DISCUSIÓN

Sometimes people talk about “feeling motivated”—or perhaps “being unmotivated”—to do something, as if motivation is an emotional force that comes and goes, beyond their control. As we have seen in this chapter, some sources of motivation are more related to emotions than others. Regardless, there is much that performers can do to affect their own motivation and to sup-port the musical efforts of students they teach and other musicians around them.

There is perhaps nothing more important for performers and teachers than contributing to positive musical experiences for children. The youngest students, especially, thrive in a musical environment marked by playful engagement and exploration. As teachers guide students in their development and introduce in-creasing rigor in their studies, they should guard against taking all the fun out of  music! Teachers are also responsible for teaching their students how to practice

Motivation 59

and build musical self-efficacy. Young aspiring musicians need help setting ap-propriate performance goals for themselves and being reminded about

why

they are performing. As shown by the research on task-involved and ego-involved goal orientations, a young musician’s motives for performing can affect how rewarding musical experiences will be.

Musicians can also take an active role in shaping their own motivation. Per-formers can too often find themselves primarily responding to the expectations of others such that their own musical preferences are ignored. To remedy this, musicians may, for example, seek out informal opportunities to play a favorite musical style that is absent from their formal music involvement. Even within their usual music activities, they should look for ways to exert personal choice, perhaps in the repertoire they work on or the kind of performances they engage in (e.g., collaborative music making rather than solo performance). In most cases, it is an underlying love of music that leads us to make music an impor-tant part of our lives. We must continually work to set goals for ourselves that make our music activities appropriately challenging and rewarding for us.

Study Questions

1. What are the influences in the lives of young musicians that can threaten their intrinsic motivation for musical involvement?

2. Describe how motivation is provided by different people at different points in a musician’s development.

3. According to the research, how do a musician’s expectancies and goals affect his or her performance achievement?

Further Reading 

Maehr, M. L., Pintrich, P. R., & Linnenbrink, E. A. (2002). Motivation and achieve-ment. In R. Colwell & C. Richardson (Eds.), The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning(pp. 348–372).

O’Neill, S. A., & McPherson, G. E. (2002). Motivation. In R. Parncutt & G. E.

McPherson (Eds.), The Science and Psychology of Music Performance: Cre-ative Strategies for Teaching and Learning(pp. 31–46).

The above offer comprehensive reviews of motivational theories as applied to music education.

Moore, D. G., Burland, K., & Davidson, J. W. (2003). The social context of musical success: A developmental account. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 529–549.

A study of the influence of parents, teachers, and peers, as well as intrinsic sources of motivation.

60 Musical Learning

4

Practice

I

n this final chapter of the section on Musical Learning we discuss the activity that musicians engage in most: practice. “How much and how do you practice?” is not the first question we would ask famous musicians, but it is certainly one that many of us would like to know the answer to. “Have you practiced today?” is the nagging question asked by parents or peers. Music teachers too often take it for granted that their students know how to practice correctly, but the objective record from the practice room experience dispels this myth. Rather than well-organized, goal-directed work, we often hear aimless and haphazard music making. Fortunately, some teachers have their particular advice on practice for students, hoping that what worked for them personally will work for their students as well. But then they might wonder why some ad-vice bears fruit for one student and not for another. The fact is that practice is a multifaceted behavior that has attracted a lot of attention from researchers and teachers alike. We know that practice is not only the most prevalent activity that all musicians engage in but that it is also unarguably a necessary duty. Further-more, we know of no one who has become (even remotely) famous without it. In this chapter we show the following:

1. The scientific concept of practice is somewhat more detailed than our everyday notion of it, which does not clearly differentiate between formal and informal practice.

2. The goal of practice is not merely to learn a piece of music but to develop complex mental and physical adaptations that, in turn, enable successful long-term skill building.

3. Not surprisingly, more practice leads to better performance. This insight has some important ramifications for our understanding of skill development, namely, that there are few (if any) shortcuts to acquiring musical skills.

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4. Although every musician is different, there are some common denomina-tors of “good practice” that have emerged from the practice of experts and that seem promising to emulate.

In document FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS EMPRESARIALES (página 52-58)