Learning from “Oops”: Strategic Risk-Taking in the Choral Rehearsal
Abstract
The emerging realms of Social Network and Emergence Theory, along with the well-established principles of constructivist educational theory provide a strong framework for accepting and encouraging strategic risk-taking as an integral component of the learning process. Previous qualitative research has been done in the realms of education and social work to study risk- taking; however, this quantitative study used a similar research base to study a choral conductor’s instructions and interactions with amateur high school singers under contrasting approaches to risk-taking. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the effect of strategic risk-taking choral rehearsal strategies on melodic and rhythmic accuracy of a newly composed piece of choral music. One group was instructed by encouraging risk-taking in a positive, experimental condition and another group was instructed in a more traditional teacher- directed manner. Also considered were the confounding effects of singers’ prior musical experience, their network centrality, the size of the treatment group, and the singers’ emotions. Their melodic and rhythmic accuracy of music performance were scored over four attempts and over five weeks to discover whether the allowances for strategic risk-taking might result in improved music performance. The group that experienced strategic risk-taking improved their performances for both pitch and rhythmic accuracy in a statistically significant way. Confounding variables had mixed interactions with the treatment variable, some statistically significant and others not.
Handouts
In sheer numbers, it does not look as if the strategic risk-taking group performed better than the traditional rehearsal group.
However, the trend lines indicate that the strategic risk-taking group should surpass the traditional rehearsal group in a hypothetical fifth rehearsal.
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