A Research Survey of Suzuki Parents Part Two

Confidence and Challenges While Supporting Their Child

by Eun Cho, Patricia DErcole, Kate Einarson

Last issue, the International Research Symposium on Talent Education (IRSTE) team shared some of our recent research about Suzuki parents. In that article, we reviewed both initial parent training and ongoing parent education practices. We also summarized how parents preferred to communicate with their teacher, and which resources they found helpful and interesting (see ASJ volume 51 number 2). In this Part Two article, we talk about how confident parents felt supporting their child’s music learning, and what challenges they experienced. We will also touch on which factors seem to affect parent confidence and their perceived challenges.

Education research has shown that parents play an important role in a child’s learning, motivation, and achievement. When it comes to music lessons, the ways that parents support and engage in their child’s learning are linked to the child’s musical interests, their learning outcomes, and how long they continue to study. Research shows that parents’ belief in their own ability to perform the parent role—known as parental efficacy—is a critical part of supporting children’s development. 

Confident, supportive parents tend to actively contribute to their child’s learning process, even if they don’t have special expertise. Within the Suzuki triangle, high parental efficacy could look like attending lessons and taking notes, seeking teacher feedback, supervising at-home practice, creating an enriched musical home environment, and supporting their child emotionally during challenging periods. Doing these things makes it more likely the child will stay engaged, and promotes competence and achievement. 

We wanted to find out how confident Suzuki parents felt performing a variety of these supportive behaviors as part of the “home teacher” role. We also wondered whether parents who had initial and/or ongoing parent education opportunities would feel more confident or would face different challenges than parents who did not have such support. 

Measuring Confidence and Challenges

A total of 225 Suzuki parents completed the online survey that we described in more detail in Part One. The survey asked parents to tell us how confident they felt doing a wide variety of behaviors, and about whether they struggled with different types of challenges or barriers. Parents rated their confidence on eight specific items in our survey. Each was related to specific tasks that Suzuki parents are given, including:

• Implementing Suzuki philosophy (the “Mother Tongue Method”)
• Reinforcing proper instrument technique
• Creating a learning/listening environment at home
• Carrying out the teacher’s instructions at home
• Keeping their child engaged in at-home practice
• Making repetition and review enjoyable
• Helping their child make progress
• Improving their own skills as home practice partner

They also rated how much they struggled to navigate thirteen common challenges. Some were logistical challenges, like making time for lessons and practice, or managing the cost of lessons. Others were related to learning and progress. These included keeping their child engaged in at-home practice, or understanding and remembering teacher’s instructions. 

Being the “Home Teacher”

Feelings of Confidence

Most of the 225 Suzuki parents who completed our survey felt able to support their child’s music learning. 75% reported being either somewhat confident (41%) or very (34%) confident as a home teacher. Of the eight items, parents were more confident in carrying out the teacher’s instructions and creating a learning/listening environment at home. They were less confident in making the repetition and review enjoyable, improving their own skills as a home practice partner, and keeping their child engaged in at-home practice.

The majority of parents reported high levels of overall confidence in supporting their child’s music learning. For example, 79 of 255 parents responded that they were “very confident” (5 out of 5) when it came to implementing Suzuki’s philosophy. But this wasn’t true for everyone: 7% of parents (16 people) rated themselves as “not at all confident” (1 out of 5).

Figure 1. Parent confidence as the home teacher.

Image by Andy Braddock

Reports of Challenges

Next, we looked at the various logistical and learning-related challenges. Overall, parents reported that issues to do with learning and practicing were more challenging for them. Some of the highest “challenge” ratings were for tasks like keeping their child engaged in the practice session and dealing with disruptions during practice. 

In addition, based on parents’ reports on confidence and challenges, we found that parents tended to find it hard to motivate their child (e.g., making the practice enjoyable). It was somewhat easier to assist with their child’s practice (e.g., remembering and carrying it out teacher’s instructions). Overall, parents who found these practice-related tasks more challenging were also likely to rate themselves as less confident.

Relationship Between Feelings and Actions
Consistent with previous music education research, we found that parents who believed more in their home teacher abilities were more likely to be actively involved in their child’s music learning. For example, close relationships were observed between all confidence ratings and the number of days parents practiced with their child. Confident parents typically reported practicing with their child more days each week. The same pattern was also found in the number of days they listened to Suzuki book recordings at home. Parents who rated themselves as “somewhat confident” or “very confident” tended to say that they practiced and listened with their child five, six, or seven days per week. This pattern is not enough for us to say that higher levels of parent confidence cause increased practicing and listening at home, but it does show that they are related!

Factors Affecting Confidence and Challenges

We dug deeper into our data to explore if a parent’s confidence and/or challenge ratings were associated with characteristics like their age, education, income, musical background, or participation in Suzuki parent education. A few patterns emerged: 

• When it came to parent age, younger parents tended to be more confident about assisting their child’s at-home practice, specifically in creating a learning environment at home, carrying out the teacher’s instruction, and helping their child make progress. 
• Parents with higher household incomes reported less struggle related to cost and affordability. However, they reported higher levels of stress around making time for lessons and practices. 
• Parents with high levels of musical expertise (i.e., a degree in music) displayed higher levels of confidence on every single confidence item. Those parents also felt less challenged when it came to learning-related tasks, like keeping their child engaged in practice, managing distractions during practice, understanding the teacher’s instructions, and helping their child progress. 

Lastly, we also looked specifically at whether parents who received initial parent education when their child started lessons showed different confidence ratings or patterns of challenges compared to parents who did not get any training. We thought the group of parents who received initial orientation might feel more confident, or report that they struggled less overall. However, our statistical tests did not show any meaningful differences between the two groups.

What Does This Mean for Teachers?

To wrap up this second installment of our research summary, we want to highlight three takeaway messages about parent confidence and parent challenges. Our first takeaway is that overall, Suzuki parents told us they felt confident as their child’s home teacher, and their confidence level was linked to their supportive behaviors. Confident parents were more likely to practice with their child each day. They also listened to their Suzuki recordings more often. We think helping parents feel confident, effective, and empowered may indirectly support these desirable behaviors.

It was less clear whether targeted support (in the form of either initial parent training or ongoing parent education) affected parents’ confidence when supporting their child’s music learning. With our data, we cannot tell whether parent education simply had no effect, or whether the group of parents who responded to our survey was so diverse and varied that any patterns were covered up. As discussed earlier, we did observe a different pattern of confidence according to parent age, income, and level of music education. These differences underscore how important it is to meet parents where they are—just like when we teach children, teachers cannot depend on “one size fits all” strategies to help parents. 

Our second message is that the struggles faced by these Suzuki parents were similar to the ones parents have reported to the IRSTE team in our own past research, and in other non-Suzuki studies too. Logistical challenges, like competing time pressures or financial constraints, were mentioned often. However, the hardest issues were to do with supporting their child’s at-home practice. The highest-rated item in our list was keeping the child motivated and engaged in home practice—an evergreen challenge regardless of the child’s age! 

We would encourage teachers to talk not only about “what” to practice, but also “how” to practice. Most parents will appreciate if you explicitly talk about how to structure a practice session, and share strategies to help maintain the child’s interest. Additionally, we would strongly suggest creating more opportunities for parents to support one another. Less than one-third of parents in our survey reported having any parent-to-parent support or mentorship programs. Parents we interviewed for our previous study told us repeatedly how knowing that other parents faced similar challenges was a source of comfort and support in hard times. 

Our third takeaway message is that the needs and wants of a Suzuki parent evolve over weeks, months, or years of their child’s lessons. Students have changing needs at each different age, stage, and playing level. And as teachers, we are highly attuned to the child’s evolving needs. However, parents in our survey had children ranging in age from infancy to over eighteen years old. We should not forget that parent confidence will also fluctuate as new learning stages and challenges arise. These changes in confidence may affect parents’ supportive behaviors, so teachers must also stay attuned to new challenges and changing parent needs. 

As a complement to the parent-to-parent support we suggested above, we want to encourage teachers to offer ongoing opportunities (both formal and informal) for parent education. Initial parent education, when it is available, can provide the basic knowledge parents need as they begin Suzuki education with their child. However, keeping children engaged, understanding instructions, and making progress remain challenging for parents at all levels. These are not one-and-done topics. Explicit parent education and targeted support need to be an ongoing process for the duration of a family’s journey in a Suzuki studio. 

Taken together, our suggestions are really about how to strengthen the Suzuki triangle by directly supporting parents in ongoing, individualized, and adaptable ways. Dr. Suzuki said “Children don’t ‘drop out,’ they are ‘dropped out’ ” (Where Love is Deep, 27). He goes on to say that it is often the teachers, the parents, or both, who are the ones to give up on the child. Teachers know that parents are the ones who work with the child the other six days of the week. If a teacher is able to meet parent needs, the child is very likely to benefit as a result. 

In these research studies, parents have told us about what they want and what they need in order to support their children as Suzuki learners. When teachers can find 100 different ways to help parents motivate and engage their children, then success breeds success. Teachers will retain their students and, most importantly, parents and children have continued opportunities to develop to their fullest potential in learning and in their bond for each other. And what could be more rewarding than that?

Dr. Eun Cho is a music educator and researcher with a passion for interdisciplinary research that intersects music, education, psychology, and culture. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s Child Study Center, where she leads a project on the health benefits of singing in infancy.  Throughout her career, Dr. Cho has been an active researcher in the fields of music education and psychology, with many peer-reviewed publications and book chapters that explore the role of music in people’s lives across the lifespan. To learn more about Dr. Cho’s research and teaching, please visit her website at http://www.eunchomusic.com.

Dr. Kate Einarson works in the research institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, Canada. Her specialty is ensuring that child development research achieves the greatest possible impact for children, families, service providers, and across systems. She also conducts music pedagogy research as co-coordinator of the International Research Symposium for Talent Education (IRSTE). She has taught instrumental and early childhood music for over 15 years, and currently sits on the Board of Directors of the Suzuki Association of Ontario.

Kate holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University, where she conducted research as part of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind. Her research interests include human development through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, with attention to the effect of environment on skill acquisition, prosocial behaviour, and health. She is an award-winning speaker and teacher, a dog lover, and co-host of the “art project disguised as a podcast” called Music for PhDs.