Student Teachers’ Needs in Blended Piano Studies for Clinic Style Face-to-face Guidance

In recent years, technological development has remarkably widened possibilities for students’ autonomous learning. This paper reports the findings of a study based on primary school student teachers’ piano studies as a part of their compulsory music studies in one Finnish university. The student teachers’ piano studies at the university in question, are organized using blended learning possibilities, which enable the students to study autonomously online, but which allows for some individual face-to-face guiding as well. During the academic year 2016-2017, one part of the face-to-face support was offered as a ‘clinic’ by one of the authors who was also the lecturer for groups of about 10 students. These same students studied piano every other week with another author/lecturer who used the community of inquiry as a framework (Enbuska, Tuisku & Hietanen, 2018, in print) to organize the learning for the students. The clinic was conducted in the lecturer’s office for the students who were studying piano playing in small training rooms and who wanted to ask some special questions to clarify their own needs. In present study, the students were asked if they had utilized the clinic and if they found it beneficial besides the other blended learning opportunities. The findings revealed that students found it important to discuss piano playing in the clinic with the lecturer. However, many students wanted the lecturer to come and meet the students and answer their questions while they were training in small groups in the training rooms. The students’ disclosed needs about the content focused on clarifying the music concepts at the beginning of the studies, and clearer connections with the online studying possibilities as well as with pedagogical applications for them as future teachers.