Research Shorts: Do you ‘tell’ or ‘talk with’ your students?

This week, I’m chatting with James Poole, who is a piano and woodwind teacher in the middle of his doctoral research on how instrumental teachers teach at the University of York. If you are an instrumental teacher, you can contribute to the research too – read more to find out how.  

James is working on dialogic teaching, that is to say, teaching that opens up conversations with students and invites them to talk with their teachers. He explained, ‘This might involve teachers asking questions such as “How could you practise your piece this week?”’. I asked him to tell us more about how this was different from other kinds of teaching, and he explained:

‘It differs from a ‘tell’ approach in which teachers transfer their knowledge by telling pupils what to do. Dialogic teaching has already been shown to enhance learning outcomes in one-to-one instrumental lessons.’ 

I asked him who he anticipated research findings being important for, and he explained ‘Findings could reveal contexts in which teachers feel less confident handling dialogic teaching (when teaching younger learners or certain musical topics, for example). This could highlight opportunities for training to support teachers to integrate dialogic teaching within their lessons.’ 

James told me more about how he’s become involved in this research: ‘As a music education student at the University of York, I became passionate about facilitating dialogue to create an interactive and engaging learning environment for students. I am now a doctoral researcher continuing to research dialogic teaching while working as a one-to-one and whole-class teacher with Inspire Music (Nottinghamshire).’ 

Find out more:

• Learn more about taking part in the research here: Take part in the research here 
• James has previously looked at dialogic teaching in teacher-training  
• Get in touch with James: York profile 

Written by Sarah K. Whitfield – Research Manager for Music Mark