Pre-Service Music Educators’ Perceived Reasons for Preferring Three Foreign and Distinctive Asian Pieces

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived reasons of pre-service music educators (undergraduate music majors preparing to teach music) for preferring three distinctive pieces with traditional roots in East Asia. The selected pieces were foreign to research participants in the US. Pre-service music educators ( N= 66) listened to a Chinese piece, a Japanese-American piece and a Korean piece. They were asked to choose one piece that they liked and one piece that they disliked and to explain why they made these preference choices. Results indicated non-significant differences for liking or disliking any of the three pieces ( p> .05). Data suggested that ‘dislike’ should be interpreted as ‘least preferred’. Results showed that pre-service music educators’ perceived reasons for preference were mostly analytical, followed by affective and interest/judgmental. Metaphorical and familiarity reasons were relatively unimportant in explaining pre-service music educators’ preference choices among the three pieces.