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Nuggets to Reflect On: Reserach that Changed my
Nuggets to Reflect On: Research that Changed my Teaching…. Part I

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by Dr. Ruth Brittin, CMEA Higher Education and
Research Representative
Hi, CMEA Readers.
Reflecting on events of the summer and last couple years, I started thinking on the research studies that change a person’s life. By that I mean the way one teaches, or the skills, materials, or philosophies one prioritizes. There are a few studies that have impacted me in a “WOW, who’d of thought?” way. And they transformed my teaching. I would like to focus this 2022-2023 year on collecting reflections on impactful studies from my colleagues around the state. It might be a particular technique where a colleague thought “this is the way everyone does it”… and then it turns out there is another way that works (maybe even better). It might be a revelation that bends the arc of one’s direction or philosophy. What are some of these inspiring research projects, be they recent or vintage? And how did this research change practice?
I will be asking various university and college music educators what research studies transformed their own teaching. The colleagues I ask might reflect on seminal studies that shaped their research agendas or careers, inspirational studies that catapulted them into a new line of exploration, or studies that inspired them to “shake up” their work with students or teachers in the field.
Colleagues around the state can share their perspectives, reflecting along these lines: 1. What was a study showing me something I didn’t really know existed? 2. What was a “mythbuster” study disproving something thought to be “true”?
The caveat is that our contributors center on something they learned from reading our journals associated with NAfME and CMEA.
And so I will start with a few thoughts on a study that impacted me! There have been a lot, so it is hard to choose…. So I’ll go with a vintage study that transformed my teaching. It was written by Rita Klinger, Patricia Shehan Campbell, and Thomas Goolsby, and it appeared in 1998 in Journal of Research in Music Education, titled “Approaches to Children’s Song Acquisition: Immersion and Phrase-by-Phrase.” I was just finishing my first year in California teaching at University of the Pacific when it was published, after being a music educator in New York, Florida, and Texas for fifteen years.
So why did this study surprise me? In teaching university students how to teach general music (the majority of them instrumentalists who thought they would NEVER need, much less want, to teach elementary general music), I had learned a specific mode of rote teaching songs. Please keep in mind rote teaching is a very appropriate mode of learning music at the elementary level as part of developing music literacy. This rote teaching model is described in Klinger, Shehan, and Goolsby’s study as the “lineby-line” or “phrase-by-phrase” approach. Indeed, this was the approach I had always seen used, and it has deep association with the “chunking” approach in psychology. It makes sense to us as a sequential approach: Model a phrase and have students repeat it, model the next phrase with students echoing, put those shorter parts together in a longer chain and have them echo; continue with more phrases and ever-longer phrases, and the students learn the song by having “chunked” it together by successive approximations. That’s the approach I had always seen used (across multiple institutions in diverse parts of the country).
However, this 1998 study was a controlled comparison of that approach with another approach, the “immersion” approach. I was astonished. Here’s what went through my mind: “I’m a university professor, I’ve been teaching how to do this for over a decade, my students are very successful, and yet…. Here’s another way some people approach rote teaching! Well, the study is in JRME, and its authors I highly respect…. OK, what the heck is this?!?”
I spent hours reading that study. Here is the summary: The immersion approach gives more opportunities to hear the song completely before the student is asked to start singing. For students, it gives more chances to get the song “in your ear” before trying to produce it with the voice. It “immerses” the listener in the total context before reproducing the target. By contrast, the “line-byline” approach asks students to start emulating the teacher’s model sooner, before hearing the full context of the song several times. It turns out that hearing the model several times in its entirety, BEFORE starting to sing, is more effective (at least with relatively simple four-phrase structures). It seems the connections between the phrases are the “weak points” in learning the song with confidence, and the “phrase-by-phrase” approach does not strengthen the confidence in moving from one phrase to the next as much as the immersion approach.
Well, I read that study. I couldn’t believe it. What?? This
approach I had scarcely seen used had such profound effects? I spent hours (yes, HOURS) poring over that study trying to understand it. Was it a fair comparison? Did the students in this controlled experiment literally get the same amount of instruction in each condition? (the answer is yes). How could this be? Why would people gravitate to “phrase-by-phrase” if immersion is so much more effective? Those questions make for good class discussion! And while one finds references that the Gordon method, for example, advocates for multiple listenings before singing and using good questioning to focus attention (https://giml.org/mlt/classroom/), I have certainly come across many teachers who use the conventional “phrase-by-phrase” structure as standard procedure.
There is a nuance of immersion that is important. One must engage the students’ focus during those initial listenings so they do not become bored or restless, and thus having engaging prompts or focusing strategies is critical. The immersion technique takes some extra effort from the teacher to creatively and efficiently keep students’ attention. Until one gets accustomed to the approach and/ or knows their students and their needs very well, it takes some extra preparation to have effective listening prompts in mind.
Well, the point of research is that you go with the evidence. If the evidence, the facts, show you a certain thing, you consider that in its full weight. You don’t just say, “Well, it must have been rigged,” or “it must have been a conspiracy,” just because you did not see the result you expected or wanted. When one is an educator, an educated person, a critical thinker, one gives full weight to what one might have considered implausible. That is the definition of having an “open mind” and of critical thinking!
So what was the result of this big “aha”? I reshaped my classes. Instead of teaching “phrase-by-phrase” exclusively, I started teaching both systems, showing students the research, having discussion, talking about limitations (other ages and formal structures might have a different effect), and encouraging them to explore both models (and possible hybrid models) in their teaching and maybe their future research. The discussions in class often center around the question, “Why, when the immersion model has been shown to have distinct advantages, do we gravitate towards the “line-by-line” approach?” Students often mention their uneasiness in keeping students’ attention through multiple listenings (and thus the urge to “get them doing something” right away to avoid classroom management issues). However, if the students are internalizing incorrect pitches, or lyrics, or insecurities about their singing, the rush to get them singing too soon may be counterproductive.
It is easy to rely on “phrase-by-phrase” as a formula, so that knowing how the song goes is all the preparation needed. Of course, as teachers get more experience, and know their students’ abilities and interests better, they can utilize effective prompts more fluidly in the moment. But for those of us working with teachers new to elementary general music, helping them understand the importance of good prompts and incorporating chances to practice developing and using those focusing prompts is important. Thus with many teachers in the last year or two adding elementary general music into their loads, this is a topic for induction programs and inservices. Additionally, as mentioned, this effect may not apply to all ages or stages of musical development, and that would be a great nuance to research further!
The conclusion? Reading the research journals (JRME, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education) may lead to revolutions in your teaching. If you feel like you don’t have time to read the journals, then engaging with conferences, in-services, and the student teachers coming out of higher ed programs may jumpstart conversations about new approaches (or substantiate existing curricula or modes of delivery).
The point of research is that we are constantly looking for new understandings and examining “best practice” to know what really is best. We live in a constantly changing environment, so what was best a century (or five years) ago may have morphed. I think that is why it is called research. We search. And then we continue to search (thus RE-search). It is never-ending. For an educated and evercurious person… isn’t that the point? There’s always more to learn!!
I have quoted Socrates more than once over the years in CMEA magazine articles… and this quote has been posted on my office door for many years. I’ll quote it again: “Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
You might be wondering if anyone else has tried this comparison again, perhaps with students of a different age. Indeed, Natalie Sorrells replicated the study in 2006 in her masters thesis at Texas Tech University, including both 2nd and 5th graders. The title was “The Effects of Immersion and Phrase-by-Phrase Learning on Elementary Students’ Song Acquisition”
I found this study at this link using a Google search with the terms “music education research singing immersion.” Sorrells also asked students which approach they preferred. Overall, both ages learned songs with fewer errors with immersion. Overall, this was true regardless of the student’s preferred approach (although there was a higher connection between better performance and preference for the immersion approach).
So, again, immersion was found effective, this time with two different ages, tested out in a different part of the country roughly ten years after the Klinger, et al. study. It was interesting that in the 2006 thesis, the author cited previous data she had collected in 2004, which found 100% of the teachers in that area reported using the phrase-by-phrase approach. This brings to mind questions for today: How much do teachers identify with these approaches? Do teachers incorporate immersion techniques with song material before using phrase-by-phrase (perhaps amounting to a hybrid approach)? How do teachers describe their process?
This brings us to a more recent dissertation by Kateri Miller, “Song Teaching and Singing Accuracy of Third Grade Elementary Music Students: An Investigation using Multilevel Modeling,” from 2020. Here, Miller tested out (with over 300 students and 22 teachers) the phrase-by-phrase, “holistic” (immersion), and combination approaches. Her analysis is more intricate, and she used a researcher-composed song that did not include any repeated phrases (a unique variable as all other studies before had at least one repeated phrase in the four-bar song structure). She did not find statistically significant differences in the three approaches, though she found some evidence that perhaps phrase-by-phrase was most impactful. You can easily access her dissertation to explore these nuances further; I found the study at this link using a Google search. Seek and you shall find, and then you’ll find some more! The Klinger, et al. (1998) is an example of a study that made me take a hard look at my own teaching approaches. I look forward over the coming year to seeing what vintage and newer studies have inspired my colleagues around California. And don’t forget, at CASMEC we will have our annual Research and Educational Projects Poster Session on Friday morning so we can see what all our friends have been seeking and finding out lately. Here’s to a great new year of exploration!