Date of Award

2017

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

H. Stanton Tuttle

Scholarship Domain(s)

Scholarship of Discovery, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Abstract

This study addressed the topic of peer assisted learning, specifically ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), in a middle school string orchestra classroom. The purpose of the current study was to implement peer assisted learning into a middle school string orchestra classroom in order to determine the impacts of peer assisted learning versus teacher-directed instruction on middle school string orchestra students’ abilities to notate correct rhythm counting. Over the course of four weeks, the researcher implemented two different instructional strategies, CWPT and teacher-directed instruction (TDI), into a sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade string orchestra classroom. Utilizing the difference between pretest and posttest scores, the researcher analyzed and compared the impacts of each strategy; the researcher also measured students’ satisfaction of CWPT and TDI for learning to notate correct rhythm counting. Ultimately, the researcher concluded that there were no statistically significant differences in the impacts, or level of satisfaction, CWPT had on middle school string orchestra students' abilities to notate correct rhythm counting when compared to TDI. However, both instructional strategies increased students’ scores from pretests to posttests, and students within each group reported equal satisfaction. Therefore, the researcher also concluded that CWPT is a tool that can be added to music educators’ repertoire of teaching strategies as a supplemental strategy to traditional TDI.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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