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This chapter examines the practice most often called ‘music listening’ in Western school music education. The first part of the chapter focuses on early developments of music listening practices in modern schooling and serves as a historical backdrop for the last part of the chapter, which reflects on past and present practices of music listening in schools from the perspective of ‘cultural psychology’. The field of cultural psychology is by no means clear-cut in terms of tenets, theories, and connections to other fields of psychology. Jerome Bruner (1996), however, identifies nine different tenets — drawn from different theories — as a sort of common denominator guiding a psychocultural approach to education. These are the perspectival tenet, constraints tenet, constructivism tenet, interactional tenet, externalization tenet, instrumentalism tenet, institutional tenet, tenet for identity and self-esteem, and narrative tenet. The chapter draws on these tenets in order to frame the history of music listening practices in music education and outline a potential application of the tenets to future music education work.

This chapter provides a historical overview of research on the intellectual benefits of music and the most popular interpretations of the research findings. After questioning such interpretations and providing alternative explanations, it describes selected experimental studies that were focused on the causal relationship between music instruction and intellectual prowess. The results of the many studies that observed children for a short period of time (i.e., up to one year), have shown convincing evidence that there are temporary cognitive benefits associated with music instruction. Such benefits include improvements in general IQ, spatial skills, and verbal tasks. Additionally, learning music produces structural and functional changes in the brain. Such changes are associated with improvements in sound processing, motor skill, and melodic and rhythmic discrimination. However, neurological investigations do not support the claim that music makes children smarted as the results have failed to show any neurological changes associated with improvements in IQ.

This chapter begins by exploring static and dynamic models of musical form that emerged in the 18th century and the way these models were transformed by changes in ideology and music education that took place beginning late in that century. It then considers two models of musical hierarchy that were initially developed to apply to domains other than music. It was only in the early 19th century that they were applied to music, and then to two rather different aspects of musical organization. The first model views hierarchy as a matter of control: each level in a hierarchy (with the exception of those at the extremes) controls the next-lower level and is itself controlled by the next-higher level. This model stretches back at least to the Middle Ages and is most often used to account for tonal organization. The second model of hierarchy relies on a more componential approach: the elements of level A of the hierarchy combine to make up individual elements at the next-higher level (level B of the hierarchy); the elements of level B then combine to make up individual elements at the next higher level (level C of the hierarchy), and so on, until the account of structure is exhausted. This model emerged during the 17th century and is most often used to explain music's metrical structure.

This chapter reviews research on music education and therapy for children and young people with severe or profound cognitive impairments. It considers the findings of the PROMISE research project, which was set up to investigate what music provision was being made for children and young people with learning difficulties in special schools in England.

Musicality is an inherited biological predisposition that is unique to the human species. This chapter argues that music learning (whether structured or informal) happens very early, and long before we used to believe, and that it takes place as a result of children's innate propensity for learning. Indeed, children's spontaneous music making, from the first mother-infant musical interactions to playground rhymes and jeers, is the springboard of music learning. However, the contexts in which early musical experiences occur are critical, and adult interventions require balancing challenge and skill to achieve musical focus and self-growth in young children, as David Elliott suggests teachers should do at all ages. This chapter examines children's musical understanding, memory, and spontaneity, early childhood music education and its relation to Elliott's praxial philosophy, musical experiences based on context, “flow” in early childhood music experiences, multiculturalism in early childhood music education, music making and music listening in early childhood, and musical creativity in children.

This book is a collection of critically reflective essays on the praxial philosophy of music and music education. The contributors are an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who believe that critical thinking, constructive debate, and dialogues are the lifeblood of music education. By means of their essays, they also speak for those who believe that future music teachers must learn to think for themselves and develop their own philosophies based on their own careful reflections. One of the goals of this book is to contribute to music education philosophy generally and the literature of praxialism in music education specifically. The contributors evaluate the praxial philosophy, pro and con, from the viewpoint of their area(s) of interest and expertise such as philosophical foundations, musical performance, music listening, early childhood education in music, multiculturalism in music education, and curriculum development and offer criticisms.

Recent work in cultural psychology has begun to explore theoretical frameworks that involve the mutual inclusion of self and culture in action. These frameworks draw on the concepts of dialogue and experience-based inquiry to illustrate the ways that learning in and through our experiences offers the potential and possibility for changing our perceptions of both self and other. This chapter discusses these ideas in relation to music performance and cultural diversity in education. It begins by describing some of the challenges that music performance educators face as they respond to the growing and problematic cultural-political agendas associated with multiculturalism.

This chapter explains some of the educational applications of musical creativities, which are broadly interpreted as a composite of practices. It shows how the three dimensions of authorship, practice, and mediation basically change the way musical creativities can be used. It tries to describe the guidelines that have sufficient utility, and still resist the tendency to prescribe methods. The chapter also provides some narratives and sketches from the field of music in education.

Studies show that music plays an important role throughout our lives, and that typically the impact is affective rather than intellectual, with the widest range of benefits accruing to those who actively participate in making music. Adult participation is an extension of engagement with active music making in childhood in the home or at school. Accordingly, the musical education offered during compulsory schooling should, at least in part, be concerned with inculcating a love of music. This chapter reviews the research evidence considering: the aims and provision of music education; opportunities for experiencing and expressing emotion in music education; students' affective experiences in music education; teaching to generate positive affective outcomes; the benefits of a greater emphasis on the emotions in music education; and directions for future research.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the ways in which cultural psychology has re-emerged recently, and been taken up in the study of human thought and activity. It surveys the application of the theory and practice of cultural psychology to music education. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter discusses the vast and interrelated topics of developmental social psychology of music and music education. This chapter has two broad sections: the approach adopted in the chapter to musical development literature and how social perspective has influenced developmental psychology and education as a whole; and the chapter's views on musical development from infancy through to adulthood. The chapter also comments on some of the main theoretical models of musical development and evaluates their usefulness from a social psychological standpoint. The chapter discusses its outlook on the formal and informal learning processes in the field of music education. The chapter examines the international variations in music educational practices and institutions. Finally, the chapter deliberates the processes of learning and teaching music in different learning environments and the role of teachers and pupils in setting the music learning agenda.

This chapter focuses on the UK sample of 72 responses from individuals aged between 19 and 86 who are mainly involved in classical music. An overview of their changing experiences is given, in which the retrospective accounts are compared with the stated aims and practices of music education in the UK throughout the twentieth century, raising questions about the intended, delivered and received music curriculum across the decades. Changes in family and school attitudes are traced through the generations, with an increasing divergence and variety of experience identified as a challenge to contemporary music teachers. The overview of data provided in this chapter is used to introduce the themes of the rest of the book in more detail, relating to music in and out of school, music in the home, and music for lifelong learning and engagement.