Listening in elementary music class: Pupils’ enjoyment ratings and self-reported classroom behavior

Listening is an important component of elementary school music education, yet less is known about how pupils evaluate listening in relation to other music-lesson activities and how they describe their own classroom behavior. This descriptive study examined the perspectives of 382 pupils in Grades 1-5 from four Israeli elementary schools participating in music lessons conducted within a teacher-training context. Pupils completed a questionnaire in which they rated their enjoyment of five common music-lesson activities-instrument playing, listening to music, singing, learning rhythms and notes, and movement and selected one response that best described their typical classroom behavior. Instrument playing received the highest mean enjoyment rating, followed by listening to music. “Listening” was the most frequently selected description of classroom behavior, followed by “participating.” Grade-level differences were found for listening and learning rhythms and notes, whereas the initial finding for movement was not retained in a sensitivity analysis accounting for school and data-collection year. No grade-level differences were found for instrument playing or singing. The findings highlight the value of attending to pupils' own reports when planning music lessons and preparing pre-service music teachers. They do not, however, establish the quality or outcomes of pupils’ listening.