The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the development of visual diagnostic skills as a pedagogical tool in the instruction of basic conducting techniques. It was intended to examine the effects that such methods might have on the instruction of conducting for beginners in posture/baton position, beat patterns, left hand gestures, legato style, and staccato style.
Treatment and testing materials were developed and prepared, including: (a) The Subject Conducting pretest-posttest, measuring mastery of conducting skills, in which each subject was videotaped while conducting musical excerpts; (b) a written pretest-posttest, measuring mastery of visual diagnostic skills, which consisted of a videotaped presentation and a multiple-choice answer sheet; and (c) the Videotape Conducting Lesson Series, two sets of instructional videotapes, which served as the treatment, one consisting of lecture/demonstration of the conducting techniques under investigation, the other consisting of an identical section, with an additional diagnostic section showing examples of the conducting techniques in question.
Subjects for the study were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. Subjects in Group A watched the lecture/ demonstration tapes, while subjects in Group B watched the lecture/demonstration/diagnostic tapes, which asked the subjects to identify improper techniques and offer corrective measures for the techniques shown.
A panel of experts reviewed videotapes containing the conducting pretest/posttest performances of all subjects, and rated each subject on his/her demonstration of the basic conducting skills in question.
While results showed no significant difference between the ability of the groups to identify conducting problems, and no significant difference in the mean conducting improvement scores of the groups, it was shown that conducting posttest scores of the diagnostic group declined as pretest scores increased. It can be concluded that instruction in the development of visual diagnostic skills does not have more of an effect on the increase of a beginning conductor's ability than a curriculum that does not stress these skills. However, the notable increase in the low-subgroup mean conducting posttest score would suggest that this method of teaching conducting does have some merit.