Preservice and experienced teachers' lesson plans for beginning instrumentalists

Preservice and experienced teachers (N = 58, from 7 universities) wrote lesson plans for a hypothetical beginning band lesson, using one page from a band method book as source material. Lesson plans were analyzed for word count, level of detail and for strategies that appeared most frequently. Experienced teachers used fewer words than undergraduates but revealed the same number of strategies and level of detail, on average. There were institutional differences in the variety of strategies incorporated, indicating certain institutions may value a wider range of strategies and activities in beginning band classes. Participants also compared their written plans to a published lesson plan and rated their familiarity with various approaches, giving another view on strategies considered most common. Familiarity ratings were similar when comparing preservice and experienced teachers and when comparing institutions. Degrees of prevalence of specific strategies, such as decontextualization of material, repetition, and modeling, are discussed.