Undergraduate Choral Conducting Courses: Examining Students’ Practice Behaviors and Instructors’ Pedagogy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate choral conducting students’ conducting practice approaches, time allocation, and beliefs. A secondary purpose was to examine conducting instructors’ pedagogy and beliefs about their students’ practice approaches. Undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory choral conducting class (N = 126) and their instructors (N = 12) responded to separate questionnaires. Students and instructors agreed that technical skills came more naturally than expressive skills, and students reported practicing technical skills more often than expressive skills. Although instructors and students agreed to the frequent use of “singing or humming musical lines” as a practice strategy, they did not align regarding the importance of using video recordings within practice sessions. Based on our results, we recommend that instructors explicitly share their practice expectations with students and introduce an incremental approach to developing expressive conducting skills earlier in the curriculum.