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The Effect of Primary Performing Instruments
on Peer Evaluation

presented by

Bradford P Howells

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The Effect of Primary Performing Instruments on Peer Evaluation
by

Bradford P Howells

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC
Music Education

2009

ABSTRACT

THE EFFECT OF PRIMARY PERFORMING INSTRUMENTS ON PEER
EVALUATION ‘

by

Bradford P Howells

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of peer evaluation of solo
performances of high school band students. The ﬁndings may be useful to a band teacher
to enhance students’ musical development, and ultimately their performance
achievement. The problems of this study were: 1) to determine if high school students’
peer evaluations of solo performances were valid when using a standard testing tool and
2) to determine if the student evaluator validity was different when the evaluator played
the instrument being rated than when the evaluator did not play that instrument. The
subjects in this study were high school band students (n=59) from a low-to-middle class,
urban school district. Each student observed seven video-recordings of peer solo
instrumental performances. Some of these performances were on the same instrument
that the evaluating student played in band. Three expert musicians evaluated all the solo
performances. There was a low to moderate correlation between student and expert
evaluations and there was a signiﬁcant difference found between same-instrument and

not-same instrument classiﬁcations.

people:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this thesis was greatly assisted by the efforts of the following

My wife, Amber, and my children who most of all sacriﬁced time and ﬁnances to
help me complete this project.

My colleague and friend, Shawn Gurk, who listened to the ﬁrst brainstorms of
this project and helped at all levels in the development of the study.

My research advisor, Dr. Cynthia Taggart, who encouraged me to pursue a thesis
track, invested hours of reading and analysis support.

My research committee, Dr. John Kratus and Dr. Gordon Sly, who reviewed my
work and held me accountable to the standards of the profession.

My colleagues William Bier, Sharon Claassen, Jennifer Culler, and Aaron Good,
Laura Hyler, and Lynn Potter who spent extra time evaluating solo
performances.

The students of Wyoming Park High School Band who gave their time and
energy in completing the evaluations.

The students of MSBOA District 10 who gave me permission to video tape and
use their performances in this study.

Words and acknowledgements cannot convey the deep gratitude I feel for each of

these individuals and groups. Your dedication to music and education is what fuels this

project.

Thank you. I hope my words do justice to the work you do.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................... v
CHAPTER
1. LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................... 1
The Need for Evaluation .................................................................... l
The Effects of Evaluation .................................................................. 3
Student Evaluations ........................................................................... 4
Factors in Evaluation ......................................................................... 7
Purpose and Problems ........................................................................ 10
2. RELATED RESEARCH .......................................................................... 11
Student Accuracy ............................................................................... ll
Instrument Inﬂuence .......................................................................... 16
Evaluator Experience ......................................................................... 17
Sumnmry ............................................................................................ 18
3. METHOD ................................................................................................. 20
Subjects .............................................................................................. 20
Design ................................................................................................ 20
Materials ............................................................................................ 21
Measures ............................................................................................ 24
Procedures .......................................................................................... 25
4. RESULTS AND INTERPRETATIONS .................................................. 27
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlation Factors ....................... 27
Discussion .......................................................................................... 28
5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................... 30
Purpose ............................................................................................... 30
Problems ............................................................................................ 30
Summary ............................................................................................ 30
Implications for Practice .................................................................... 31
Suggestions for Future Research ....................................................... 33
APPENDD(
A. Woodwind Brass Solo Evaluation Form ....................................... 35
REFERENCES ............................................ . ................................................. 37

iv

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 - n of Recordings ........................................................................... 22
TABLE 2 - Solo Performances per Evaluation Session ................................ 23
TABLE 3 — Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlation Factor ................ 28

Chapter One — Literature Review
The Need for Evaluations

Music teachers have long used informal assessments, such as observation, to
make mental note of how students are progressing at acquiring musical skills. However,
large ensembles, limited class time, and performance pressures often force teachers to
forget the speciﬁc attention to the evaluation of student learning that each individual
student needs. As a result, the teacher may neglect to assess students’ cognitive learning
in a formal way. When the semester ﬁnishes, such a teacher will be forced to assign
grades based on the last few observations and interactions with a student, which may or
may not accurately reﬂect the student’s true performance in class.

Occasionally, a participation grade will be weighted more heavily to boost a poor
academic skill grade. McCoy (1991) found that band directors placed an average of
56.48% of their grade on attitude (affective) and concert participation and behavior (non-
music). The choral directors in the same study based 55.67% of their students’ grades on
the same categories, while their principals would have based the majority (57.23%) of the
grade on musical knowledge (cognitive) and performance ability (psychomotor) (McCoy,
1991). This complacent attitude of ensemble teachers towards assessment has been
accepted in school music programs for decades.

With the advent of No Child Left Behind (US Department of Education, 2002),
schools are required to display adequate yearly progress through state assessments.
School administrations seek to measure the growth 'of their students throughout the year
with formal assessments to ensure that they are meeting their own goals and benchmarks

towards maintaining and/or improving their current educational success. Ultimately,

teachers are held accountable for the learning of their students. While the implications of
this accountability has been debated in many staff meetings and criticized behind closed
staff lunchroom doors, the importance of improving our schools is undeniable. In many
school systems, this drive to improve ﬁlters down into the arts programs and creates a
need to measure student achievement and progress.

While using evaluation techniques is not new to the music education profession,
music teachers are often not equipped with strategies for assessing their students’
performances. Music teachers’ undergraduate training commonly does not spend a
signiﬁcant amount of time on creation and implementation of a quality assessment
program (Lillis, 2000). Rubrics, continuous scales, additive scales and other such
assessment terminology are unfamiliar to many music teachers. Professional
development conferences and workshops have only recently started to incorporate
assessment as topic that is worthy of study for music teachers. In the State of Michigan,
the association that organizes vocal festivals addressed this shift by replacing their
assessment system in 2008 with rubric-style evaluation (Stegman, 2009). The need for
better comprehension and application of performance assessment has encouraged a large
outgrowth of studies investigating the effects and determining the best methods of
evaluation (Bergee, 1993 & 1995; Fiske, 1975 & 1977; Hewitt, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007;
Hewitt & Smith, 2004; Morrison, Montemayor & Wiltshire, 2004; Saunders & Holahan,
1997).

Do students actually learn better or learn more if their performances are being
evaluated on a regular basis? How often should students have their performance

evaluated? Is it the case that, to ensure student learning, the school concerts in December

 

and May are no longer sufficient, nor the district and state concert festivals held in the
spring? To begin answering questions like these, Bergee (1997) studied the acceptability
of student peer-evaluations. The accuracy of student self evaluations on solo
performances was investigated twice by Hewitt (2002; 2005). Morrison, Montemayor,
and Wiltshire (2004) studied the effect of self evaluation on the students’ attitudes
towards music performance. In a similar vein, Hewitt (2001) investigated the effect of
self evaluation on their attitude towards practicing. Can they improve their practicing

after being evaluated?

The Effects of Evaluation

Hewitt (2001) studied whether modeling, self-listening, and self-evaluation had
an effect on junior high instrumental music students’ performance and attitude about
practice. His ﬁndings suggest that, when students only evaluate their own solo
performances, there was no significant improvement in performance. However, self-
evaluation combined with listening to a recorded model did tend to improve
performances. He also found that students’ attitudes towards practicing were not affected
positively or negatively by self-evaluating.

Likewise, Morrison, Montemayor, & Wiltshire, (2004) revealed that a recorded
model had a positive impact on self-evaluation. This study suggested that listening to a
recorded model also improved the performances of the modeled song. Interestingly,
other unmodeled songs performed by this group also improved when compared to
performances by ensembles that had no modeling experiences. This ﬁnding implies that

perhaps the effects of modeling transferred across performances.

Students in this study demonstrated increased discrimination of errors in their
own performances in addition to increased awareness of expression and phrasing after
having listened to a recorded model in the course of learning their pieces. The authors
stated the beneﬁts of this study as following: “Developing habits of self-evaluation in
students is generally seen as desirable among music teachers as a means of encouraging
student responsibility for musical learning” (Morrison, Montemayor, & Wiltshire, 2004,

p.118)

Student Evaluations
From the school administrators’ perspective, evaluations and assessments are the
responsibility of the teacher and should objectively measure the growth demonstrated by
the students. In this light, music teachers need to perform regular assessments to monitor
growth and adapt teaching strategies for proper instruction. However, evaluation can be
used as a curricular tool when students learn to evaluate performance, as mentioned
previously (Wells, 1997). The National Music Education Standards, as created by
MENC: the National Association for Music Education, include “Evaluating Music and
Music Performances” as the seventh of nine standards. The description of this standard
for students in grades ﬁve through eight says that students should:
a) develop criteria for evaluating the quality and effectiveness of
music performances and compositions and apply the criteria in
their personal listening and performing.
b) evaluate the quality and effectiveness of their own and others'

performances, compositions, arrangements, and improvisations by

applying speciﬁc criteria appropriate for the style of the music and
offer constructive suggestions for improvement (Music Educators
National Conference, 1994,
http://www.menc.org/publicationfbooks/prek125t.html).
The description for grades nine through 12 is worded only slightly differently. Teachers
as a whole agree that evaluation of musical performances is a skill that music students
must have.

Investigators have explored how accurate students’ evaluations are when
compared to professional educators or adjudicators (Bergee, 1993, 1997; Byo & Brooks,
1994; Hewitt, 2005), as well as how students’ evaluations change over time (Aitchinson,
1995; Hewitt, 2002). Establishing the accuracy of student evaluations is critical at the
onset of any student-focused assessment system. If students’ evaluations are not
accurate, instruction on how to evaluate performance is necessary. The information
gathered from such evaluations will have negligible educational value if they lack
accuracy. Hewitt (2002) found that middle school students did not increase their ability
to evaluate when using a self-guided evaluation form. Aitchinson (1995), however,
found that, with teacher support, students did improve in their ability to self-evaluate. If
accuracy can be improved over time and with guidance and instruction, there may be a
number of uses for incorporating student evaluations into the music program.

First, students could develop the skill to listen critically to performances. This
skill is one that all musicians desire for improving their own performances. Critical
listening also enables musicians to gain experience from the performances of others.

Second, students might be able to learn from the positive musical performances as well as

mistakes that they hear and, subsequently, improve their own performance achievement.
Finally, students might develop the skill of communicating to others about their
observations in a helpful manner.

Several studies have investigated student acouracy in a variety of settings. Hewitt
suggested that middle school students tend to overrate their own solo performances when
compared to expert raters (2002). High school students were only slightly more accurate
than middle school students in certain sub-areas of evaluation, such as tone, intonation,
tempo, interpretation, technique/articulation (2005). His 2002 study also showed that
students participating in the study increased in their performance scores, but not in their
ability to self—evaluate. After six weeks, some post-test sub area correlations improved
slightly from the pre-test, which suggests that, over a longer time period and with more
experience, self—evaluation accuracy might improve. The author proposes “that extended
and perhaps more frequent opportunities should be offered for self—evaluation” (Hewitt,
2002).

Another study of junior high students’ abilities to evaluate full ensemble
performance supported the claim that students had low correlation when compared to the
rating of music educators (r = .18) (Byo & Brooks, 1994). However, this study also
showed student ratings of a university level ensemble were more moderately correlated (r
= .50) with ratings of experts. Temporal graphs presented similar ratings across time
(Byo & Brooks, 1994). The authors suggested that perhaps the ability level of the
performing ensemble affects the evaluation skills of students. This suggestion was
supported by the weak correlation of student to expert evaluations, possibly because

students were less objective in their evaluations of their own performances or because

they did not have the requisite musical skills to accurately evaluate their own
performance (Byo & Brooks, 1994).

Two studies in a series conducted by Bergee (1993, 1997) on self-, peer-, and
faculty evaluations of college-level solo performance corroborated previous ﬁndings.
Correlations of self-evaluations with faculty evaluations were moderately low (r = .10—
.39) in the 1993 study and moderate to inversely moderate (r = -.54 - .56) in the 1997
study. The peer-to—faculty evaluations resulted in considerably stronger correlations. In
the 1993 study the correlations were (r = 86-91) and the 1997 study (r = 61-98)
(Bergee, 1993, 1997).

These studies reveal that the self-evaluations of school age students should not be
the sole method of evaluation, as those evaluations do not reliably correspond to those of
music educators. Students may not be as objective as would be deemed ideal for the sake
of assessment or they may not know enough to make valid performance assessments.
Self-evaluation is a useful tool for developing critical listening skills, but a teacher should
not assign a grade based upon student self-evaluations. Alternatively, peer-evaluations
should be investigated further, as they may be more accurate and may be a practical tool

in music education assessment.

Factors in Evaluation

When considering an individual who will be evaluating a performance, one must
understand what personal characteristics may inﬂuence the evaluation. At solo and
ensemble festival in the state of Michigan, the organizers of each event hire professional

musicians to evaluate performances on their primary instrument. In select cases, a judge

may be asked to evaluate an instrument that is not his primary instrument, although in
most occurrences, the instrument will be related to the primary instrument of the judge,
such as clarinet to saxophone. It is assumed that the evaluation will be more accurate if
done by someone who performs on the instrument and who has personal experience with
its performance characteristics. Research shows that this may an incorrect assumption
(Fiske, 1975; Hewitt, 2007; Hewitt & Smith, 2004).

In a study comparing judges who performed on brass instruments with those who
do not play brass instruments, there was no statistically signiﬁcant difference between
their ratings when evaluating high school solo trumpet performances (Fiske, 1975). Fiske
also found that, when he re—categorized the judges as wind or non-wind instrument
players, the only trait that resulted in a signiﬁcant difference was technique. He
suggested that, for purposes of auditioning for membership in an ensemble, the judges’
primary performing medium need not be considered when selecting judges. However,
the author did recommend that, in evaluations intended for improving a soloist’s
performance, it would be best to have a judge who at least played in the same type of
performing ensemble, such as band or orchestra (Fiske, 1975).

Other studies supported this conclusion. When looking for signiﬁcant
relationships between experience level (lower-, upper-division college students, and in-
service teachers) and primary performing instruments on evaluation reliability, Hewitt
and Smith (2004) found few. The stronger relationships were between experience levels
and not between primary performing instruments. The authors were led to concur with
other studies that the performing instrument of the judge does not have any affect on the

reliability of the evaluation (Hewitt & Smith, 2004).

In a similar study, Hewitt again investigated effects of age level and primary
performing instruments on evaluation reliability. In this study, however, he grouped the
students by middle school, high school, and college level. Again, he found no inﬂuence
of primary performing instrument on the ratings at any age level. However, Hewitt did
ﬁnd some signiﬁcant differences due to age level. One ﬁnding that was particularly
interesting was that, overall, the middle and high school students rated the performances
lower than did college students. These findings contrasted previous studies that suggested
that younger students tend to overrate in evaluation settings (Byo & Brooks, 1994;
Hewitt, 2002). The design of the evaluation may have had some inﬂuence in this, as
students were not self-evaluating in this study but rather peer-evaluating (Hewitt, 2007).

As mentioned previously, professional musicians are hired to adjudicate at solo
and ensembles. It is also assumed that evaluators must have a higher levellof
performance achievement than the performer to accurately evaluate student
performances. One study shows that this also may be untrue. When looking for
relationships between judge performance achievement, judge reliability, and judge non-
performance achievement, Fiske found that there was no relationship between
performance achievement and reliability of ratings or between performance achievement
and non-performance achievement. Non-performance achievement was deﬁned as the
cumulative scores of the judges’ college level music history and music theory classes.
However, there was an inverse relationship between non-performance achievement and
judge reliability. In other words, judges who do well in music history and music theory
may actually be worse at evaluating performances. The author attributed this

phenomenon to differing mental mechanisms used in various music disciplines.

“Disciplines that require absolute responses, such as music history and
music theory, ordinarily would provide little practice for such a
[discretionary] mechanism and, at worst, would tend to extinguish its use
altogether. Conversely, teaching experience in performance would tend to
strengthen the mechanism since student progress in performance depends

upon ongoing evaluation” (Fiske, 1977).

Purpose and Problems

Limited research has been conducted on the accuracy of peer evaluations. There
have been no studies that ask students to evaluate solo performances of multiple
instruments. Therefore the purpose of this study is to investigate the validity of peer
evaluation of solo performances of high school band students. The ﬁndings may be
useful to a band teacher to enhance students’ musical development, and ultimately their
performance achievement. The speciﬁc problems of this study are as follows:

1. Are high school students’ peer evaluations of solo performances similar to

those of expert judges when'using a standard testing tool?
2. Is the student evaluator accuracy related to whether the evaluator plays the

instrument being rated?

10

Chapter Two - Related Research
Student Accuracy

Many studies have found that student self-evaluations of performances have little
relationship to the evaluations of expert music educators (Bergee, 1993, 1997; Byo &
Brooks, 1994; Hewitt, 2005). Bergee used similar methods in both of his studies to obtain
the correlations of r = .10—.39 in a 1993 study and r = -.54 - .56 in a 1997 study between
student self-ratings and the ratings of musical experts. The evaluated performances were
of college-level students who were performing juries for a panel of faculty evaluators.
The performances were video-recorded. The faculty evaluations were done in real—time,
while the peer and self evaluations were completed while watching video recordings.
Performances were already scheduled to occur, and the faculty members were well-
acquainted with the evaluation process. To prepare materials for evaluation, the author
merely needed to video-record the performances to allow for subsequent viewing by the
performers. While this presented a practical solution for this study, differences in
evaluations may have occurred due to the nature of the presentation of the performances
(Bergee, 1993, 1997).

In the 1993 study, Bergee attempted to account for these discrepancies by using a
technique involving comparisons of mean differences. The reported differences ranged
from .03 to .51, which indicated relatively strong agreement (0 would indicate complete
agreement of scores while 4 indicates complete disagreement) (Bergee, 1.993).

When investigating self—evaluation accuracy, several researchers found that
recording the performance ﬁrst and then evaluating the recorded performance results in

greater student objectivity than evaluating a completed live performance (Byo & Brooks,

11

1994; Hewitt, 2002, 2005). This may be due to the student evaluators’ focus of attention
during the performance. There may exist too great of a challenge on the part of the
student to attend to both his/her current playing and also remember every aspect for later
retrieval in the evaluation setting. Self-evaluating may also be viewed as assigning
oneself a grade. Therefore, middle school students especially may not be able to
objectively evaluate themselves if they see the evaluation in that light.

A recorded performance is also more practical when using a large number of
evaluators (Bergee, 1997). The use of video recordings as opposed to audio recordings
does not seem to affect the reliability of evaluations in any study. With the rapid
development of high quality recording technology, video recording is no more
complicated then audio recording. As a result, the resulting recorded performance may
feel more authentic or “live” when video-recorded. For the purpose of this study, I chose
to have both expert and student peer evaluations conducted using identical video-
recorded materials. This choice allowed the evaluation format to be the same for both the
students and the expert evaluators and contributed to the validity of the study.

The method of measurement has varied throughout the studies. Saunders and
Holahan (1997) created criteria speciﬁc ratings scales and determine the accuracy their
measures. They also studied whether these scales helped the judges differentiate between
levels of performance. The results of this study revealed that the Woodwind Brass Solo
Evaluation Form [WBSEF] has high internal reliability (.92) and has been shown to be
effective when used by middle and high school students (Hewitt, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007;

Hewitt & Smith, 2004). The authors also found that WBSEF also allowed the judges to

12

speciﬁcally focus on areas of accomplishment and address areas where the performer
needed assistance (Saunders & Holahan, 1997).

Bergee used a measure he created called the Brass Performance Rating Scale
[BPRS], which included 27 statements that were categorized into four factors:
interpretation/musical effect, tone quality/intonation, technique, and rhythm/tempo. Each
item was rated in Likert format with 5 points per item. Some of the statements were
positive and therefore earned 1 point for a strongly disagree to 5 points for strongly agree.
The negative statements were scored 5 points for strongly disagree to 1 point for strongly
agree. He referenced his own prior studies for reliability. Total score reliability in those
studies was strong (r = 94-98), as was reliability among factors (r = 89-99). None of
the statements referred to speciﬁc brass characteristics, and thus it may possible to use
this measure for any wind instrument. However, length of time required to read and
make a judgment on 27 separate statements may be counterproductive if the BPRS was
used with high school students (Bergee, 1993). As a result, this study will use the
Woodwind Brass Solo Evaluation Form [WBSEF] (Saunders & Holahan, 1997), which
also has high internal reliability (.92) and has been shown to be effective when used by
middle and high school students (Hewitt, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007; Hewitt & Smith,
2004).

The reliability investigation conducted by Byo and Brooks (1994) showed that
students were less reliable compared to expert raters when they evaluated their own
ensemble’s performance (r = .19) than when they listened to a university ensemble
playing a similar style piece (r = .50). Two factors of their methodology must be taken

into consideration in light of the present study. First, the authors chose to use a

13

Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) to collect data on the listeners’ reactions.
This device allows evaluators to turn a dial to rate the overall quality of the performance
on a scale up to 100. CRDI does not reveal any data concerning the dimension of the
musical performance to which the evaluators are responding. Although data is coded for
time, and this coding can be aligned with the performance, evaluators are often
responding several seconds later than the actual event they are evaluating. The resulting
data is interesting and useful for comparison, but it does not inform the readers beyond
the graphs and numbers. The authors admitted that it must be assumed that the students
were actually evaluating the quality of the performance and not rating their preference for
the performance. Therefore, this study will include ratings of the speciﬁc dimensions of
musical characteristics of tone, intonation, technique/articulation, melodic accuracy,
rhythmic accuracy, tempo, and interpretation as included in the WBSEF.

The second factor to be considered in the Byo and Brooks study (1994) is that
students were not evaluating solo performances. Listening to ensembles takes on a
different form due to the harmonic textures and various timbres that occur. It cannot be
assumed that students are sufﬁciently experienced in ensemble evaluation to accurately
perform such a task (Byo & Brooks, 1994).

Another study that compared student self—evaluations with expert evaluators in an
ensemble setting found that high school students’ scores had no signiﬁcant correlations to
experts’ scores in any subarea (r = -. 12 - .21) (Hewitt, 2005). Hewitt found a low to
moderate correlation for middle school students (r = .20-.38). The student participants in
this study were asked to evaluate themselves after they had just ﬁnished performing a

selected ensemble piece in a summer music camp rehearsal setting (Hewitt, 2005). The

14

accuracy of such evaluations must be questioned due to the methods used. Students,
especially those in middle school, may ﬁnd it challenging to distinguish their
performance in each of the different musical subareas of WBSEF, as they are performing
their part of a full wind ensemble. For example, most customary arrangements for
middle school bands do not often present a signiﬁcant portion of melodic material to the
low brass instruments. French horns are often asked to play rhythmically demanding
parts; yet they may not be able to identify how their part supports the rest of the
ensemble. This may make it difﬁcult to rate interpretation or melodic accuracy. Solo
evaluations are simpler, as there is only one performer to consider.

Certainly, an accompanist may play a role in the overall performance, but this role
can be minimized with a valid measurement instrument. One study has shown that
student evaluators are able to identify strongest and weakest aspects of solo performances
regardless of accompaniment style (Brittin, 2002). Solos are complete in and of
themselves, without needing context of an entire ensemble. The present study will
continue to look at the evaluations of solo performances.

While studies have found consistently low correlations (Byo & Brooks, 1994;
Hewitt, 2005), both of the Bergee studies revealed strong relationships between peer and
facultyevaluations. In the 1993 study, the correlations ranged from 86-91 and in the
1997 study, the range was 61-98 (Bergee, 1993, 1997). The greater range in the 1997
study was attributed to the combined factors of small sample size and large variety of
solo performance instruments and large variety of faculty performance instruments.
Speciﬁcally, there were ﬁve vocal, three string, four brass, four woodwind, and three

percussion faculty from one site evaanting the performances. Solo performances

15

consisted of seven vocalists, six string players, eight brass players, nine woodwind
players, and seven percussionists. Interestingly, the instruments with the strongest
faculty-peer correlations had the weaker faculty-self and peer-self correlations (e.g.,
Percussion, Site 3 Faculty-Peer r = .98, Faculty-Self r = -. 19, Peer-Self r = .06). The
opposite was also true; the strongest faculty—self and peer-self correlations had the weaker
faculty-peer correlations, although the stronger faculty-self and peer—self correlations
were negative and the faculty-peer correlations were statistically strong (e. g., Strings, Site
1 Faculty-Peer r = .75, Faculty-Self r = -.48, Self-Peer r = -.59) (Bergee, 1997). To
increase the chances that the method of the study does not interfere with the data, the
number of expert evaluators will be limited to two brass and two woodwind experts,
while the number of student evaluators will be maximized. Because the second problem
of this study is speciﬁcally looking at the effect of the evaluator playing the same
instrument as the performance being evaluated, this study will seek a broad

representation of primary instruments.

Instrument Influence

A signiﬁcant number of studies have shown that the primary performing
instrument of the evaluator does not inﬂuence the accuracy of the evaluation (Fiske 1975;
Hewitt, 2007; Hewitt & Smith, 2004). These studies were done only on trumpet
performances for which the evaluators were grouped as brass or non-brass performers.
All three found that there were no signiﬁcant differences between brass and non-brass
evaluators, including overall evaluations and evaluations for traits or subareas (Fiske

1975; Hewitt, 2007; Hewitt & Smith, 2004). However, at the results of studies that were

1.6

 

limited to trumpet performances alone do not necessarily generalize to other instruments.
Trumpet performance traits may be more recognizable by a broad number of musicians,
especially brass musicians; thus similar standards for performances may already exist.
Considering this, the present study is designed so that the student evaluators of all

instruments will evaluate performances of all instruments.

Evaluator Experience

Two recent studies have investigated the effect of the evaluator’s age or
experience level on the accuracy of their evaluations (Hewitt, 2007; Hewitt & Smith,
2004). Hewitt and Smith divided college students into lower and upper classmen, and
compared these two categories with a third, in-service teachers. This study found no
statistically signiﬁcant difference between the ratings of the three experience levels. The
evaluators were listening to performances of junior high trumpet players, and the
differences emerged over one performer in particular. Upper-classmen rated this
performer higher in tone and intonation then lower-classmen and in-service teachers.
Lower-classmen also scored the intonation of a different performer signiﬁcantly higher
than upper-classmen. The authors of this study concluded that, for the study as a whole,
experience had little inﬂuence on the evaluations. To explain this, they state: “The
lower— and upper-division college students in this study seem to have reached the level of
sophistication that allowed for them to evaluate a diverse sample of junior high trumpet
players in a manner similar to more experienced teachers” (Hewitt & Smith, 2004, p.

324).

17

 

In a study with a similar design, Hewitt (2007) investigated the inﬂuences of
education level on evaluation. He compared middle school, high school, and college
level students. The results suggested that these age groups evaluate performances
differently, especially when focusing on sub-areas. Tone was mostly rated lower by
middle and high school students than college students. Evaluations between middle
school and high school students were the most similar for the majority of performances
and across subareas. Evaluations by these groups of students were more often lower in
ratings than college age students (Hewitt, 2007).

Many other studies have used evaluators at various education and experience
levels. Both studies by Fiske involved expert evaluators (1975, 1977). Both studies by
Bergee (1993, 1997), one study by Hewitt (2007), and the study by Hewitt and Smith
(2004) involved college students. High school evaluators were the focus of two of
Hewitt’s studies (2005, 2007). Several authors have used junior high students in
evaluations (Byo & Brooks, 1994; Hewitt 2002, 2005, 2007). The results of these studies
suggest that conducting a study among high school students should yield consistent

results between similarly aged student evaluators.

Summary

I have taken into consideration prior research methods and results in the
development of the design and methods for the present study. The following list contains
a summary of these considerations:

1) Both expert and student peer evaluations should be conducted using identical

materials and evaluation formats.

18

 

2) This study will use the Woodwind Brass 8010 Evaluation Form [WBSEF]
(Saunders & Holahan, 1997), which has high internal reliability (.92) and has
been shown to be effective when used by middle and high school students
(Hewitt, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007; Hewitt & Smith, 2004).

3) This study will include ratings of musical characteristics of tone, intonation,
technique/articulation, melodic accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, tempo, and
interpretation as included in the WBSEF.

4) The present study will look at the evaluations of solo performances as

 

opposed to full ensembles or individual performances within an ensemble.

19

 

Chapter Three - Method
Subjects
Subjects in this study were from a west Michigan school district that has a fairly
diverse population and has a medium sized high school band program of approximately
80 members. The band program uses standard instrumentation, including all of the major
solo performing instruments (ﬂute, clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, F horn, trombone,

snare and mallet percussion) and other performing instruments as they are available

4 A man it -3:

(oboe, bassoon, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, euphonium, and tuba).
I Students in this program are familiar with solo and ensemble and full ensemble "

concert festivals, as they participate in them on an annual basis. This type of evaluation

comprises the majority of their prior evaluation experience. As a result, their band

teacher uses the basic terminology of musical sub-areas on the ratings forms for those

events during class. Their instruction consists of a comprehensive music education

through performance so that the terms tone, intonation, rhythm, melody, and

interpretation are familiar and functional vocabulary.

Design

The design of this study is two-fold. To answer the ﬁrst question, I used a cross
sectional design to determine correlations between student (peer) and expert evaluations
of performances. I answered the second question using a non-statistical comparison of
the correlation between the students and the expert judges when the student evaluator

played the same instrument as the performance being evaluated (hereafter labeled “same-

20

instrument”) and when the students did not play the instrument of the performance being

evaluated.

Materials

In order to answer the questions of this study, I needed to have recordings of solo
performances on a variety of instruments that both the students and expert judges could
rate to yield the data for the study. As solo-ensemble festival is the most common venue

for solo performance, and the performances at those festivals are knowingly performed

Hun—nan. q

for ratings, taping solo-ensemble festival performances seemed logical. Prior to a solo
and ensemble festival, I contacted the band directors of the schools within the district that
normally would participate in the festival. 1 provided the directors with a consent form to
distribute to their students, and asked the directors to provide me with performance
schedules of the students who consented to participate. Due to their school
responsibilities, only two directors returned schedules of consenting students from which
I could create a schedule to record the performances. To remedy this shortage of
participants, I approached groups of performers on the day of the festival, requesting to
video-tape their performance for use in this study. Prior to the performance, the soloist
and his/her parents completed the consent form. All video recordings were made using
the same digital video recorder and recorded directly to the hard drive of a laptop
computer. The number of solo performances obtained can be found in Table 1.

To increase the likelihood of a random sample, the researcher obtained
performances from students who attended a variety of schools and represented a variety

of grade levels. This reduced the effect of each school’s program or experience level on

21

the student evaluations. I also spread the recordings of each instrument throughout the
day so that the evaluations were not affected by the time of the performance.

Ideally, I would have preferred to gather four video recordings per major solo
instrument. While I only planned to use two or three recordings for evaluation, gathering
more recordings would have allowed me to discard any recording that may have lower
recording quality or technical difﬁculties. 1 had planned to obtain a single high-quality
solo recording of other solo instruments (oboe, bassoon, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone,
euphonium, and tuba) that are not as widely studied in the band classrooms.

Table 1

n of Recordings

Solo Instrument n recordings
Flute 3
Clarinet 2
Bassoon l
Alto Sax 2
1
3
l
l
1
l

 

Tenor Sax
Trumpet

F Horn
Euphonium
Tuba

Total

 

After gathering the recordings, I created five video compilations, each of which
included seven solo performances and time in between for the student evaluators to
complete their WBSEF forms. One video compilation was watched per evaluation
session. Two video compilations could ﬁt on one digital video disc (DVD), therefore

three DVDs were created.

22

 

 

The seven performances included in each video were chosen based on three
factors. 1) A11 recorded performances of the primary performing instrument for that
session would be included in the video compilation. 2) The remaining performances
would represent a variety of instruments that students in that session would not be as
familiar with. 3) Each recorded performance would be included equally across all seven
performances, to the extent possible. In each session, there were one to three
performances on the primary instrument of the student evaluators. These were
intermixed with four to six other performances of other various instruments. Each 1
student evaluator observed seven total performances. The total number of students who
performed evaluations was 59.

Student sessions were divided based upon primary performing instruments and
were grouped to keep the number of students per session relatively similar. I desired to
be sensitive to the band director’s need for rehearsal time and minimum distractions to
the week; thus smaller groups were also grouped so that requiring extra days of
evaluations could be avoided. Trumpet and horn players were grouped together as were
all low brass voices (trombone, euphonium, and tuba). A table that contains each DVD’s
contents can be seen below.

Table 2

Solo Performances per Evaluation Session

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flute Session Clarinet Session Saxophone Session
Performance #1 Trumpet #2 Clarinet #2 Tenor Sax #1
Performance #2 Flute #2 Tuba #1 Flute #2
Performance #3 Tenor Sax #1 Flute #1 Alto Sax #1
Performance #4 Clarinet #2 Clarinet #1 Trumpet #1
Performance #5 Flute #1 Trumpet #2 Alto Sax #2
Performance #6 Euphonium Alto Sax #1 Clarinet #2
Performance #7 Flute #3 F Horn #1 Bassoon #1

 

 

 

 

23

 

'Table 2, continued

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trumpet/Hom Session Low Brass Session
Performance #1 Alto Sax #2 Bassoon #1
Performance #2 Trumpet #3 F Horn #1
Performance #3 Clarinet #1 Tuba #1
Performance #4 Trumpet #1 Clarinet #1
Performance #5 Flute #3 Euphonium #1
Performance #6 Trumpet #2 Flute #1
Performance #7 F Horn #1 Alto Sax #2

 

 

 

 

 

I created a separate DVD that contained all 15 performances which were observed

by the expert judges in random order.

Measures

Both the students and expert judges used Woodwind Brass Solo Evaluation Form
[W3 SEF] to rate the performances because of the strong reliability as a whole (.92) and
ach S s the range of instruments (82-97) as documented in previous research literature
(San nders & Holahan, 1997). In other studies as well, WBSEF has been shown to have a
stron g inteijudge reliability (Hewitt, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007; Hewitt & Smith, 2004).
WB SEF has been used in many formal studies with middle and high school aged students
and has been shown to be appropriate for use with performances of this age level.
To complete WBSEF, the evaluator is presented with criteria-speciﬁc, continuous
ﬁve‘point ratings scales in each of six sub-areas: tone, intonation, melodic accuracy,
r hYthmic accuracy, tempo, and interpretation. A seventh sub-area, technique/articulation,

is rated using an additive ﬁve-point scale (See Appendix A). WBSEF also includes

24

rating Scales for evaluating the performances of scales and sight-reading. In the context

of this study, these were not used.

Procedures

Consent forms were given to the student participants from the band chosen to do
the evaluations. The forms were taken home to be signed and returned. During their
regularly scheduled class rehearsal time, I took one instrument group to a separate room
to view the recordings. I distributed seven copies of the WBSEF to each student
evaluator, who then watched a two-minute instructional video on how to use WBSEF that
I created to keep the instruction as consistent as possible. It was noted in this video that
the technique/articulation section of the form was additive, or “Check all that apply.”
Some students expressed a concern about the wording of this section. The items read ‘ as
marked” for concepts such as accents, omamentations, and articulations (see Appendix
A)- Because the students did not have the musical score, I advised them to check the
selec tions if the accents, omamentations, and articulations were played in a way that was
mus i cally appropriate. Finally, we discovered during the sessions that some of the video
recoI‘ciings had an audible “popping” sound that was a recording deﬁciency and not a

Property of the musical performance. I advised the students to disregard this in their
evalu ations. The data collected do not reﬂect any effect of this defect on the scoring.
According to the author of WBSEF, the evaluator is to act as a reporter and via
the form and “describe the levels of performance achievement” (T.C. Saunders, personal
Communication, March 6, 2008). Evaluators were advised not to replace the numerical

Va‘Ues for descriptor, such as excellent, good, average, or poor. I answered any questions

25

from Students to ensure that optimal understanding was established prior to

commencement of the evaluation period.

The students evaluated each of the seven solo performances on separate forms in
one Session. After evaluating the performances, student evaluators would ﬁll out a short
survey to identify their primary performing instrument and any secondary instruments
they may perform on in other settings, such as marching band or jazz band.

After conducting the student peer-evaluation sessions, I contacted three
professional instrumental musicians to evaluate the recorded performances. Before the
evaluation session, I informed the judges about the purpose and methods of this study. I
compared the WBSEF to other evaluation tools these judges were familiar with to show
differences during a short discussion about the use of the WSBEF. I pointed out similar

issu es as discussed in the student sessions. Then, in one hour-long session, the judges

eval u ated all of the performances using WBSEF.

26

Chapter Four - Results and Interpretations
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlation Factor
I calculated the inter-judge reliabilities between expert evaluators using a
correlation matrix to determine how consistent the scores were between judges. The
correlation between expert judge 1 and judge 2 was .78, between judges 2 and 3 was .75,
and between judges 3 and 1 was .86. These correlations are within an acceptable range
for inter-judge reliabilities.

After each of the instrument groups had evaluated the performances on their
speciﬁc compilation, I analyzed the data to determine means and standard deviations of
a1 ] evaluations, as well as the results according to the grouping of same instruments and

n Qt-same instruments. Some student evaluators indicated that they played multiple
in struments in performance settings. For example, during the concert season, one student
Played trumpet. During marching season, however, this student played euphonium. In
Such cases, the student’s primary instrument was classiﬁed by whichever session (ﬂute,
C 1 arinet, saxophone, trumpet/hom, or low brass) he or she participated in during the
6"valuation process. The trumpet/euphonium player mentioned here was considered a
tru mpet player because she attended the trumpet/horn performance rating session. Data
from the ratings of instruments that the student played during other times of the school
year were excluded from the study.

The student evaluations were correlated with those of the expert judge scores for
the same-instrument performances using the Pearson Product Moment formula. The

resulting means, standard deviations, and correlations are reported in Table 3.

27

Table 3

Means, Standard Deviation, and Correlation Factor

 

Student

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student Expert Expert r
Mean SD Mean SD
All Evaluations 55.48 9.48 55.57 6.25 .44
Same Instrument 55.87 9.29 54.82 6.95 .58
Not Same Instrument 55.23 9.59 54.15 5.58 .39

 

 

Discussion

The means of the students and the expert judges were similar, even when taking
into consideration same and not same instruments. However, the standard deviations of
the students tended to be much larger than those of the expert judges. This means that
there was more variance in the student scores than in those of the judges.
The ﬁrst problem of this study was to determine if high school students’ peer
e valuations of solo performances agree with those of expert judges when using a standard
e V aluation instrument. The correlation between all student evaluations and expert
6" aluations is moderate to low (r=.44). This suggests that student evaluations may not
be an accurate reﬂection of the quality of the performance. Although the moderate to low
correlation found in this study is slightly higher than those of previous studies, the
practical implications are much the same. Byo and Brooks (1994) found a low
COrrelation (r=.18) when junior high students evaluated their own ensemble performance.
Although Hewitt (2005) looked at each individual music performance subarea (tone,
i ntonation, melodic accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, tempo, interpretatidn, and
technique/articulation) the range of correlations he found (r: -. 12 - .21) was somewhat

lower than that of this study but practically comparable.

28

The second problem of this study was to determine whether the student evaluator
accuracy was affected by whether they were evaluating a performance of the primary
performing instrument of the evaluator or of an instrument that the student did not play.
The correlation with the ratings of expert judges to students who play the same

i nstrument as the evaluated solo performance was moderate (r=.58), while the correlation
between expert judges’ ratings and the ratings of students listening to instruments that
they did not play was considerably lower (r=.39). The resulting differences between the
two correlations reveal that there is some effect of same-instrument versus not-same-
in strument evaluation on students’ abilities to rate performances. These ﬁndings are in
moderate disagreement with previous studies, which suggested that the primary
Performing instrument had little effect or no affect on the overall solo evaluation (Fiske,

1 9'75, Hewitt & Smith, 2004).

29

Chapter Five - Conclusions and Recommnedations
Purpose

The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity of peer evaluation of solo
performances of high school band students. The ﬁndings may be useful to a band teacher

to enhance students’ musical development, and ultimately their performance

achievement.

Problems

The problems of this study were: 1) to determine if high school students’ peer
e valuations of solo performances were similar to those of expert judges when using a
S tandard testing tool and 2) to determine if student evaluator accuracy is related to

Whether the evaluator plays the instrument being rated.
S ummary

The importance for student musicians to be evaluated on their own
Performance, along with evaluating the performances of others, is becoming
i lIcreasingly evident in the music education community. The National Standards
reflect this by including “Evaluating Music and Music Performances” (Music
Educators National Conference, 1994,
Qpﬁzl/wwwmenoorg/publication/books/preklZsthtml). The focus of this study
Was on the validity of ratings when comparing evaluations of students who play

the same instrument as the one being evaluated to those of when the student does

not play that instrument.

30

The subjects in this study were high school band students (n=59) from a
l cw-to-middle class, urban school district. Each student rated seven video-
recordings of peer solo instrumental performances using WBSEF. Some of these
performances were on the primary performing instrument of the evaluating

student and others were not. Three expert musicians evaluated all the solo

performances.

The correlations of the student-to-expert evaluations were calculated as a
whole and then according to whether the student was evaluating a performance on
the same instrument that he or she played in band as opposed to a different

in strument. Therewas a moderate to low correlation between student and expert
e Valuations when the ratings were considered as a whole. However, the
C Orrelation between same instrument ratings and those of the expert judges were

Somewhat higher than those of the overall ratings or different instrument ratings.

Implications for Practice

The similarities of the moderate to low correlation factors amongst this and other
Stu dies (Byo & Brooks, 1994; Hewitt, 2005) investigating student evaluations suggests
th at most student musicians do not evaluate other solo performances very well.
I‘Iowever, in this study, students were more accurate in their ratings when they were
I‘ating a performance on their primary instrument. The music education community
places a high priority on students’ abilities to evaluate performances, as mentioned
'Dreviously. With teacher guidance, it may be possible to improve this ability
(Aitchinson, 1995). Therefore, more classroom time should be spent guiding students in

evaluation. Perhaps a bi-weekly performance evaluation session, in which three to ﬁve

31

students perform an exercise, a portion of the upcoming concert, or a recent 8010 &
Ensemble piece could be put into place to allow students a chance to evaluate their peers.

Guided practice, teacher feedback, and class discussion might be helpful in teaching the

process.
It is encouraging to discover that instrument experience moderately affects peer

evaluations. Logically, a student may appreciate some of the ﬁner points of performing
on an instrument, especially in the area of technique, if a student has more experience
with that instrument. During the evaluation process, this student may identify
performance weaknesses that others would miss because he or she has encountered
Si lnilar weaknesses in his or her own experience. Likewise, an expert musician may be

rI’lore familiar with these tendencies. This may account for the slightly higher

C:(Dr‘relations for same-instrument ratings. Fiske’s study (1975) corroborated this, when he

f(Dmlnd that only the area of technique showed a signiﬁcant difference between evaluators

Who played the same type of instrument and those who did not.

The results of this study show that all students need guidance learning to transfer
the knowledge and experiences they acquire on their own instruments so that they can
E11)ply them to performances on other instruments. They also need to continue to develop
t1”leir evaluation skills on their own instruments. To help develop this, a teacher could
have students perform for the class and have each student in the class evaluate the

performance. The evaluating students gain valuable experience in assessing other

performances, ideally improving their skills in evaluation with each attempt (Aitchinson,

1995).

32

 

Suggestions for Future Research

It is evident from this study and others in this ﬁeld that music educators need to
involve their students in the processes of evaluating musical performances. More
research should be done to determine the extent to which students are able. to evaluate
musical performances and how these evaluations can be improved. Possible research
topics could include peer solo evaluations that focus on speciﬁc musical dimensions such
as tone, intonation, melodic accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, tempo, interpretation, and
technique/articulation. Examining students’ abilities to focus on these speciﬁc
dimensions may reveal more about their musicianship and the areas upon which teachers
need to focus when developing student evaluation skills. The current study gathered this
kind of data, but it was not analyzed in such a way as to reveal the validity of the student
ratings of each sub-area.

Also, do students evaluate full ensemble performances more accurately than solo
performances? Considering that they are engaged in full ensemble performance more
often than solo performance, this may be a revealing study. While solo performances are
ideal for assessing individual growth in a student, a large number of student musicians
may not seek the opportunity to perform on their own. The majority of their musical
experience will be in the full ensemble setting. Therefore, their evaluation abilities when
listening to or performing in an ensemble may differ from those used in solo
performances. Is there a difference, and, if so, is this differentiation important enough to

be addressed?

33

 

 

In addition, WBSEF includes rating scales for playing scales and sight-reading,
neither of which were used in the context of this study. Can students effectively evaluate
their performances these areas using the WBSEF?

Finally, which experiences help students improve their skills in music evaluation?
Can providing regular opportunities for students to evaluate performances increase the
accuracy of their ratings? Will their ability to evaluate performance with more accuracy
result in the development of richer musical skills? Studies that seek the answers to these
questions are vital to the continued success of student musicians and music education in

our schools.

34

Appendix A - WOODWIND/BRASS SOLO EVALUATION FORM

 

 

 

Evaluator Number: Sample Number:

Final Score:

TONE The performer’s tone: (Check ONE only)

10 __ is full, rich, and characteristic of the tone quality of the instrument in all
ranges and registers.

8 _ is of a characteristic tone quality in most ranges, but distorts
occasionally in some passages.

6 _ exhibits some flaws in production (Le, a slightly thin or unfocused
sound, somewhat forced, breath not always used efficiently, etc.).

4 _ has several major flaws in basic production (i.e., consistently
thin/unfocused sound, forced, breath not used efficiently).

2 is not a tone quality characteristic of the instrument.

INTONATION The performer’s intonation: ‘ (Check ONE only)

10__
8

6

is accurate throughout, in all ranges and registers.

is accurate, but performer fails to adjust on isolated pitches, yet
demonstrates minimal intonation difficulties.

is mostly accurate, but includes out-of-tune notes. The performer does
not adjust problem pitches to an acceptable standard to an acceptable
standard of intonation.

exhibits a basic sense of intonation, yet has significant problems,
performer makes no apparent attempt at adjustment of problem
pnches.

is not accurate. The performer’s performance is continuously out of
tune.

TECHNIQUE/ARTICULATION The performer demonstrates: (Check ALL that
APPL Y, worth 2 points each)

Appropriate and accurate tonguing.

Appropriate slurs as marked.

Appropriate accents as marked.

Appropriate ornamentation as marked.

Appropriate length of notes as marked (i.e., legato, staccato)

MELODIC ACCURACY The performer performs: (Check ONE only)

10__
8
6

all pitches/notes accurately.
most pitches/notes accurately.
many pitches accurately.

35

 

10-D-

 

numerous inaccurate pitches/notes.
inaccurate pitches/notes throughout the music, (i.e., missing key
signatures, accidentals, etc.).

RHYTHMIC ACCURACY The performer performs: (Check ONE only)

10—
8

6

4
2

accurate rhythms throughout.

nearly accurate rhythms, but lacks precise interpretation of some
rhythm patterns.

many rhythmic patterns accurately, but some lack precision
(approximation of rhythm pattern used).

many rhythmic patterns incorrectly or inconsistently.

most rhythmic patterns incorrectly.

TEMPO The performer’s tempo: (Check ONE only)

10—
8

6

4
2

is accurate and consistent with printed tempo markings.

approaches the printed tempo markings, yet the performed tempo
does not detract significantly from the performance.

is different from the printed tempo marking(s), resulting' In inappropriate
tempo(s) for the selection, yet remains consistent.

is inconsistent (i.e., rushing, dragging, inaccurate tempo changes).

is not accurate or consistent.

INTERPRETATION The performer demonstrates: (Check ONE only)

10 _ the highest level of musicality including well-shaped phrases and
dynamics.

8 _ a high level of musicality, but has some phrases or dynamics that are
not consistent with the overall level of expression.

6 _ a moderate level of musicality and musical understanding.

4 __ only a limited amount of musicality and music understanding.

2 _ a lack of musical understanding.

TOTAL SCORE: I70 POSSIBLE. Please write this number in the space

provided at the top.

36

 

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38

 

   

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