No abstract

The purpose of this pilot study was to survey prospective undergraduate music education majors to learn what motivated them to aspire to a career in music education. Respondents were candidates auditioning, but not yet accepted, for music teacher preparation programs at four institutions ( N = 228). Findings corroborate prior research that suggests that school music teachers and/or private lesson teachers are highly influential. This study sought to quantify the types of experiences participants had in teaching roles at the time of their college audition, supporting other research suggesting that such experiences may increase interest in a music teaching career. Recommendations include engaging music educators at all PreK—12 levels in actively recruiting and encouraging future teachers, providing private instructors and performance majors with teacher recruitment information, emphasizing earlier identification and preparation of prospective educators, and refining and continuing the work begun in this pilot study.

School-age students from Grades 2, 5, 8, and 11/12 (N = 112) were asked to listen to a recording of thefirst movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 104. Al subjects were asked to record theirperception of "tension " in the music using a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) dial. As in previous studies of this type (Fredrickson, 1995;Madsen & Fredrickson, 1993), no definition of the term in question was given, allowing subjects to, in essence, create their own definition. Graphic analysis showed that even though the magnitude of group responses varied widely, there are some striking similarities in the timing of major group responses. Pearson correlations between groups ranged from .98 between the fifth and eighth graders to. 71 between the second graders and a population of professional musicians from a previous study who responded to the same musical recording. In general, younger subjects tended to use a wider range of the dial, whereas older and more musically experienced subjects were much more conservative. These results were consistent with results of previous studies and indicated a perceptual consistency regarding an entity that a fairly wide variety of populations define as tension in this piece of music.

This study used the Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) to measure musicians' and non-musicians' perceptions of ongoing "aesthetic response" in the first movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 104, in an attempt to determine if musical "tension" might relate to the aesthetic experience. Subjects (musicians n = 43, non-musicians n = 40) indicated their aesthetic responsiveness using the CRDI. Analysis focuses on composite graphs of mean group responses and comparisons to results of a previous study (Madsen and Fredrickson, 1993) which replicated the work of Frede V. Neilsen entitled "Oplevelse af Musikalsk Spending (The Experience of Musical Tension)." Results of this study indicated some co-variation between perceived tension graphs of subject responses from the previous study and recorded aesthetic response, primarily in the musicians. Overall, tension responses were found to be more variable than the aesthetic response, with the latter being consistently positive and somewhat higher. Non-musicians' responses were consistently more positive than musicians' responses throughout, which conforms to the findings in previous studies using the CRDI with these populations.

In this descriptive study, we examined the influences and experiences motivating students to enter college-level music schools as reported by a population of precollegiate students auditioning (but not yet accepted) to music education degree programs. As a follow-up to a published pilot study, this research was designed to quantify the various experiences respondents had as part of their precollege school and community programs that related to teaching and music. Results indicate a strong connection between respondents’ primary musical background and future teaching interest. The top three influential experiences were related to high school ensemble membership (band, choir, orchestra), and the most influential group of individuals in the decision to become a music educator were high school ensemble directors. Respondents from all four primary background groups (band, choir, orchestra, and general or other) rated private lesson teaching as their second strongest future teaching interest, just behind teaching at the high school level in their primary background. Respondents rated parents as moderately influential on their desire to become a music teacher.