Time Use in Instrumental Rehearsals: A Comparison of Experienced, Novice, and Student Teachers

Abstract

Sixty instrumental music rehearsals were videotaped to measure the use of rehearsal time by three groups of teachers. Rehearsals were equally divided among those conducted by experienced teachers, novice teachers, and student teachers at the middle and high school levels. Dependent variables included preparation time, initial teacher talk, time in warm-up, time during each musical selection, breaks, final teacher talk, and dismissal. Variables were measured in real time and converted to percentages of class period. The primary variables for teaching activities were time spent in verbal instruction, nonverbal modeling, verbal discipline (disapproval-social), and performance. Findings include: student teachers talked most and allowed students to play least; experienced teachers provided the most break time, divided rehearsal time more equally between a warm-up and two musical selections, spent more than half the period on performance, used the most nonverbal modeling got the ensembles on-task the quickest, and talked the I least during rehearsals.