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Irrespective of the pedagogical implications of the more recent studies of practice behavior, making practice assignments in terms of time practiced instead of goals accomplished remains one of the most curious and stubbornly persistent traditions in music pedagogy

In fact, informal reviews of private teachers' instructions for practice reveal that teachers commonly assign only what to practice and how long to practice, with little attention given to specific proximal goals to be accomplished each day.

This is in stark contrast to assignments in many academic disciplines in school, where students are given sets of problems to solve, chapters to read, or essays to write, and the time devoted to homework is determined by the time required to complete the problems, read the chapters, or compose the essays. It seems readily accepted in other disciplines by teachers and students alike that all students will not devote the same amount of time to assignments, because individual learners work at different rates and different learners will not require the same amount of time to complete each assignment. How long one works depends on how long it takes to accomplish the assigned goals.

There were no performance differences between groups at the end of three practice sessions. However, 24 hours after completing practice, random group participants were able to play significantly faster than blocked group participants without sacrificing accuracy.

The contextual interference hypothesis predicted that the blocked group would perform better at acquisition but that the random group would perform better at retention. Results of this study provide partial support for the second half of this hypothesis

Structured practice, which involves using a planned sequence of practice activities, has been found to be beneficial for students of all ages