Motivation, student–teacher rapport, and praise-seeking and rejection-avoidance beliefs of university-level music students

One-to-one studio music lessons provide the potential to develop strong teacher–student rapport. However, these relationships can also inhibit progress if students are more motivated to seek their teacher’s approval than pursuing musical goals. The purpose of this survey study was to explore relationships between music students’ motivations to pursue degrees in music, perceived rapport with their studio teachers, and praise-seeking and rejection-avoidance beliefs. Participants ( N = 151) were music majors at a large school of music in the United States with highly competitive entrance requirements across all degree programs. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the 12-item Revised Achievement Goal Questionnaire, the Praise-Seeking and Rejection-Avoidance Scale, the Student–Instructor Rapport Scale, and open-response items. Results indicated that there was a weak positive correlation between perceived rapport with studio teachers and mastery-approach achievement orientation, that praise-seeking was weakly correlated with the performance-approach orientation, and that rejection-avoidance was moderately correlated with the performance-avoid motivational orientation. The open-response items revealed profiles of both positive and maladaptive statements about motivation and student–teacher relationships. These results suggest that the relational component of studio teaching requires teachers to carefully consider how their words and actions affect students, as student motivational tendencies can be influenced either positively or negatively by teachers.