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Show Piano Group Instruction Is As Effective As Individual Instruction To the maze of information k-bout k-bout teaching that has piled up in recent years as a result of the vast amount of research in teaching teach-ing methods has been added recently re-cently a contribution that will startle conservative educators eveiy where. In his master's thesis, "A Comparative Com-parative Study of the Relative Efficiency Ef-ficiency of Class Piano Instruction by Group versus the Private Individual In-dividual Method," Mr. J. Ellwocd Jepson, University of Utah, has shown by experiment that even in music; piano, at least group instruction in-struction is just as effective as individual in-dividual instruction, and that if decimal differences mean anything even moresc. In undertaking so unique an experiment, ex-periment, Mr. Jepson, himself a music teacher, was faced with the necessity of constructing a scale upon which to determine the degree de-gree of relative excellence in the playing of students who had been tutored by private instructors as a-gainst a-gainst the playing of students who studied piano technique in groups. As subjects Mr. Jepson selected at random from the Granite schojl district in Salt Lake City 100 students stu-dents ranging in age from 7 to 17, half of whom had had nothing but group instruction, and the ether half nothing but private instruction. in-struction. All subjects played the same selections,' and the experiments experi-ments were carried on under i-denticle i-denticle circumstances in every case. After the phonographic recordings record-ings within the groups had been scaled in order of relative merit;, cumrjarisons in the playing of both groups were made by a staff of 200 judges, five of them expets. The consistency with which all iudges appraised the playin; of the selections was exceptional, ac--crdnig to Professor Thomas Giles, dean of the department of music at the university oi Utah. The difference in the average performance cf members of both sroups is significant enough to attract at-tract further investigators to a field of investigation that has long :een considered "verboten." |