Variations in Music Education Curriculum and the Organization of Listening

Abstract

Sociologists argue that we learn evaluative skills, such as those to distinguish qualities of music, through practical knowledge. Yet sociologists have not asked how we understand those sonic events as musical in the first place. Through nine months of semi-structured observations in six elementary school music classrooms, I examine how music education draws symbolic boundaries around musical sound. I find that variations in curriculum produce different organizational practices in the classroom. These practices develop what is a basic sensory skill -listening -in very different ways. I identify four dimensions of teacher performance that support these differences: authorized sound-makers, constrained movement, enforced perspectives, and selected attention. These variations in music education produce contrasting performances for recognizing musical sound.