In my August 15th post on teaching, I mentioned the psychomotor (physical) and cognitive (thinking) aspects of playing saxophone. There is a third component as well, the affective, or feeling portion of the activity.
Learning is an interaction between the mind, emotions, and muscles. If I’m working with a student they are, presumably, feeling something (affective) about the concepts, (cognitive material) and working them out on their sax (psychomotor).
As a teacher I need to consider all of these things: ideas, feelings & actions. Doing so will allow me to develop an approach that engages the student, and gives them the drive to continue working towards mastering the saxophone.
My September 4th post, in which I describe how I used a saxophone-playing, aquarium, skeleton sculpture to reach a middle school student, in an almost stand-up comedy type of routine, is an example of how ideas, feelings, and actions, can be combined together to develop a teaching method that engages the student.
If we think back to our own education, much of it has focused too much on the cognitive matter, without any thought given to the affective and psychomotor aspects. Therefore our natural inclination when we teach, is to fall back into what we have the most experience with, and that is to tell people what they need or want to know. Unfortunately, this doesn’t utilize the affective or psychomotor aspects of learning, and tends not to engage the learner.
Music, by it’s very nature, is affective, and elicits feelings & emotions. As saxophone teachers, we actually have it far easier to combine ideas, feelings, & actions, than if we were calculus tutors!
For further information on the education concepts I briefly touch upon in this post, I highly recommend the book Learning To Listen Learning To Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults, by Jane Vella. It is published by Jossey-Bass ©2002. This book is a valuable tool for anyone teaching, or facilitating in any capacity, from middle school on up. Vella’s book is available through Amazon.com & Amazon.ca.
If you have any questions about teaching or learning in general, feel free to use the Contact Page to reach me.
