Higher Education Piano Teachers’ Perspectives to Imagery: A Qualitative Study

Musicians often engage in imagery to improve their practice and performance, however, there are experiences that shape preferences and varying approaches to how they engage with imagery and how they may teach imagery. Mental practice and imagery research offers varied nomenclature that span motor-sensory adaptation, refinement, expressive lucidity and goal-orientation that point to self-regulatory concepts in music learning. Exploring what teachers may conceive imagery to be, how teachers formulate upon their early understandings of imagery and how they currently engage with imagery in impactful teaching practice from personal experience is an under-researched area of investigation. This phenomenological study investigated three higher education piano teachers’ use and approaches to imagery by analysing perceptions, attitudes and applications of imagery in teaching within a masters-level music performance course in Melbourne, Australia. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) revealed differing conceptions of imagery and how it is utilised as a pedagogical tool and the value teachers hold for engaging imagery as a means of approaching planning, performance and reflective practice. The findings highlight social and experiential underpinnings to how imagery is conceived and used as a pedagogy. The study offers implications to activation of imagination in imagery conceptions in applied learning experiences and usage in teaching practices.