Abstract
A framework for studying teachers’ hand gestures in instrumental music pedagogy is proposed, focusing on teachers’ teaching behaviours as a context-dependent basis for understanding the meaning and functionality of their gestures. The application of the Teacher Behaviour and Gesture framework across instrumental music pedagogical settings (one-to-one, small and large teaching groups and across singing, woodwind, brass, strings, and other pedagogical contexts) will bring understandings on the role of teachers’ gestures in their pedagogical interactions with students, with implications for student learning and instrumental music teachers’ teaching and education.
It is amazing what and how much humans can communicate by playing a musical instrument. Music making is a fully embodied activity performed and perceived through gestures (Leman, 2010): a multimodal phenomenon processed in a dynamic interplay between our senses, sensory organs and modalities (Maes, Leman, Palmer, & Wanderley, 2014), within which the human hands play an essential role. More specifically, the human hands are directly involved in the motor aspects of playing a musical instrument; they serve as an aid to understanding the conceptual and practical musical knowledge needed to perform and interpret musical material. Hand gestures are also an essential communicational element of the teaching and learning process. However, a plethora of issues relating to such teachers’ and students’ gestures in instrumental music contexts remain neglected areas of music research literature. Research into this area might stimulate answers to a range of questions, including: can educational practices and specific learning contexts play a decisive role in the way that performers use gestures during musical performances? If these gestures are learned, what is the significance of the environments in which they are attained? And, ultimately, can instrumental music teachers’ gestures be optimised in order to promote better learning? In light of critical interest in gesture by music performance researchers (e.g. Clarke & Davidson, 1998; Dahl & Friberg, 2007; Davidson, 1994, 2006; Goebl & Palmer, 2009; Wanderley & Vines, 2006) the present lack of research in this topic seems to result from two interrelated factors.
First, researchers approaching the study of teachers’ gestures in instrumental music contexts have not defined a consistent context-dependent ground where gestures can be considered and understood in meaningful ways. Across different fields of knowledge gesture refers to a concept of motion (Schneider, 2010). However, such motion can be troublesome to define, and may assume different forms, meanings and functions depending on the particular context where the gesture occurred. That is, in a specific given context a certain gesture can assume a certain meaning, however in another context the same gesture can be meaningless or assume a different understanding. For example, composers creating a musical work are creating musical notational motional patterns in a metaphorical way, through which expression is conveyed. Performers, on the other hand, physically embody the gestures of either musical written material or imaginary music mental images (e.g. when improvising); and in so doing, music is brought to life. And where music needs to be embodied and physically performed during the learning process, instrumental music teachers’ gestural demonstrations provide students with an understanding of the movement to be performed in terms of trajectory, direction, amplitude, intensity and the intended sound or tone quality. Such varied ways of generating, perceiving and gesturing imply that approaches to researching gesture in music-related areas need to take into account the fact that meaning in gesture is necessarily bound to specific contexts of music making (Leman & Godøy, 2010; McNeill, 1985). Whereas in the field of psycholinguistics the meaningfulness of gesture is established on two fundamental principles: (1) association to verbal content and (2) a representational element whereby gestures express aspects of the action they reference (e.g. Goldin-Meadow, 1999; Kendon, 1980; McNeill, 1985). Music does not have a semantic or verbal equivalent (even when combined with linguistic singing practices). Nevertheless, it is still communicational in its own way – it is meaningful for people (in different ways); in performance it is ubiquitously embedded in gestures and bodily action (e.g. Davidson, 2001, 2006; Ginsborg & King, 2007; Gritten & King, 2011; Poggi, 2007; Rahaim, 2008, 2012; Trevarthen, Delafield-Butt, & Shögler, 2011). And, in instrumental music pedagogical environments, gestures are accompanied by speech and music making at the same time, or by music making only (Simones, Schroeder, & Rodger, 2015). Consequently, the meaningfulness of teachers’ gestures in instrumental music teaching is embedded not only in the intrinsic specificities of this context but should also be considered as associated to specific pedagogical intentions, musical and communicative functions, which in a nutshell can be referred to as teachers’ teaching behaviours. This constitutes one of the main premises of this work.
Second, researchers focusing on the study of gesture and body movements in instrumental music contexts have mostly used or attempted to use gesture categorisations developed in the fields of music performance and psycholinguistics (e.g. Clayton, 2005; Nafisi, 2013; Poggi, 2007; Rodger, Craig, & O’Modhrain, 2012; Zalar, Kordeš, & Kafol, 2015). However, gestural organisational models drawn from the fields of music performance and psycholinguistics are inadequate for the purposes of understanding this area of activity since instrumental music teachers employ gesture in a way unique to the teaching context as explained below.
King and Ginsborg (2011) loosely grouped recent research on gesture categorisation in the fields of music performance under the following rubrics: functional gesture classifications, focusing on the effects of gesture for and during sound production (e.g. (Jensenius, Wanderley, Godøy, & Leman, 2010); classifications focused on the physical posture used by performers, in which researchers mostly adopt Delalande’s (1988) argument that each gesture type demonstrates an expressive behaviour related to different body postures (e.g. Wanderley & Vines, 2006); and classifications of communicative gestures, which apart from the ones considering body postures (as above) also includes extensive research carried out by Davidson (1993, 1994, 2001, 2005, 2006) using in several instances Ekman and Friesen’s (1969) psycholinguistic classification of communicative non-verbal behaviours.
Regarding functional approaches to musical gestures, the latest is that of Jensenius et al. (2010), which consists of an amalgamation of previous functional musical gesture classifications and distinguishes between gestures under the following rubrics: communicative (intended mainly for communication and according to the authors can be classified using McNeill’s 1992 and 2005 classification); sound producing (effectively productive of sound); sound facilitating (supporting sound production in various ways); and sound accompanying (not involved in sound production, but following the music). The major drawback when attempting to apply this categorisation to instrumental music pedagogical contexts is that sound producing, sound facilitating, and communicative gestures often overlap, making it difficult to specify what function or functions a certain gesture may assume in a given context (Dahl et al., 2010). Aware of such overlap the authors state that “different categories are not meant to be mutually exclusive, as several gestures have multiple functions” (Jensenius et al., 2010, p. 24). However, the practical difficulty of ascribing greater levels of functional specificity to gestures while using this categorisation contributes to a dilution of the established categories and difficulties in gestural annotation that restrain further empirical considerations. It is also uncertain as to how McNeill’s (1992, 2005) spontaneous co-verbal gestures classification is to be used both in music performance and instrumental music contexts. Should it be applied only in cases where there is associated verbal content (e.g. singing or talking)? Or should it be used in a broader and more abstract sense, in which musical content would or could entail similar ideas to those expressed in speech? Given these ambiguities, Jensenius et al.’s (2010) framework appears to be not applicable for studying teachers’ gestures in instrumental music pedagogy.
With respect to approaching gestures from the point of view of body posture, Delalande (1988, 1995) analysed Glenn Gould’s gestures during his performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of the Fugue, specifically focusing on piano performance, and found five interconnected psychomotor organisations which he named gesture types. According to Delalande, the body postures represent an expressive characteristic encompassing a psychomotor organisation and an expressive content that represents unified expressive schemata. It is argued that each gesture type demonstrates an expressive behaviour related to different body postures: recuilli (meditative); vibrant (vibrant); fluant (fluid), delicat (delicate); and vigoureux (vigorous). King and Ginsborg (2011) state that these gesture types can also be considered types of illustrators, defined by Ekman and Friesen (1969) as body movements performed by the hands, face or head that occur simultaneously with speech, given that these body movements occur simultaneously with musical performance and often illustrate an expressive behaviour. Therefore, expression conveyed through specific body postures and connected to certain musical intentions related to musical structure and/or performers’ inner emotions can also provide a contextual basis for gestural analytical considerations in instrumental music pedagogy. However, given the focus of this article on teachers’ hand gestures, considerations at this level are outside of the scope of this article.
Regarding communicative gestures, previous attempts at establishing parallels between gestures used in musical performance and rehearsals and those used in everyday human communication (e.g. Clayton, 2005; Davidson, 2005; Fulford & Ginsborg, 2013; King & Ginsborg, 2011) and supported by the co-verbal gesture classifications of Kendon (1980), McNeill (1992) and Cassell (1998) have had a number of limitations. To begin with, in establishing such parallels, assumptions that gestures used in music performance would mirror speech patterns have been put forward (e.g. Davidson, 2005). Such assumptions can be evidenced in the following quote: If the parallel between speech and music is drawn, the specific gestures made by the pianist I studied could indeed mirror the speech pattern. […] For example, he plays one solo right hand passage in the Beethoven Bagatelle whilst tracing it in the air with the left hand. Here, at least, a significant function of the gesture would involve acting out the expressive idea in space. (Davidson, 2005, p. 222)
However, why establish this comparison with speech patterns in the first place? It seems as though the author is implying that speech patterns involving acting out expressive ideas in space are solely or mostly intimately related to speech or words. This analytical angle might contribute to an overlooking of the specificities of musical communicative gestures in terms of their own production features (gesture shape and forms) and the intrinsic nature of musical communicative processes, which might as well be of a different nature than speech-related communication. In addition, if communicative musical gestures do not necessarily mirror speech in instrumental music teaching contexts, then a vital question needs to be asked: what criteria can be used to differentiate between gestures used in everyday human communication and those specific to an instrumental musical context?
The TBG framework
The Teacher Behaviour and Gesture (TBG) framework proposed in this article is based on the main premise that teaching behaviours provide an accurate context-dependent ground for determining the meaningfulness of teachers’ gestures. In developing this premise adaptations were carried out to previous teachers’ behaviour categorisations in the instrumental music literature in order to conceptualise a categorisation which could be used as a context-dependent ground to categorise gesture. These adaptations are at the core of the next section, after which considerations on the practical analysis of gesture within teachers’ behaviour categories are made in relation to the annotation process and tools, its applicability across instrumental music contexts, its strengths and limitations.
Fine-tuning a teachers’ teaching behaviours categorisation for the framework
Teacher behaviours can be defined as specific and delimited behaviours performed during an instructional session with specific pedagogical intentions and functions manifested by verbal and/or gestural channels. Since Abeles’s (1975) work dedicated to establishing the characteristics of effective applied instruction, teaching behaviours have been approached by several researchers from instructional, behavioural and pedagogical points of view (Parkes, 2009, 2011). As Kurkul (2007) points out, there are two main problems in this research (i.e. Albrecht, 1991; Hepler, 1986; Kostka, 1984; L’Hommedieu, 1992; Schmidt, 1989). First, most of this literature, with some exceptions (e.g. Gipson, 1978; Levasseur, 1984; O’Neill, 1993; Wang, 2001), focuses almost exclusively on verbal elements to define categories of teaching behaviours. Second, this research lacks clear definitions given by researchers of their proposed categories. This fact was pointed out by Kurkul (2007) in relation to the nine categories put forward by Gipson (1978), for which he only defined teacher musical directing and O’Neill (1993) who included seven categories, however only defining voice tone – friendly and facial expression – friendly.
I argue that works by Zhukov (2004) and Carlin (1997) can be appropriately adapted to provide: 1) a defined set of teacher behaviour categories and 2) a contextual basis for the analysis of gesture (this is explained in more detail in the section entitled “Practical application of the TBG framework”). The adaptations I have made to Carlin (1997) and Zhukov (2004) (see Table 1) (adapted from Simones, Rodger, & Schroeder, 2015) encompassed defining specific behaviours taking into account ideas drawn from recent literature and terminological adjustments aimed at greater specificity (see Table 1).
Adaptations made to Carlin’s (1997) and Zhukov’s (2004) work on instrumental music teachers’ teaching behaviour categorisation.
Note. *To provide a more dynamic character to the previous categories and inculcate a sense of action, the adaptation made encompassed placing a verb before the specific category type.
Although Carlin (1997) has proposed the following categories of teaching behaviours: instructing; coaching; demonstrating; playing; and other, I take the view that in this context, teaching and learning processes can be wholly defined as coaching (see Creech & Gaunt, 2012). Thus, the categories instructing (here entitled giving information), demonstrating and playing (entitled more specifically as playing a musical instrument or singing) are used. In order to retain the openness provided by Carlin (1997) through the inclusion of a category entitled other, I have added the categories modelling (further discussed below) and listening/observing. The listening/observing category was added due to observations made for previous investigations that I and my colleagues have carried out (see Simones, Schroeder, et al., 2015).
Zhukov’s (2004) categorisation contains a greater level of specificity in comparison to Carlin (1997) and previous researchers, despite the fact that her work is mostly focused on verbal behaviours. The greatest difference in relation to the teaching behaviour categorisation established here and in Zhukov’s (2004) work relates to the use of the term demonstrating. Zhukov (2004) acknowledges demonstrating as a way of modelling, stating that “the teacher focuses on a specific element, allows the students to repeat it until it is corrected and then puts it into context by playing the entire passage” (pp. 197–198). This definition does not specify the amount of student observation, the essential conditions in which the imitation takes place, or the fact that imitation is not always immediately put into context with the rest of the musical material. Indeed, teachers can at times demonstrate without requesting imitation, and this may have implications in terms of student learning outcomes. The above problems regarding use of the terms demonstrating and modelling are not only reflected in the work of Zhukov. These problems persist on an interdisciplinary basis, where the terms have been used variously and inconsistently across a range of conceptual approaches, including motor learning research, instructional research, music psychology, and music education. In motor learning research for instance, modelling is used interchangeably with the term observational learning and demonstration is more often used in the instructional context to refer to observational learning (Magill, 2007).
Due to these terminological inconsistencies, differentiation between the terms demonstration and modelling is undertaken here. In this differentiation, demonstration is defined as instances where teachers show the student how a particular action should be performed, without actively engaging the student in the action and in which the student is mostly listening and observing. Modelling is defined as instances where teachers actively engage the student in performing actions alongside teachers’ explanations. This differentiation operates in relation to seeing an action/gesture being performed and seeing and executing an action/gesture and enables further consideration into how particular teaching strategies can affect student learning.
In relation to terminology, aiming for greater levels of specificity, instructing was changed to giving information due to the fact that instruction is primarily one-directional and the term giving information is here aimed at assuming a more human interactive process; playing was changed to playing a music instrument or singing since there can be different types of playing within a lesson (e.g. playing games). Although all instances where teachers play a musical instrument or sing in their day-to-day teaching can be considered as a form of demonstration, for the purposes of this work it was considered that playing a musical instrument and singing be considered for those instances where teachers engage actively and intentionally in music making with the student where a demonstrating or modelling element is not directly assumed from the interaction taking place between them. These instances can include: playing a part of a piano duet with the student, participating in a singing duet, creating and developing musical questions and answers in the process of musical improvisation between student and teacher. Thus, the nature of the teacher’s musical engagement in this behaviour is considered more as participatory and collaborative music making rather than purely demonstrative. And because questioning might imply to ask a series of related questions or even cast doubt on a person’s actions or intentions this term was replaced with asking questions, which is simpler, meaning posing one or more questions. To provide a more dynamic character to teachers’ behaviour categories and inculcate a sense of action flowing in time, the adaptations involved placing a verb before the specific category type to emphasise the fact that behaving (with or without observable overt movement) is considered to be doing something.
In fact, recent trends in descriptive psychology are increasingly recognising that behaviour can no longer continue to be defined simply as “observable overt movement” (for a review, see Bergner, 2011). Instead, behaviour is a broader concept describable as “an attempt of an individual to bring about some state of affairs – either to effect a change from one state of affairs to another, or to maintain a currently existing one” (Ossorio, 2006, p. 49). In this conception, mental acts such as planning, calculating and problem solving are considered behaviours despite the fact that observable body movements or verbal elements may be absent. As an example, a researcher conceptualising and imagining how to carry out a research project is, according to this view, doing something and behaving in a certain way despite the fact that there might not be necessarily observable overt movement. Ossorio’s (1968/1981, 2006) formulation of the Persons concept, focusing on the notions of deliberate action, significance, and acting as a member of a community, articulate the conceptual structure within which descriptions of persons and behaviour could be given. Fundamental to his paradigm was the notion that people act in accordance to the rules of given systems. He used several analogies to convey this more clearly including explaining that to engage in a game of chess, one must understand the rules of the game and that with such knowledge one can not only play the game but also develop strategies for successful playing.
Additionally, Ossorio (1968/1981, 2006) maintains that behaviour is better captured by focusing on eight parameters: identity: the person whose behaviour it is; want: the state of affairs the person seeks to bring about; know: the cognitive parameter and the distinctions and conceptions that are being acted on; know-how: the broader competency or competencies; performance: the procedural aspects of behaviour such as bodily postures, movements and gestures; achievement: the outcome of the enacted behaviour; personal characteristics of the individual such as traits, attitudes, interests, values, abilities and knowledge; and significance: what in fact the person is doing by doing what he or she is doing (see also Bergner, 2011; Shideler, 1988). By using these parameters it is possible to consider at a deeper level the person enacting the behaviour as well as focusing on the conceptual structure within which the description of persons and associated behaviours occur. Instrumental music teachers act according to contextual cultural norms expressing contextualised understandings of music (Jorgensen, 2008). Therefore, in researching teaching and learning to play a musical instrument it is relevant to include considerations to the specificities of the teacher and of the teaching context. Ossorio’s (1968/1981, 2006) framework allows considerations at this level and these parameters could be used to conceptualise categories of teachers’ behaviour in instrumental music pedagogy, potentially providing among other things deeper understandings about how musical meaning may vary across different musical cultures. Examples of how to apply the eight parameters proposed by Ossorio (1968/81, 2006) to some of the categories of teaching behaviours are provided in Figures 1 and 2.
Annotation template example A.
Annotation template example B.
In Figures 1 and 2 it is possible to observe that by considering gesture as located in the performance parameter proposed by Ossorio (1968/1981, 2006) within each specific teaching behaviour, it is possible not only to depict its meaningfulness and functionality, but also to determine relationships between didactic intentions (expressed through teaching behaviours) and types of gestures used to communicate with students.
A gesture categorisation for the TBG framework
Simones, Rodger, et al.’s (2015) piano teachers’ gesture categorisation (see Table 2) was established on the grounds that communication of musical knowledge encompasses a communicational atmosphere in which verbal, musical behaviours and gestures operate simultaneously and at times independently. It incorporates the spontaneous co-verbal gesture classification of McNeill (1992, 2005) for gestures that accompany speech and other speech-related activities, and spontaneous co-musical gestures categorisation for gestures that accompany either speech and music making at the same time, or music making only. In the case of singing, a simultaneously speech and music-related activity, a distinction needs to be made between gesturing to convey meanings associated with the words being sung and gesturing aimed at conveying particular musical elements, features and ideas. The term “spontaneous co-musical gestures” was grounded on parallels established between the musical gestures observed and co-verbal gestures (McNeill, 1992, 2005), which lead to an argument for extension of McNeill’s (2005) ideas of imagery–language–dialectic to imagery–music–dialectic based on the following: spontaneous co-musical gestures are synchronous both to the music and to the experience of music making in like manner to that of spontaneous co-verbal gestures which are synchronous to speech. In the same way that verbal content can, in many instances, determine the type of spontaneous co-verbal gestures being used, musical content, teachers’ perceived student learning needs and teachers’ specific teaching behaviours appear to guide teachers’ use of spontaneous co-musical gestures. And spontaneous co-musical gestures in many instances represent features of the musical content in the same manner that spontaneous co-verbal gestures “can represent features in the speech, complement it, or represent an aspect present in the speakers’ thought but not expressed through speech” (Ishino & Stam, 2011, p. 4). This gesture classification emerged from a study where a total of 639 piano teachers’ gestures were observed. The gestures were captured through video recordings carried out in typical day-to-day pedagogical interaction between teachers and students, who were unaware of the focus on gesture. Using mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative approach) the analysis considered gestures performed by three teachers across a total of 18 teaching sessions capturing first stages of engagement with a set repertoire equal for all teachers and students in study. Each gesture was observed and classified according to shape/contour, contextual pedagogical meaning, function, and for the simultaneous use of verbal, non-verbal and musical modalities (such as singing, marking the beat, playing piano, etc.). Repeated observations revealed that teachers used certain gestures for similar pedagogical and/or musical ends (for more, see Simones, Rodger, et al., 2015; Simones, Schroeder, et al. 2015).
Piano teachers’ gesture categorisation (adapted from Simones, Rodger, et al., 2015).
This categorisation of gesture recently devised within an instrumental music context and with considerations on the meaningfulness of gesture is recommended for use within the TBG framework. However, other gesture categorisations which may be devised considering the specificities of this context can also potentially be used. In relation to the previous Simones, Rodger, et al. (2015) gesture categorisation, I propose here a more in-depth definition of the mimic gesture category to encompass a subdivision of this gesture into two categories: mimic gestures with instrument manipulation (instances where teachers physically reproduce a gesture that they consider appropriate for performing a particular musical sound producing action and in which manipulation of the musical instrument is involved); and mimic gestures without instrumental manipulation (instances where teachers physically reproduce a gesture that they consider appropriate for performing a particular musical sound producing action without manipulating the musical instrument). This differentiation is aligned with concepts put forward by Ecological psychology (Barker, 1968; Gibson, 1966, 1977), Dynamic-systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994) and Activity theory (Vygotsky, 1966/1991). These theories consider a biological conditioning for learning through bodily actions that leads to the idea that “the body and its dynamic relationship with the world are a fundamental component of musical literacy at all levels of development and musical cognition” (Philpott, 2001, p. 80). More specifically, it is assumed that learning is the development of new skills via goal-oriented attunement to affordances in fields of promoted action (Abrahamson & Sánchez–García, 2014; Schiavio & Høffding, 2015), and that training “tunes” the learner to attend to selective elements in the environment that can be relevant for performing a given task (Vilar, Araújo, Davids, & Renshaw, 2012). The turning point leading to such theoretical blending has been the recent acknowledgement that learning is essentially an attempt to solve a motor coordination problem, whether it is in music, sport, or even mathematics; and, moreover, that a teacher’s role is to “impose environmental constraints on a novice’s attempts to accomplish a task” (Abrahamson & Sánchez–García, 2014, p. 5). In this regard, the subdivision of teachers’ mimic gestures into gestures produced with or without manipulation of the musical instrument, enables considerations on the use of tools for cognition (see Vygotsky, 1966/1991) and a variety of other issues such as: how the mimic gestures made by teachers with or without an instrument can reveal teachers’ embeddedness of manual skills, how such embeddedness can become part of a teachers’ teaching identity (see Streeck, 2009), and how it can influence student learning (for a recent experimental investigation on the learning effects of a specific type of teachers’ mimic gesture on student learning, see Simones, Rodger, & Schroeder, 2017). In using this differentiation, other elements can jointly be assessed: the presence of verbal and/or musical elements; description of the gesture (considering its shape and trajectory); and its pedagogical intentions through analysis of teachers’ teaching behaviours.
Practical application of the TBG framework
Figure 3 provides a schematic overview of the TBG framework. Considering each teaching behaviour as characterised by the eight parameters of Ossorio (1968/1981, 2006) discussed earlier (i.e. identity, want, know, know-how, performance, achievement, teacher’s personal characteristics and significance), it becomes possible to understand how the performance parameter (where gestures are embedded) relates to the other parameters in itself. And looking at how specific teaching behaviours combine with gesture in time it is possible through analysis of video-recorded material to ascribe meanings and functions to gestures.
Schematic overview of the TBG framework.
Annotation process and tools
Considering how teaching behaviours and their integral parameters evolve in time, templates for the annotation of data need to consider ways in which a sequence of events can be captured vertically and horizontally through systematic observation as in the examples provided in Figures 1 and 2 (see section entitled “Fine-tuning a teachers’ teaching behaviours categorisation for the framework”). The variables annotated as they occurred in time, included verbal content as expressed through speech and five of the eight parameters proposed by Ossorio (1968/1981, 2006) for conceptualising behaviour, including gesture. The behaviour parameters identity, achievement and personal characteristics were not part of the timeframe annotation as they need to be considered more broadly and not on a second-by-second basis. In terms of the meaningfulness of gesture in the example provided in Figure 1 it is possible to conclude that piano playing gesture was used by the teacher to demonstrate an audio/visual template of aimed sound and balance between the various musical layers of the piece in study. In Figure 2, through the use of mimic gestures the teacher focused on a student-specific learning need, while using modelling teaching behaviour to help the student learning the action/movement required to achieve a particular required tone or sound quality.
From an annotation perspective gesture recognition software can be extremely useful, enabling the observation of video recordings of data material on a timeframe scale. Some of these tools are freely accessible and downloadable from the internet, including Elan software developed by the Institute of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen (Netherlands) (accessible at https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/) (for an overview, see Lausberg & Sloetjes, 2009) and Anvil software (available at http://www.anvil-software.org/). The Appendix at the end of this article shows an excerpt of annotation made using Elan software of a piano lesson. In this example the variables in analysis included speech transcription, teacher’s teaching behaviours, Ossorio’s parameters and gesture types (co-verbal and co-musical).
Opting for a purely manual or digital manual annotation and using teacher’s behaviours as a context-dependent basis it is possible to not only use the gesture categorisation proposed in this work but also other categorisations of gesture and study aspects such as gestures: “size (large/medium/small); duration (long/medium/short); speed (fast/medium/slow); plane of direction (horizontal/vertical/diagonal/circular/semi-circular); and handedness (right-hand only/left-hand only/both hands in parallel motion/both hands in contrary motion/both hands linked)” (King, 2013, p. 69). It is also possible to look at aspects such as head nods, eye gaze and other intended aspects which may include actions, gestures or both.
This way, gesture can be linked to verbal content and to other particular aspects of behaviour in terms of when and how it occurs either alongside speech or in isolation, and in association with musical elements (e.g., singing, relation to musical structure, expression, physical posture while playing a musical instrument or singing) in specific contexts. Another advantage of the use of Elan software is that it enables comparisons to be made on the level of agreement in annotations for the purposes of inter-annotator reliability assessments (in accordance with Bakeman and Gottman’s 1986 requisites for observational techniques). The possibility of evaluation (by others) of the implicit subjective element of a researcher’s observation provided through the use of tools such as Elan software offers opportunities for potentially fruitful discussion and communication amongst professionals. The resulting insights can positively inform further research, while assessing research validity and reliability.
Applicability across instrumental music contexts
Despite originating from an investigation focused on piano teaching, this model could be used partially or entirely for research in other instrumental music pedagogical contexts including teachers teaching in a variety of settings such as one-to-one, small and large instrumental music pedagogy groups. This is because the teacher behaviour categories devised here are broad and all teachers in this context enact the teacher behaviours proposed here; that is, they: give information, demonstrate, play a musical instrument/sing (at times do both separately or at the same time), model, listen and observe, give feedback, ask questions, give advice and give practice suggestions. And in relation to gestures, the categories proposed here include spontaneous co-verbal gestures devised by McNeill (1992, 2005) which are used by all human beings for day-to-day communication, and spontaneous co-musical gestures (Simones, Rodger, et al., 2015) which teachers spontaneously use while teaching: in one-to-one instrumental pedagogical contexts teachers are likely to perform up and down movements of hands, arms, and/or head to denote the tempo or speed at which the music should be played (musical beats gesture); teachers may also undertake up and down movements of hands and arms that generally assume a rounder shape providing temporal and expressive information about the music (conducting style gesture); they may also play the musical instrument they are teaching at certain instances during the lesson or sing (or even do both at the same time) (playing a musical instrument or singing gesture); teachers can also represent and express an action by performing the action, action sequence or movement which they consider beneficial for performing a particular musical task, musical phrase, or other musically related issue, while expecting the student to imitate such action or movement (mimics gesture); and, there may be instances where teachers make intentional physical contact with the student in the course of instrumental music teaching to develop the required hand position or posture and convey certain types of touch needed to achieve certain intended sound qualities (touch gesture). Given the broad character of the categories devised here, I am fully expecting that this framework is of practical applicability to research in the various contexts of instrumental music teaching.
The framework proposed here could be used for studying a variety of types of instrumental teaching/learning scenarios including: woodwind, string, brass and vocal teaching, as well as expanded to encompass coaching of small/large groups and comparisons with conductors of small/large ensembles. While doing so, it is also possible to focus on teachers teaching students of all skill levels (from pre-grade to expert stage). Through the establishment of this framework a variety of research avenues can be undertaken. In the short term it would be interesting to understand differences in teaching behaviours and gestures of instrumental music teachers in one-to-one settings across musical cultures, while determining relationships between didactic intentions (expressed through teaching behaviours) and types of gestures used to communicate with students. Another interesting research avenue would be (instead of teachers) to consider students and their learning behaviours and gestures as part of music making.
Strengths and limitations of the TBG framework
The TBG framework expands and incorporates theoretical frameworks from a variety of different disciplines such as music psychology and education, psycholinguistics, gesture-led educational research, imitation, and observational motor-learning. While offering an approach for these seemingly disparate areas of knowledge to symbiotically contribute to the study of teachers’ hand gestures in instrumental music contexts, it combines them to achieve a more objective definition of terms and categories, particularly in relation to teachers’ teaching behaviours and their gestures. Application of this framework across instrumental music education contexts has the potential for bringing forward understandings on how effective communication (verbal, gestural and musical) can be established between teachers and students; more informed acknowledgements of how specific educational practices in certain learning contexts can influence teaching and, ultimately, the provision of insights that instrumental music teachers can take forward to optimise teaching practices that are highly gestural and aimed at promoting effective student learning.
By taking teaching behaviours into consideration when analysing gesture in instrumental music teaching and learning, it becomes possible to implement the framework of embodied music cognition proposed by Leman (2010) for studying gesture roles in the formation of musical meaning. He suggests a layered framework of analysis containing three distinct perspectives:
First person perspective (based on the interpretation of experiences and observations). This can be undertaken by teachers recording and analysing own teaching sessions focusing not only on verbal content (as it is in most cases) but also looking at their specific teaching behaviours, the types of gestures they have used and student’s learning. This would highly complement instrumental music teachers’ educational courses since a challenge we face today is that relatively little is known about how teachers’ communicative behaviours may vary in order to scaffold student understanding and thus continued research work in the emerging field of instrumental music gesture studies is needed.
Second person perspective (related to how gestures function as social cues, which here intimates seeing and considering teachers’ gestures not only within a general teaching role, but also as embedded in specific teaching behaviours, wider cultural contexts and as an integral element of the teaching process). Although the processes underpinning learning in music are “shared across cultures, constituting part of natural learning processes that are common to all human beings” (Hallam & Bautista, 2012, p. 658), the musician-teacher is: “an exemplar who embodies a contextualised understanding of music, literacy, orality, performance practice, creative musical expressions and scholarship” (Jorgensen, 2008, p. 388). Therefore, researching the process of teaching and learning to play a musical instrument implies viewing each context as culturally contextualised in what Dunbar-Hall (2006, p. 388) calls “ethnopedagogy”. Such an understanding implies that gestures and teaching behaviours that generally instil coherence, understanding and meaning may be different in different musical cultures.
Third person perspective (related to research and use of methods to measure and quantify gesture and action of body parts, sonic forms, or both), ranging from systematic observations of video material, to the use of tools and processes such as motion capture to obtain parameters such as “gesture amplitude”, “speed” and “plane of direction” and looking at aspects such as types of physical gestures (such as head nods, body sways, hand lifts, wrist rotation); other non-verbal behaviours, such as facial expressions and eye contact; the relationship between musical structural parameters and observed gestures; the functions of gestures (such as communicative, technical); and examinations on the effect of gestures at various levels, such as musical and social.
In terms of limitations, this framework is designed to study teachers’ teaching and therefore is of limited practical application for studying interactions between teachers and students or to focus solely on students. For studying student learning behaviours and associated gestures, learning behaviours could similarly be taken as a context-dependent basis for understanding gesture. However, further considerations and testing are needed to ascertain if this would be a valid research premise. When applying this framework to other contexts of instrumental music pedagogy (singing, woodwind, strings, brass, ensemble, conducting, etc.) there is a possibility that other teaching behaviours or gesture types might need to be added. Seemingly, the categorisations proposed here might require subdivisions among categories according to observed contextual specificities.
Conclusive remarks
Although in the instrumental music teaching context a musically rehearsed approach to performance may be promoted, teaching and learning itself consists of a musical performance within an interactive discursive experience of action and movement, through which meaning is constructed and enveloped by gestural, verbal and musical behaviours. If such is the nature of instrumental music pedagogy, and gesture is an integral presence for both communication and music making, research in this area needs to be grounded in these particular specificities and not anchored on gesture/action research from disparate or related fields (i.e. psycholinguistics, music performance).
The critical examination of gesture categorisations from the fields of music performance and psycholinguistics undertaken in this work shows that previously defined categorisations of gestures in these fields are not suitable for studying teachers’ gestures in instrumental music pedagogy. Considerations still need to be made as to whether these categorisations may or may not be suited to the study of students’ gestures in this context.
The adaptations made here to Carlin (1997) and Zhukov’s (2004) work on teaching behaviours resulted in a teaching behaviour categorisation where apart from verbal elements, gestures can be considered from a point of view of meaning and functionality. The framework proposed here can be applied to teaching across one-to-one and small/large groups in instrumental music pedagogical contexts and promotes the advancement of pedagogical knowledge by enacting ways in which teachers can observe and reflect on their own teaching. It also opens a range of new research avenues which will undoubtedly promote the development and education of instrumental music teachers with implications for student learning.
Footnotes
Appendix
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to express her gratitude to the research participants in previous studies for their vital contribution in making possible the conceptualisation of the proposed framework and the anonymous reviewers and editor for their insightful and valuable comments.
Funding
Studies that enabled conceptualisation of this framework were supported by a PhD studentship provided by the Department for Employment and Learning, administered by Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland.