‘…give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest'. (John Holt. 'How Children Learn’)
Anecdotal evidence suggests that many instrumental teachers use some form of `peer mentoring', particularly in school settings. Yet there have been few attempts to evaluate formally its effectiveness. In 2003 an award from the Bernarr Rainbow Trust enabled Mary Cohen to fulfil a long-standing desire to test `one-to-one' peer mentoring in instrumental tuition, under carefully monitored conditions. As she reveals, setting up this project was an illuminating experience. She spoke about this peer mentoring project at the autumn National Forum meeting. This is the first part of a two-part article.
Background: using role models
Back in May 2001 I set up an after school hours Violin Club, for eight absolute beginners (a mixture of boys and girls), in a local state primary school. This was to become the focus of my ongoing research in relation to group teaching. The children in Violin Club presented quite a challenge, all coming from `non-musical' backgrounds, where they were the first generation in their families to have formal instrumental tuition. There was also almost no music provision in their normal school day. It took a long time to get the basics established, but we mixed instrumental skills with a variety of 'games’ (including Dalcroze exercises), and the atmosphere was very happy and enthusiastic. After only a few sessions, Violin Club achieved a high profile in the school, and we performed solo and ensemble items regularly at assemblies.
From the second term onwards, there had been a Volunteer helper (‘E’) at most of the Violin Club sessions. She was a Grade 2, Year 6, pupil of mine, who happened to attend the same school. E would stand at the front to 'model' the violin line, and help to keep everyone together when I wanted to play piano or duet accompaniments. Eventually, as her confidence grew, the role expanded naturally, and eventually she helped with tuning up, supported pupils who were looking `lost', and modelled bow holds, posture and so on. What was fascinating was how much E's own playing developed as a result of this experience. Musically, she was not a ‘high flyer’, and had the usual range of technical difficulties, but in this new setting she blossomed. In September 2002, when E had moved on to secondary school, another of my pupils (‘K’) asked if she could take over this role for a year. This second helper was also in Year 6, but slightly more advanced than the first, at about Grade 3.
Both of these `Role Model' helpers were current members of regular String Quartets From Scratch ensembles themselves, with very positive experiences of being mentored during the first year of playing in quartets. E and K had also, in the natural way of things, occasionally benefited from the ability of advanced players to model solo pieces or support them in a play through. Hence they were able both to empathise with the younger players and offer support which they deemed likely to be helpful.
Countering ‘selective deafness’
We all know that pupils can appear very selective about the information they 'choose' to absorb. They can ignore advice for weeks, months - even years - yet encountering the same information from a different source may report it back as something new, even when it is exactly what you have been saying to them all along. I had noted with interest that at Violin Club, often a technical point seemed to 'stick' most effectively when part of the delivery process included the role model going round the group offering help. Discussing technical matters quietly with a peer was clearly involving the pupil in a more active process, which aided the absorption of information.
Challenge or opportunity?
By May 2003 Violin Club had been running for two years, and at the beginning of the next academic year there would only be four of the original group of children left at the school (three boys and one girl). It was time to review the future of the club. There were several possibilities: When the current batch of children had moved to secondary school, I could simply start a new club from scratch. Alternatively, I could recruit new younger pupils and run two separate clubs - but this would pose logistical difficulties as the school hall was only available to me once a week. However, there was also the more creative and challenging possibility of integrating established club members and new beginners. After a great deal of thought, I settled on this third option, carefully designing a project that used all four of the established pupils as one-to-one peer mentors with the new beginners. However, this was clearly going to be innovative and so the idea of formally charting the work of the club for a year, as a research project, presented itself. Aware that the Bernarr Rainbow Trust awarded grants to back music teachers working at ‘innovative projects and pedagogic initiatives’, I set to work on a formal funding proposal for a project that would involve a carefully assessed one-to-one peer mentoring scheme, supported by additional musical resources.
Providing a musical context
Reflecting on my experience of getting the original club members through the earliest stages, I was aware that one of their biggest handicaps had been a lack of musical culture either at home or at school. Very little, if any, singing took place in the school, and there was no regular classroom music in the curriculum. Indeed, when Violin Club began, none of the children involved had any clear idea of what classical music was. They could not name famous composers, or famous players, and did not know anything about orchestral instruments. Part of my application to the Bernarr Rainbow Trust was for funding to enable me to develop the scope of Violin Club, so that instrumental skills could be acquired in a broader musical context.
Occasionally we had been listening to short pieces of classical music and had followed this with discussions, but it was apparent that the children had very little real idea of how to listen, so I wanted to experiment with dedicated ‘listening time’ within the sessions. This could be backed up with a range of CDs to listen to at home. I also was keen to acquire some books about composers with accompanying CDs, which could form a library to be shared among the group. One or two violin repertoire books had recently been published containing CDs of accompaniment tracks, and I wondered if these might be a way of encouraging practising. Again, observing and charting a year of these activities would help me to rate the usefulness of all this technology.
Additional opportunities
From its inception, Violin Club had links to my String Quartets From Scratch weekly chamber music activities. With Keith Stubbs, CBSO Education manager, I had been working for two years on a plan to run a series of chamber music workshops to take place in January/February 2004, leading to a big public concert where pupils would play alongside members of the CBSO. Keen that the new intake of Violin Club should participate in this event, part of my budget proposal to the Bernarr Rainbow Trust included partnership funding to enable us to have a CBSO player working specifically with this youngest group to provide the necessary support for them.
Finding a bench mark
Since May 2001, I had been working as lead consultant for the new Associated Board violin Music Medals syllabus. As the result of working intensively on the Music Medals ensemble books and solo lists. I knew both the material and standards intimately. In addition, I had tried out pilot Music Medals ensemble pieces with the original Violin Club. So this would be the perfect material to use as a bench mark against which to assess the progress of the new intake. As I knew how the first batch of beginners had fared with the pilot material, this would help to assess the effectiveness of the one-to-one peer mentoring experiment.
All aboard
If the new project was to work, it would need the whole-hearted support of the existing Violin Club members. When we sat down together to discuss the future of the club, it was very encouraging to find they were extremely keen to welcome four new members and try out one-to-one mentoring. The established players also worked with me to define a range of individual goals for themselves, so that over the year their progress could be measured too.
Application
It took a great deal of work to condense this ambitious project into a tight and coherent proposal to send to the Bernarr Rainbow Trust. Eventually I received a letter saying my proposal had been short-listed, and inviting me to attend an interview at the Institute of Education, University of London. Touchingly, the Violin Club members were thrilled about this and I went down to London armed with enthusiastic quotes from them about why they thought the Trust should support the project. A week later, when I passed on the news that the committee of the Bernarr Rainbow Trust had indeed awarded us a grant, the children were convinced that then quotes had ‘pulled it off’. The project began in earnest in September 2003, and the results were to prove quite extraordinary...
(Article continued in 'Getting out of the way' part 2)