Piano lessons of beginning students who persist or drop out: Teacher behavior, student behavior, and lesson progress

The purpose of this study was to identify behavioral differences between children who dropped out of piano lessons and those who continued for 3 years. Two videotaped first-year lessons of 14 pairs of piano students were systematically observed to record the duration or frequency of occurrence of selected student and teacher behaviors. Students in each pair took Lessons with the same teacher and had comparable initial levels of pianistic ability and achievement. One child in the pair continued the piano lessons for 3 years, whereas the other child dropped out during the first or second year of lessons. In general, dropouts elicited verbal cues and tended to seek approval from the teachers more often than did the more persevering students. On the other hand, they received fewer actual approvals from the teachers, tended to accomplish the goals set by the teachers less often during the lessons, and obtained lower marks in the end-of-year piano exam than did their matched peers. The results of independent analyses performed for students who dropped out during the first and second year of lessons suggest that behavioral differences related to achievement may help identify late dropouts, but not early dropouts.