I am doing a course for teachers. One question for my assignment is "What do you think is more important to develop first - concept or skills? Why?" The area I am studying is Cognitive Development.

-- Deanne Scott (deeday@dodo.com.au), April 30, 2003

Answers

Boy, Deanne, this sounds like a ying-yang answer is necessary here! One can advance only so far technically without understanding, and of course being "clear on the concept" is nice but useless if one doesn't act on the understnading. Relating specificlly to learning the piano, perhaps understanding the concepts relating to the mechanics of the instrument and its use to produce music must come first, and some introduction to printed music, but then I would suppose concepts and learned skills would go hand in hand. (This is supposing that the student already has the concept of "music.") Anybody else? There are some wonderful "pedagogs" on this site!

-- Shirley Gibson (sacgibson@juno.com), April 30, 2003.

Experience must always precede learning. Otherwise there is no context for the learning. I usually proceed through new concepts in this order: aural (hearing it), physical (feeling it), visual (seeing what it looks like) and intellectual (naming it and pulling together the first three in a meaningful way).

This is both efficient and effective.

-- Arlene Steffen (asteffen@fresno.edu), May 06, 2003.

Skills. 100%

Which would you rather have, a society of people who understand music, or a society of people who make music? I choose the latter.

-- Jason (jason@kreisleriana.com), May 06, 2003.