Chinese piano teachers’ experiences: incorporating the intelligent-brand piano into community music education in China
Creators: name: Tang, Anqi
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2025

description: Music education displays diverse characteristics globally, with new concepts evolving both independently and interdependently across societies. Various factors have influenced contemporary music education in mainland China, spanning from ancient to modern times and extending into today’s technological era. Focusing specifically on mainland China, the study of Chinese music education examines the teaching and learning of music in the region, which, due to its unique cultural context, has experienced a different trajectory in music education compared to the Chinese territories of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan (Bendiksen, 2022; Guccini &amp; Zhang, 2021). As such, this study focused exclusively on music education in mainland China. Two significant events have shaped the trajectory of mainland China’s current music education system: (a) a unique phenomenon in music education called the Piano Craze (“钢琴热”, or Gangqin Re) that emerged in the late 1970s (Bai, 2021), and (b) the transformations in the training of general music teachers in China since the introduction of Western teaching methods in 1999 (Yu &amp; Leung, 2019). Given the historical lack of quality in Chinese music teacher-education, technological innovations such as the Intelligent-Brand Piano have been designed to provide music teachers with packaged curriculum and pedagogical tools to support their limited abilities as educators. The research questions come as: what successes and challenges have music teachers in China experienced when incorporating the Intelligent-Brand Piano into their piano teaching? How do music teachers in China believe that their piano curriculum and pedagogy have changed because of incorporating the Intelligent-Brand Piano into their teaching? This qualitative interview study explored the phenomenon of teaching piano using the Intelligent-Brand Piano system in community music schools in China. The population being studied is 325 Intelligent-Brand Piano teachers who are actively teaching students working for music centers/schools work for music centers/schools in 17 provinces in China. Seventeen participants were recruited for this study, one from each province, because music teaching in China differs from one province to another. Each participant had at least one school year of teaching using the Intelligent-Brand Piano; the participants were teachers with any level of piano teaching experience. After completing the analysis, five themes emerged from the dataset: (a) early-stage challenges, (b) improving teaching processes and student efficiency, (c) pitch and rhythm, (d) lesson planning, and (e) comprehensive curriculum design. Because this study was exploratory, there is much additional research that needs to be completed to fully understand Intelligent- Brand Pianos and the impact that the Intelligent-Brand Piano system has on Chinese piano teaching reforms. This initial study only provided a glimpse of the experiences of Chinese piano teachers using the Intelligent-Brand Piano, but the findings presented provide grounding for future work in this area. Intelligent-Brand Piano teachers in China must work to effectively address barriers that they experience so that students can experience more efficient and effective piano lessons using this helpful piece of technology.