How do we motivate students to practice and persist when facing challenges inherent in learning to play an instrument? In this article, I synthesize research findings into strategies to encourage students' mastery goal orientations and intrinsic motivation. Educators can use these strategies in the classroom or as inspiration to create innovative…

In 1990, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi warned against an excessive emphasis on how well music learners perform rather than on the experiential aspect of music in and of itself. Whereas the former approach is, in his words, "a source of psychic disorder," the latter approach offers access to "flow": the optimal,…

Challenges are a constant across all kinds of musical contexts, and teachers are always looking for ways to help students overcome them. While there are many technical and pedagogical approaches to helping students achieve in music, psychology also plays a significant role in the struggles that students face. Counteractive optimism, the act of…

A clearinghouse on mastery learning (CML) has been established at Loyola University (New Orleans, Louisiana) to accommodate the informational needs of mastery learning researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Manual and computer searches on this topic have been conducted in the following databases: ERIC, Education Index, Psychological…

This directory provides brief, current information about 50 goal-based education programs of many types, sizes, and scopes throughout the United States. These programs make use of such concepts as minimum competency testing, mastery learning techniques, and continuous progress curricula, among many others. The directory is organized into five…

In this update, 49 more goal-based programs are added to the 50 programs described in the directory's initial 1981 edition. The programs are goal-based in that they make use of such concepts as minimum competency testing, mastery learning, and continuous progress curricula, among others. As in the initial edition, each program receives a one-page…

Aspects of the Total-System Design (TSD) approach to instructional design in medical laboratory science that was implemented at Creighton University are described. In a four-year project, TSD principles were used to produce the uniform, systematic, and complete definition of a medical technology major within a program of study leading to the…