Abstract
Researchers have repeatedly affirmed that parental interest in their children’s musical development has a noticeably positive impact on children’s musical development even without parents having any musical knowledge. Knowing that parents and teachers naturally bring different yet overlapping perspectives to beginner piano students, this chapter considers the relation between teachers and parents. An examination of interactions between teachers and parents from a historical perspective and within musical settings reveals that teachers may unconsciously perpetuate attitudes of assumed authority over parents. As an alternative, teachers may establish meaningful parent relations by developing openness and trust that includes listening to what parents have to contribute, figuring out what they need, finding out what works, and drawing from what’s already there rather than trying to reconfigure the family’s structure. This chapter concludes by providing practical information for the first conversation with parents, musical cornerstones for parents, welcoming real life families, and twice-yearly teacher-parent interviews.
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Thompson, M.B. (2018). Taking Parents into Consideration. In: Fundamentals of Piano Pedagogy. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65533-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65533-8_7
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