Teachers' perception and teaching techniques using students' music preferences for instrumental classes : a case study of Bangkok Music and Dance Academy

Abstract

The purposes of this study were 1) to study teachers’ perceptions on students’ music preferences by specific factors such as music characteristics, familiarity, age, gender, mood, social influences, and nationality. 2) to collect teachers’ teaching techniques on music preferences to summarize their teaching methods in the document through specific factors. The methodology of this study was qualitative. Data collection was gathered through semi-structured interviews with 12 instrumental teachers at Bangkok Music and Dance Academy (BMDA). The findings of this study revealed teachers’ perceptions and teaching techniques by using students’ music preferences. 1) Musical Characteristics: Students' musical characteristics of music preferences can be summarized into complexity, tempo, and favorite form in this study. Also, their favorite musical characteristics are individual things. Moreover, teachers would give a lot of information of the style to understand each style and song. 2) Familiarity: Listening to the song frequently or repeatedly can gradually change students’ musical preferences. So, model performance (imitation) would be one of the clear teaching techniques. 3) Age: The different age groups have clearly different tastes of music and different ways to teach by the teachers themselves. 4) Gender: There are no differences in music preferences and teaching techniques between male and female students. 5) Mood: Teachers strongly believed that mostly, students’ mood does not affect their music preferences. However, students’ mood is able to affect their lessons. Therefore, sometimes, the relationship between teacher and student is important and the teacher needs to be a persuader or a negotiator. 6) Social influences: It is one of the strong factors that can affect the taste of students’ music. Also, teachers included students’ favorite repertoires in their lessons. 7) Nationality: The factor of nationality can affect students’ musical preferences because the ways of teaching and materials are different in each country. Also, understanding different cultures from different countries would be helpful to teach students from different countries. Furthermore, teachers can use students’ music preferences as a tool such as students’ favorite pieces as a repertoire, repetition, imitation, different tastes of music, and using social media. Lastly, in order to engage in learning Music, teachers should know students’ preferences, their appropriate selected repertoires, and a proper lesson plan is needed.