We review the musical conservatory as a model for educators to learn how to enhance admissions, instruction, and assessment in liberal arts collegiate settings. Although conservatories serve primarily students wishing to enter musical careers of various kinds, the model on which they are based can, in many ways, serve any student and any school.…

It can be difficult to navigate the tasks of repertoire selection and part assignments in a way that produces a successful performance product while also being educationally beneficial to all students. However, researchers have explored methods of ensuring these goals through repertoire selection. In this article, I present ideas for how educators…

Musical independence is a common objective for large-ensemble classes, but traditional, teacher-centric instructional practices for these groups may discourage rather than promote students' critical thinking and decision making in music. Cognitive apprenticeship provides an instructional approach through which student musicians can develop skills…

Music conservatoires have generally neglected focusing on a key issue: that of audiences--their needs and wants, why they value particular music, and how music actually functions in any particular community. Yet audience is typically a musician's first contact with the "real world"; understanding audience (one's market or customers) is…

The purposes of the present study were to identify the teacher behaviors that preceded learners' active participation in solving musical and technical problems and describe learners' roles in the problem-solving process. I applied an original model of problem solving to describe the behaviors of teachers and students in 161 rehearsal frames…