The merits of student-centered approaches to instruction are becoming more and more recognized by faculty at all levels of education. For this experiment two different intact orchestra classes at a high school in the Southeastern United States participated in approximately two weeks of student-centered lessons to create an arrangement for the fiddle tune “Goodbye Liza Jane” and two weeks of teacher-centered lessons to create an arrangement for the fiddle tune “Cindy Cindy.” During teacher-centered lessons, the teacher taught and made all artistic and arrangement decisions. During the student-centered lessons, the teacher allowed students to problem-solve and gave them autonomy in deciding how the arrangement should go. Students rated their engagement, enjoyment, learning and other factors in a Student Reflection. They also wrote about their experiences in an End of Unit Reflection. Their ratings and responses indicate students preferred some guidance from their teacher, but also wanted to retain autonomy in their learning processes. Ratings also indicate students feel they learned more in their first attempt at solving a new problem than they did in the subsequent attempt, regardless of whether the lesson was a student-centered or a teacher-centered lesson. Results support findings from previous research about student-centered learning, but also indicate students learn the most when solving a given type of problem for the first time. Results also further validated Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, in that students enjoyed autonomy more when they already had some experience arranging.
