.13. See for examples, Chris Clark and PenelopePeterson, "Teachers' Thought Processes" inWittrock, ed., Handbook of Research on Teaching

Volume IV, Number 1

3rd edition (New York: MacMillan, 1986); CarolLivingstone and Hilda Borko, "Expert- ovice Dif-ferences in Teaching: A Cognitive Analysis andImplications for Teacher Education," Journal ofTeacher Education 40, no. 5 (luly/ Aug. 1989), 36-42; and D. Berliner, "Ways of Thinking about Stu-dents and Classrooms by More and Less Experi-enced Teachers" in J. Calderhead, ed., ExploringTeachers' Thinking (London: Cassal EducationalLtd., 1987), pp. 60-83.14. Louis Rubin, "The Thinking Teacher: Cultivat-ing Pedagogical Intelligence," Journal of TeacherEducation Vol. 40 (Nov./Dec. 1989), 31-34.15. For a thought-provoking introduction to devel-oping expert teachers through reflection on prac-tice, see David Elliott, "Rethinking Music TeacherEducation," Journal of Music Teacher Education 2,no. 1 (Fall, 1992),6-15.16. Francis Gross, Passages in Teaching: Develop-mental CrisesIn the Teaching of Adolescents andYoung Adults (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982).17. ibid, p. 13.18. Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Educa-tion (New York: The Free Press, 1929), p. 1.19. Results as reported in "Harvard AssessmentSeminars," The New York Times, Mar. 5, 1990.~,

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