A COMPARISON OF ELEMENTARY GENERAL MUSIC EDUCATOR PRACTICES AND RATIONALE FOR THE INCLUSION OF MUSICAL VARIETY IN AESTHETIC EDUCATION TOWARD BROADENING MUSICAL TASTE

The music education profession may find its greatest influence on consumers in the music which is provided for students in the classroom. Within a concentrated effort to broaden and enrich lifelong taste toward the variety of musical styles throughout the world, teacher selection of music for use in the classroom is a critical issue. An individual teacher's training and musical experience, behavioral objectives of the class lesson, the method of presentation, properties of the musical stimulus, and learning and personal characteristics of the students all combine to influence the ultimate decision.;Based on the results of a survey of Missouri elementary general music teachers, the following conclusions were reached: (1) Textbooks and supplemental materials which provide a variety of musical styles are available to practicing music educators for classroom use; (2) A variety of music genres is in current use by the music educators in the elementary general music classroom. American Folk, Western Classical and Pop/Rock are most frequently presented by the teacher, while music of Southeast Asia, Australia/Pacific and Medieval Europe are least used; (3) More than three quarters of elementary general music educators use a moderate to high amount of music variety in the classroom; (4) Over half of the teachers surveyed consider the development of aesthetic responsiveness as a more important curricular focus than the development of musical skills; (5) There is no significant relationship between the most important music curricular objective as perceived by music educators and the amount of musical variety used in the elementary general music education classroom.;The purpose of this study is to discover the extent to which elementary general music teachers are currently using a wide variety of musics for broadening musical sensitivity and taste in the development of meaningful aesthetic response within the individual student. A further purpose is to establish through a review of the literature that elementary general music education as aesthetic education may shape and broaden musical sensitivity and taste through the use of a wide variety of musics in the teacher-selected curiculum. An extensive discussion of factors that influence the development of musical taste and measures of attitude preference is presented.