Achievement motivation and its impact on music students' performance and practice in tertiary level education

Abstract

Music schools of higher secondary and tertiary levels aim at preparing professional musicians, particularly, instrumentalists. They comprise a very specific area of education, since the students' practical skills and competencies are at the center of our attention. In addition to acquiring theoretical knowledge, the students must master the skills of playing on their instruments, which form the basis of their future success. The aim of this article is to describe the discoveries made during our exploration of the partial relation between instrumental practice, performance and the music students' achievement motivation in tertiary education in the music departments of universities for the arts. We focus on two dimensions of motivation: the hope of success and the fear of failure. Our results suggest that there is a relation between the students' motivation and their final performance (the final evaluation in the form of grades), but the particular dimension of motivation (avoidance of failure and achievement of success) does not influence the final performance on a statistically significant level. Similarly, motivation for achievement exists in a statistically significant relation to the daily duration of time dedicated to practicing on the instrument, but there is no evidence for any possible relation between the dimension of the musicians' motivation and the duration of their average daily instrumental practice. We have gathered the relevant data from the Vorwerg achievement motivation scale and a number of semi-structured interviews taken from various musicians.