Making the Implicit Explicit: Music Listening, Blended Delivery and the Representational Redescription Model

Abstract

Close listening, perhaps the most important skill in music education is seldom practiced in the 21 st century. The ability to listen, understand, communicate, and interpret what you hear is central to education in general and transferable to many life situations and modes of communication. For this reason, listening is the primary focus of most first year post-secondary music history courses. It is also one of the most challenging skills to teach in large classroom formats. To address these challenges, we developed a blended delivery approach to support recognition, comprehension, and communication of musical materials. Based on the literature on music cognition and Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) Representational Redescription Model (RR Model) of knowledge acquisition, we designed a cognitive framework to support the design of enhanced listening models. This paper describes the results of a pilot project which presented the students with selfpaced on-line listening activities followed by a virtual listening/discussion session with peers. Both activities were well-received by the students and level of music experience was not associated with students' perceived value of the activities, indicating that students with varied backgrounds found the activities useful. The results support our cognitive framework as a foundation for technologicallyenhanced listening activities for postsecondary music courses.

Individual Differences, Student Satisfaction and Performance in Supplemental On-line Activities in a Postsecondary Music Course

“…In on-line learning, although significant differences in grades of high and low self-regulators may be inconsistent, Artino and Stephens [15] report that low self-regulators experience less cognitive and reflective engagement as well as less satisfaction and willingness to participate in subsequent on-line experiences. Concerning music education specifically, Long, Hallam, Creech, Gaunt and Robertson reported self-regulation as a predictor of achievement in musical skill acquisition and musical performance [16] for these reasons, as in our previous research [3] we included a measure of selfregulation in the 2015 study.…”

“…General demographic information was collected (e.g., program, year in program, gender and age) as well as: 1) a Music Experience Survey [3], 2) a Selfregulation Questionnaire (SRQ) [17], and 3) a Computer Experience Questionnaire [6].…”

“…Honing contends that prior music experience should not impact students' ability to engage in close listening, as this is an implicit skill. In an earlier study of the results of first-year undergraduate student listening activities, we determined that prior music experience resulted in no significant difference for student success [3]. Although it is likely that prior experience might have provided some students with a degree of comfort with terminology they were learning in the classroom at this level, the activities themselves yielded similar success for all students, regardless of any prior experience.…”

“…According to Akilli [2], one of the most substantive obstacles to the optimal integration of technology into educational activities is the lack of a guiding development model that is based on learning theory and supporting research. To address this problem, we took great care in developing a theoretical framework that would guide the development of our technology-based educational activities, specifically targeted at music content [3]. This was accomplished in two steps: 1) by understanding the cognitive processes involved in the close listening of music, and 2) by employing a knowledge acquisition theory that aligned closely to those cognitive processes.…”