Learning Music to be a Better Teacher

Wanting to become a better teacher? While there are many excellent ways to improve your instruction, I’d like to offer one that may seem a little unusual: learn a new instrument.

I will grant that this seems at first a completely useless bit of advice; after all, what use does a biology instructor have for being able to play piano? On the surface of it, not much, though I’d also like to add that – in my mind at least – playing music is a reward on its own. There is of course a salient argument to be made that learning music makes it easier to make connections across disciplinary lines, and that alone is a huge benefit to being fluent in an instrument. As an example, I can say without a doubt that my love for music makes me a better instructor for my non-majors simply because it gives me another chance to connect with students outside of the course material. I’ve written enough about the importance of those student-teacher connections that I don’t think it needs much repetition here. Instead, I want to argue (and hopefully show) in this post that learning an instrument – more specifically, the process of learning one – provides distinct benefits derived from the insights it gives us into the process of learning.

Learning an Instrument is a Multi-faceted Process

When I first learned violin, it became very clear very quickly (and very noisily) that this is an extremely complicated instrument to master. Violin was the last of five or six instruments I play, so I already had the general knowledge of music down fairly solidly, but the actual mechanics of the instrument were completely mind-boggling. I had to learn how to properly hold the bow, how to hold the violin, proper posture, proper finger placement, and on through a very long list of skills. And of course, not only was each separate skill a challenge, but I also had to learn how they all fit together! And then there was the more musical side: emotions, timbres, dynamics and so on. The same can be said of many instruments, yet to a skilled musician, playing their instrument is simply one fluid act. We just do it, without thinking consciously about it. We can say the same thing about the skills that make up our field; truly doing ecology, for instance, requires knowing the basic foundational knowledge, understanding the extent and limitations of our knowledge, being able to produce and digest scientific research, and to place it in the context of the greater pool of human knowledge. Each of these is a distinct skill, yet to a distinguished scientist, it all makes up one thing. For many of us, our field is likely second nature (we are unconsciously competent), and so learning an instrument can potentially improve our teaching by making us consciously aware of the multi-faceted nature of learning. In a sense, it renews our sense of being incompetent, which can help us design better courses that reflect more aspects of our field than simply the foundational knowledge.

Being a Novice Learner Again

Let’s face it: learning comes naturally to the instructors. We are the embodiment of lifelong learners, and by the very nature of what we did to get there (particularly the dissertation or these process of advanced degrees) learning has become something we can do almost effortlessly. Many of us may have forgotten how extremely frustrating learning something new can be, and I have no doubt this colors not only our expectations for students, but also how we perceive and respond to that frustration when we see it in students. I have seen many a professor respond with “how do you not understand this?!” style shock when instead what we should be doing is offering encouragement and reassuring students they cannot be immediate experts. Learning an instrument is, frankly, a pain in the butt. Look at the long list of skills that went into the violin; the only way to master them is long hours of practice and self-criticism. It’s not a comfortable process, and after 7 years of playing I still have a lot of stuff to work on. Just as learning an instrument can make us more conscious of the multi-faceted nature of learning, it can also make us [painfully] aware of the frustration that comes with breaking down knowledge barriers. It might also highlight areas where our expectations for students are misguided; just as no one is an instant advanced musician, we cannot expect our students to be instant experts in our fields.

The Song of Learning

In many ways, I would argue that learning the totality of a field (i.e. the overarching goals of, say, a whole course) is almost perfectly analogized by the learning of a new song. Although we may spend days or weeks on particular parts of that song/field, it truly only comes into existence when we play the whole thing in context. This also highlights a very important learning strategy called interleaving, where students focus on individual aspects of a skill, interspersed with focusing on the whole context or message. Musicians learning a song do the same thing; our orchestra rehearsal seasons begin with a night where we just play through the entire concert to get a rough feel for the grand scheme of the works; subsequent rehearsals are spent focusing in much more detail on particularly troublesome spots. I’ve been slowly learning the opening to Bach’s violin partita No. 2, and there are times when – although I prefer to play the whole thing – I spend half an hour on one or two measures. It is not much of a stretch to see how this same approach is used in learning, and so going through the process as a novice a musician can potentially give us important insight that we might use to structure and plan a course.

To close, I must point out that the three main benefits above are absolutely not limited to learning an instrument; indeed, I’m fairly confident that most skills sufficiently far from our areas of expertise could yield similar insights. Of course, listening to and playing music has documented cognitive benefits as well, though that’s far outside my ken (perhaps it’s a new skill I should learn!), but I think it can also directly impact our teaching by reminding us what it feels like to be novices. And even if that weren’t true, is not music a worthy end undo itself?

Unknown Unknowns

I know of few phrases that have been so derided in recent times as Donald Rumsfeld’s famous “Unknown unknowns.” In all honesty, though, as nonsensical as the phrase may seem at first glance, it actually conveys a very important idea, one that we as educators should be much more aware of. The same idea is also contained in Socrates’ famous quote “If I know anything, it is only that I know nothing.” In that case, Socrates would have been talking about Known Unknowns, and both of those represent points on a kind of spectrum of competency. I remember graduating from college thinking I knew a good deal about how the world worked, and six years later I’m convinced we know next to nothing about that same subject. What could have possibly happened (besides the insidious and very real imposter syndrome)? Simply put, the more I learned, the more I started to see the gaps, and I’m sure most readers who have an advanced degree can entirely sympathize with that experience. Because we have such a firm grasp of what we still need to learn, we are at or near the end of the competency spectrum.

When students start out, they are what can be considered “unconsciously incompetent.” I know that sounds like a harsh term, because of the unavoidable connotations of the word “incompetent,” but it simply means that novice learners don’t have competence with a particular skill set, and that they don’t know how to address that…that is, the unkowns are, to them, unknown. As they learn more and start to develop skills, students (if primed to think about how they learn) hopefully develop the ability to highlight important areas for improvement. They have become “consciously incompetent,” meaning they are still struggling to develop a skill, but they now know areas where their knowledge is lacking. I like to think of my own development as a musician: when I first started learning violin, everything was new and I had no idea how to even start learning the instrument. Nowadays, although I still have a lot of room for improvement, I have a firm idea of things that need work: my tone, my use of dynamics, and so on. Armed with that knowledge, I can devise strategies and devote effort to fixing my weakness. Is that not precisely what we want our students to be able to do?

Of course, “conscious incompetence” is only about halfway through the competency spectrum. Getting students there is a huge accomplishment, but ideally we want students to be able to move even further, to “conscious competence,” where they have conscious mastery of a skill set. I would argue that many starting graduate students fall into that category. We enter graduate school with a solid handle on research methodology, writing, and the technical know-how of our fields, but we are still developing and it may still require a good deal of effort to use those skills. At the final end of the spectrum is “unconscious competence,” which I like to think of as synonymous with “second nature.” Again, I like to refer to my own music education: although I am definitely consciously incompetent with the violin (maybe consciously competent on a good day), playing trombone or piano are second nature to me. I don’t have to consciously think about all the small technical details that add up to performance, I just do them. Of course, at one point, that was far from the case, and it has only been constant practice and use of those skill sets that has allowed me to fluidly and competently play music. That’s certainly another argument for the importance of challenging work to help students develop, but I would argue that we need to be aware of the competency spectrum for two other reasons.

We as instructors are usually unconsciously competent, with the possible exception of first-time instructors teaching something somewhat outside of their immediate field. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, being unconsciously competent can actually prove an obstacle to effective teaching, because we may have forgotten what it was like to first learn a subject and the particular obstacles we faced. For instance, when I taught my remedial marine science course a couple of summers ago, I stumbled (to put it mildly) when it came time to teach the Pythagorean Theorem. The math and idea was so familiar to me that I could not comprehend how differently my students were approaching the problem (compounded by my lack of knowledge of metacognition), and I just ended up doing the worst thing a struggling instructor can do: repeating the same thing over and over. Had I taken the time to really consider what my students were thinking, perhaps it would have occurred to me to start with a tactile, physical example of how the Pythagorean Theorem actually works in the real world, which would have been a much better starting point than just jumping into a formula with no background. Any time we teach something that is second nature to us, we risk falling into the same problem, and so next time you’re teaching something and students “just don’t get it,” consider the possibility that we just haven’t yet given them the framework to understand the skill in the way we do. Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this issue beyond active thought on our part as instructors, but actively talking with our students to understand where they may be stumbling is an essential first step.

The second reason that the competency spectrum becomes essentially important is a bit broader-scale than issues of instruction. Even the luckiest students, those who know precisely what they want to do in life, start out without clear knowledge of how to make that happen. In other words, they have a goal, but no path. Of course, this is why we have well-defined curricula; students may know what they want to do, but we as the experts (presumably) know how to help students get there. In the traditional approach to education based on set curricula, this is an excellent solution to that aspect of students’ unconscious incompetence (assuming the curriculum is well-designed and articulated, but that’s a separate issue). However, in recent times, there has been an extremely rapid growth in “personalized education,” education that is student designed and driven. While the importance of passion in driving learning cannot be overstated, shifting curricular control mostly or entirely to students (especially at lower levels) carries a great deal of risk because of students’ unconscious incompetence. Ignoring the fact that many starting students may not even know what they want to do in the long run, how can even the best-meaning student truly design a curriculum that works for them if they don’t know what they need to know or learn? This is not an insurmountable obstacle, of course, and I honestly think the shift to a more personalized education is a net good thing. That said, as the shift continues and “students as customers” (why I despise that notion is a separate subject) get more control over their education, we have to remember that in this case, the customer is not always right. If they were, they wouldn’t need an education.

And maybe we can all learn a new instrument in the meantime; it just might be that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to learn something entirely new.

Cogito ergo…cogito?

I had said previously I wanted to write a post discussing the topic of metacognition (which can be summarized as “thinking about thinking”), because it is a natural outgrowth of considering the importance of grading as communication. While I was sitting on that particular topic until I had written about some others, I stumbled across this article during my morning internet stroll, and it hit me that this may be a perfect time.

The idea of metacognition is not new, nor is it new for good teachers to at least intuitively make use of the ideas in class. Indeed, Pedagogy Unbound over at the Chronicle recently released on excellent article on the use of metacognition principles in course design. The idea is basically to get students thinking about how they learn new things, which is in fact one of the six “domains” of Fink’s significant learning taxonomy. This can be accomplished many ways over the course of an entire semester and even an education, and the reader curious about those powerful curriculum design methods will likely find that column indispensable. The overall goal of metacognition approaches is to help students learn how to learn, both practically to prepare for exams and more abstractly to become lifelong learners. This is of course one of the central goals of any good course/education, but what I want to talk about is a little different, and goes back to the study I linked in the first paragraph. What I think should be discussed more often usually occurs early in a student’s life (possibly even before we get them in higher ed): the creation of fixed versus growth mindsets.

Think of a skill that you use frequently. Maybe you’re an excellent writer, or an astute musician. Perhaps you’re great with your hands or an amateur gourmet chef. Regardless of the skill, I’d be willing to bet that – at some point in your life – you were awful at it. In my own case, I like to consider my musical instruments (in this and many other aspects of teaching): I am fairly good at violin nowadays, but when I first started, I was banned from practicing within earshot of another human being. It was extremely frustrating, especially because I was surrounded by exceptionally talented musicians, but I knew I would improve with enough practice. That is precisely what the growth mindset says. Had I been holding a fixed mindset, the outcome would have been very different; I likely would have put down the violin to never touch it again under the assumption that I just wasn’t “a born musician.” Now think of your students. How many of them enter your class “knowing” that they can never play the proverbial violin? What are you doing to encourage them to practice?

The issue of fixed or growth mindsets seems to become even more pronounced when you teach non-majors, which is my particular specialty here at UGA. It is often easy to tell by students’ actions within the first class meeting who is eager to try new things, and who is convinced that they can never possibly understand this subject that is so outside their own domain. In more cases than not, the latter group consists of students who in the past have suffered under an inadequate teacher of the subject. Without knowing better, such students often internalize their failures in the subject as a reflection of their own capacity, not knowing that it may be a reflection rather of how they’re taught. That of course is an insidious problem, and one not entirely easy to fix, but we have the opportunity as higher ed instructors to undo at least some of that damage. So can we go about that?

One of the most important steps in encouraging a growth mindset is to make students care about the material. I stuck with violin and the hours of hellish sounds I produced because I really, really wanted to be able to play some of the beautiful music written for the instrument. I deeply cared about it, and I was willing to sound embarrassingly bad because I know the payoff will/would be worth it. If students can say the same about the material you teach, then the biggest obstacle has been overcome. Usually, this might mean nothing more than explicitly saying at the beginning of a course why you think it’s important for students. For example, I start my own organismal biology course with a discussion of current controversies that have a biological component, making the case that students need to understand biology to understand these issues. I also make an active effort to relate every day of material to something the students encounter in day to day life; with a little thought and effort, you might be surprised how easy this actually is when you teach a subject you deeply care about. If students are on board with you in thinking your subject is important or even intrinsically interesting, they will almost always be willing to put forth the effort to “practice” rather than turn away from difficult material.

Of course, getting students interested is only one step, albeit a big one; a course must also be designed to allow students to practice their skills at the subject under low- or even no-stakes conditions. Some may point out that this sounds like “teaching to the test,” and I would agree; but if the test assesses the key skills (not content, a topic for later) they need to develop, is it so bad to teach to it? If my violin instructor gave me a bunch of practice materials then assessed me by handing me a piano concerto to play, my reaction would have been…less than pleased. On that line, the other big factor in encouraging a growth mindset is *drumroll* your grading! As I discussed in the previous post, grading should be a communication tool, a way to acknowledge the skills your students have developed and show them how they can improve and build on those skills. Something as simple as tweaking your grading a little can make a huge difference, especially early in the semester.

To close, I want to mention something that might seem a little counter-intuitive. Sometimes, it is the smartest of students who display the most rigid fixed mindsets. This may come as a surprise, but often times these students have been able to adopt new skills with ease as they explore them, and they have repeatedly received feedback from well-meaning peers and parents that they are “just so smart.” The consequence is that later in life, when they are challenged with new things (such as in the high school to college transition), they might dismiss skills they cannot immediately master as something they simply cannot do. Many of my close friends who try to take up an instrument in their adult life have fallen prey to this mindset, at least at first, without remembering that everything was at one point a new skill to them. As more and more research comes out confirming the lifelong plasticity of the brain, that will change, but for now, we as instructors should always keep in mind that sometimes our first challenge is to convince students that they can even learn in the first place.

As an aside: musical instruments seem to come up a lot as a perfect example of the benefits of practice for learning. Perhaps that is an argument for more musical education at a young age? Hmmm.