Preference of Chinese pre-service music teachers and schoolteachers for three culturally diverse musical pieces

TL;DR

This study explores the musical preferences of Chinese pre-service and schoolteachers for music from Romania, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia, revealing insights into their personal and external preferences.

Contribution

The study extends Fung’s work by examining both personal and external preferences of Chinese music educators for culturally diverse music.

Findings

No significant differences in personal preference, but significant differences in external preferences between the two groups.

Folk music received the highest preference rating, while popular music had the highest forced-choice preference.

Strong correlations between personal and external preferences were found across all three musical pieces.

Abstract

Using three musical pieces as musical stimuli from Romania, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia, this study extended Fung’s study by examining Chinese pre-service music teachers’ (n = 115) and schoolteachers’ (n = 131) personal preferences and external preferences for orchestral, folk, and popular music pieces. Two groups of participants were asked to select their preferred music from three pieces and to provide verbal descriptions of the reasons for their selections. The results showed (a) no significant differences in personal preference between the two groups but statistical significances in external preferences between the two groups; (b) the highest preference rating by both groups of teachers was folk music and the highest forced-choice preference was popular music; (c) statistically significant correlations between personal preference and external preference were evident in both groups across all three pieces; and (d) frequent descriptions by both groups of participants of the pieces in terms of musical characteristics were shared. The implications of this study are as follows. (1) Psychologists and music researchers gain insights about Chinese young adults’ listening preferences, which might offer implications for future research in the field of psychology; and (2) By enhancing multicultural awareness, music education teachers and researchers should combine different music styles to broaden students’ music horizons.

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