Toward a Pedagogy of Organ Practice: Learning vs. Teaching

In the organ world, workshops on practicing tend to focus on practice techniques. While this workshop will include some discussion of practice techniques, the intent of the workshop is to go beyond this and introduce a few over-arching concepts related to the pedagogy of organ practice. How do teachers impart to their students the understanding and skills related to practicing? The following topics will provide some clues that help us answer this question: (1) Making the distinction between teaching students how to learn, vs. teaching students how to play; (2) A brief introduction to learning theory and how it applies to organ practice; (3) Demonstrating Jerome Bruner’s spiral curriculum in relation to organ practice; (4) Introducing the concept of variegated practice; (5) Planning and assessing organ practice, (6) Discussing self-regulation, and (7) Supervised practice.