Better Practice Blog- What We Can Learn From the Bobo Doll Experiment
What We Can Learn From the Bobo Doll Experiment
A Bobo doll is a large, inflatable doll that is weighted on the bottom so it always stands upright. It doesn't have any hands or fingers, can't play any music, let alone make a sound, other than a the thud of people striking it. However, The Bobo doll has taught learning experts a lot about learning through observation.
What is Social Learning?
In 1961, Albert Bandura, who developed the Social Learning Theory, conducted his infamous Bobo doll experiment. This is what happened:
72 boys and girls were randomly split up into groups, each group seeing a different demonstration of an adult playing with the “Bobo doll”.
One group watched an adult “playing" with the Bobo doll very aggressively (e.g. punching it, hitting it with a hammer, throwing it). Another group was exposed to non-aggressive play: the adult played with the Bobo doll gently or ignored it and played quietly with other toys. After observing, each child was able to spend time in the same playroom alone. The goal was to see if what children observed manifested in their actions. See actual footage of the experiment here:
Lo and behold - the children exposed to aggressive play played more aggressively than any of the others. They imitated the aggressive actions they observed and even came up with new ones! They had learned through observation: they saw what actions were possible and maybe even constructed an idea of the norm (“Maybe this is how everyone is supposed to play with Bobo dolls”).
What does this mean for music?
We are the sum of our experiences. In other words, children start off with a blank slate and learn everything through observation. As beginning musicians, wind or string players often have many opportunities to see how others are progressing through band or orchestra. However, those who are only learning through lessons (I’m looking at you, pianists!) have... how many models? Probably a grand total of (drumroll)… one: the teacher.
So how do these children learn how to practice? Unless their parent or other close family member is a musician, they’re not going to be learning anything at home. Many teachers often do a “supervised practice” during their lesson - they have the child practice as they normally would while the teacher observes and gives them tips on how to improve their practice. This is great! We highly encourage that you do this. But - how do you show a child how much to practice? Children may take the tips into consideration, but practice habits are what’s important.
Now, if a child were able to observe their peers’ practice habits, they could learn preferred behaviors from them. “Jake practices about an hour every day, and he’s really good. Emily only practices 2 days a week and she’s... Not so good.”
This is where Better Practice comes in. We take this currently non-existent social aspect of music practice and make it one of the main motivators.
We see that traditional practice is lonely and, most of the time, tedious. In other areas involving practice (like sports or band), you constantly meet with a group and are able to see how others are doing, what they do to get better, or who the top of the class is. In other words, you can see how you compare, how you can improve, and what level of achievement is possible. Traditional practice leaves you in the dark about all of these things: you simply go home and do what you’ve been assigned, not knowing what or how your peers are practicing, if you’re practicing better than them, or what the best kind of practice looks like.
With Better Practice, students can always see their peers’ practice stats for the day (e.g. how many songs they practiced and how long). It’s amazing how much kids will practice when they know others will be able to see if they’re slacking off! The top daily practicers also win badges for certain achievements like being the first practicer of the day, having the longest practice, etc., so students can create standards for improvement and also have a sense of friendly competition. Students can also see how many times other students have practiced a certain song. If a student saw someone play amazingly at the last recital and now they’ve been assigned the same song, they can use this feature to get a sense of how much practice leads to what kind of result.