International Journal Of The Humanities

International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 2, Number 2spend approximately 40 billion annually on thepurchase of recorded music and listening equipmentworldwide according to 2001-2002 data reported bythe Recording Industry Association of America. Thevariety of reasons for listening to music as well asthe amount of time and money spent listeningsupport the idea that people value listening to music.During the second half of the twentieth century,listening to music has been shown to have increasingimportance in the lives of adults and children (BoalPalheiros & Hargreaves, 2001). Multimedia anddigital technologies have changed the nature oflisteners’ musical experiences and expanded therange of listening possibilities. Since music hasbecome more accessible to listeners, more often, andin more places, musical experiences have becomemore individualized (Frith, 1996), as reflected inlisteners’ personal choices of music. Listeners canchoose from many musical styles and genres,spanning the gamut from classical and romanticpieces to rock and rap music. Even within a givengenre of music, listeners can select a recording fromthe multitude of recordings available.While listening to music, the listener is constantlymaking judgments and decisions, consciously orunconsciously, about what is being heard. Thesedecisions include personal likes and dislikes, as wellas preferences for a particular musical style andperformance medium. Listeners also make decisionsabout how to direct their focus of attention duringlistening, a central issue in developing listeningskills (Prince, 1972). For example, college studentshave reported attending to the lyrics, the melody, therhythm, and the bass line in their favorite music(personal interviews, March 30, 2003). The act ofconsciously choosing to listen to music involves aconsiderable number of thought processes anddecisions. Understanding the human thought processduring music listening can provide invaluableinsights into the process of musical thinking.Furthermore, as the anthropologist Levi-Straussasserted, “if we can explain music, we may find thekey for all human thought” (cited in Gardner, 1983,p. 123).Listening to music may involve thinking aboutmusical style, patterns, and meaning. Serafine (1983,1986) suggested that listening involves thinkingabout music in active, cognitive processes, in whichlisteners develop their own understandings of music.She proposed that specific cognitive processes aregeneric (independent of musical style) and have adirect correlation to patterns or organization in themusic. In her research, she examined cognitiveoperations in temporal and non-temporal processes.She found that children of different developmentallevels as well as adults process music in differentways. Her work has raised important questions aboutthe developmental nature of music listening andstudents’ musical understanding.1162Music Listening and Critical ThinkingUnderstanding music listening is of fundamentalimportance in understanding how music isexperienced. Bamberger (1972, 1982) suggested thatunderstanding music and learning music are bothacts of problem solving through listening.Bamberger (1991) also proposed that elementaryaged students organize sound as it occurs. Listening,then, is a process during which listeners makemeaning from sounds and develop ways ofunderstanding music, including developing newways of understanding the same music (Bamberger,1994). Bamberger’s work in music cognitionincluded repeated listenings to music that resulted inconceptually reorganizing the listener’s perceptionand accommodating new understandings of the samemusic. Metacognitive processes during listening, or“reflection-in-action” (Bamberger, 1991), involvedalternatively reflecting from an experience andreflecting on an experience. Bamberger’s workincludes the exploration of musical self-knowledgeand intuitions, beginning from the premise thatlisteners’ knowledge of music is based on lifelongexperiences with music. In Developing MusicalIntuitions (2000), Bamberger asserted that music iswhat we make of it, because each listener creates hisor her own musical understanding throughimagination and experience.Despite advances in the study of music listeningand music cognition, the act of listening to musichas often taken a secondary role in music education.Music educators have often focused on performancepreparation and instrumental skills through drill andpractice instead of developing listening skills. Musiclistening seldom plays an integral role in daily musiceducation because of the lack of teachers’ trainingand resources, pressures to prepare forperformances, and inadequate means of assessment(Bundra, 1993). Haack wrote, “music listening isamong the last and least studied aspects of music”(1992, p. 451). Learning to play instruments, to readand write notation, and to perform in ensemblesoften occupies the majority of music instructionaltime; however, some scholars believe thatinstrumental performance skills and repeatedpractice “not only greatly impede the growth ofmusical sensitivity, they [also] distort and obscurethe goals of musical development” (Gaston, 1963, p.64). Madison (1966) also noted that reliableevidence of music listening skills is difficult toobtain, and that listening is consequently oftenoverlooked or neglected as an instructionalobjective.Yet listening skills are an essential part of all othermusical skills, because the primary purpose of musicis to be heard and shared (Haack, 1992). Baldwin(1936) and Reimer (1989, 2003) also support theimportance of simply listening to music, as it allowsfor music appreciation and musical experience

Music Listening and Critical Thinkingwithout the concerns and limitations of performance.The ability to listen to music intelligently can betaught, especially using structured pedagogicalapproaches (Haack, 1969). At the end of thetwentieth century, the general music movementbegan to focus more attention on the learning andteaching of listening skills (Haack, 1992); musiceducators made considerable progress by includinganalytical and perceptive listening activities andlessons in music series textbooks and curriculumguides (Haack, 1990). If the central challenge andcontribution of general music curricula is to providemusical experiences that are “intensely involved,perceptive, feelingful, creative, richly significant,and satisfying” (Reimer, 1970, p. 120), then musiclistening is an important educational goal thatdeserves attention in the classroom. To this end, aninnovative pedagogy in the form of critical thinkingoffers promise for advancing both teachers’ andstudents’ musical understanding.Critical ThinkingIn the twenty-first century, listeners haveunprecedented access to a wealth of music andinformation via the internet and other digital media.As a result, discriminating consumers need to selectfrom an increasing amount of music and informationaccording to their personal preferences. In responseto the volume of recorded music and information,listening to music has become a passive activity(O’Brien, 1987), and “children are learning not tolisten” [italics in original] (Sims, 1990, p. 38).Similarly, Meyers (1986) asserted that students’abilities to understand and process information havenot kept pace with the amount of resourcesidentified in his text on teaching critical thinkingskills. As ever-advancing technology is likely toprovide even greater amounts of information in thecoming years, music educators’ pedagogical focusneeds to shift from content to cognition. To reflecttechnological changes, teachers should impartthinking skills instead of mere information(Knowles, 1980); in other words, “in an age wheretextbooks are often outdated before they are off thepress . . . the goals and aims of education inevitablymust change” (Meyers, 1986, pp. 1-2). Whiteheadsuggested that the real goal of education is thedevelopment of thought processes instead of theaccumulation of information (1929/1967). Whilehuman beings are naturally predisposed to createmeaning and construct concepts (Hunt, cited inMeyers, 1986), Meyers wrote, “the specific ways inwhich we make sense of the world are learned”(1986, p. 11).In education, critical thinking and its instructionhave taken many forms. These include bothgeneralizable and context-specific approaches thatembrace self-constructed meaning and discovery(Kim, 1993; Kurfiss, 1988; Meyers, 1986). Usingthe term “reflective thinking,” Dewey (1933) firstdescribed the active and persistent consideration ofbelief or knowledge. His writings served to providethe basis for subsequent authors who defined criticalthinking in a variety of ways.Along with increased access to music andinformation, social and technological changes havedemanded a higher quality of thought at the turn ofthe twenty-first century to understand and apply thewealth of available information (Paul, 1993).Critical thinking, then, is “the essential foundationfor adaptation to the everyday personal, social, andprofessional demands of the twenty-first century”(Paul, 1993, p. xi). To elevate intellectual standardsand to effect a qualitative change in thinking, criticalthinking advocates such as Paul have encouragedstudents to think for themselves by guiding students’reflection on their own experiences, by developinglistening as a critical thinking skill, and by askingprobing questions. Learning to listen to music,however, has not been explored by music educatorsusing such a pedagogy.As discussed above, the instruction of musiclistening skills has traditionally taken a diagnosticand prescriptive approach including visual guidesand knowledge-level questions often related tomusic theory. For example, in Music for YoungAmericans (1966), Berg recommended teachingprogram music in terms of composers’ feelingssuggested by their use of melody, rhythm, form, andother musical elements; authors such as Berg gavefew opportunities for students to express their ownthoughts or feelings in response to music listening.Textbook authors approached music listening asmusic appreciation, including the acquisition ofmusical vocabulary and an understanding of musicin historical contexts.A contrasting approach to music listeninginstruction, based on verbal descriptions,emphasized the listener’s personal response to musiclistening (Bamberger, 2000). By highlighting theimportance of listening experiences apart fromtheoretical and historical information, Bambergerand Brofsky (1975) stimulated the listener’s powersof critical observation and independent judgment. Inactive listening, as advocated by Bamberger andBrofsky, the listener’s perspective of the music is“personally involved, questioning, and critical” (p.xix). In other words, Bamberger and Brofskyprescribed no fixed way of listening but encouragedthe listener to discover personally relevant meaningin the music. Instead of relying on terminology andmusic theory to inform the listener, Bamberger(2000) also advocated addressing musical thinkingthrough inquiry and analysis. Such an approach tomusic listening and music education lends itself tocritical thinking and higher order thinking skills.Higher order thinking, including analysis, synthesis,and evaluation (Bloom, 1956), provides a theoreticalbasis for critical thought (Olson, 2000) and can beapplied to music listening activities in the classroom.1163

International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 2, Number 2For the purposes of this discussion, criticalthinking in music may be defined as musicalunderstanding through reflection and participation ina constructivist model of education. Critical thinkingskills used to developing musical understandingincludes: analyzing, synthesizing, comparing andcontrasting, developing criteria for judgment,sequencing, making connections, recognizingpatterns, and evaluating musical information throughactive listening, reasoning, and reflection basedupon affective responses and prior musicalexperiences.Critical thinking is both a major goal in education(D’Angelo, 1971) as well as a universal term ineducational theory and practice (Richardson, 1998).The process of critical thinking begins withcomprehending information that has been presented.Critical thinking includes thinking for one’s self,using inductive and deductive reasoning skills(Bloom, 1956; Ennis, 1962; Sternberg, 1985) and is“reasonable reflective thinking that is focused ondeciding what to believe or do [with newly acquiredinformation]” (Ennis, 1987, p. 10). Instruction incritical thinking, as defined in this study, assistsstudents in learning new material and encouragesstudents to think for themselves.Great thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, andDescartes advocated an approach to education basedon reason and inquiry using reflective, “Socratic”questions based on the student’s reasoning andthinking abilities. By using reflective q

The International Journal of the Humanities is a peer-refereed journal published annually. Full papers submitted for publication are refereed by the Associate Editors through an anonymous referee process. Papers presented at the Second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities,