Survey: Piano teachers are stuck in their development

Survey: Piano teachers are stuck in their development

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norman lebrecht

September 13, 2018

A survey of 389 British piano teachers conducted by the Finchcocks learning centre yields some predictable depressing results:

Finchcocks’ survey revealed that over a third of piano teachers – 37% – do not undertake any formal professional development. For most teachers, this was not because they had no interest in developing their skills – in fact the vast majority (90%) said they wanted more training – but it was because of the scarcity of courses available for teachers. Indeed 25% of piano teachers surveyed rated the provision of teaching resources available to piano teachers as “poor” or “very poor”.

Motivation, practice and rhythm key teaching challenges

An almost unanimous 94% of piano teachers surveyed stated that they’d like to develop techniques for better motivating their students; 9 out of 10 teachers stated that they’d like to develop methods of instilling better practice techniques in their students; and 89% of teachers admitted that teaching students to play rhythmically was a key challenge.

 

Comments

  • brian says:

    Do you have a link to this? I’d want to see their methodology and other detail — these kinds of surveys frequently behave like their counterparts in the political realm, i.e., they often contain hidden agenda and statistical confounds or sample/population mismatch, so allowing readers the ability to examine the survey construction and its methodology, MoE, etc., would be useful.

    • Malcolm Kottler says:

      Try this blog on the Finchcocks website:

      https://www.finchcocks.com/teachers/piano-teachers-struggle-find-right-professional-development/

      September 11, 2018
      37% PIANO TEACHERS STRUGGLE TO FIND RIGHT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

    • Sandrine Musique says:

      Could it be mere coincidence that a new course is being launched at Finchcocks?

    • Saxon Broken says:

      Er…political polls actually have very high standards in the way they construct their estimates, and the people doing them spend a lot of time being careful and discussing their techniques. They are, pretty much, the “gold standard” for polls. The fact that they don’t always get it shows how hard it is to get good results from polls.

      This is in sharp contrast to most other polls, which are extremely slapdash in how they approach sampling. So much so that I wouldn’t take their results very seriously at all.

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