As music educators, diverse pedagogical concepts and frameworks are available for individual and ensemble application. With these varied techniques, students from all backgrounds and developmental levels can participate or be reinforced by the enjoyment of performing or appreciation as a listener. As the field of education becomes more of an evidence-based practice, music education needs to become aware of what productive practices are available to provide and promote effective pedagogical instruction. To accomplish a feat of such importance, music educators must adapt assessment, research, and decision-making practices based on empirical data to promote better efficacious and generalized pedagogical practice, not simply authoritatively, inspirationally, or intuitively. Since the cognitive revolution of the mid and late twentieth century, a myriad of studies on the aesthetics, affective response, and attitudinal shifts of music preference have been conducted. Unfortunately, little resulting evidence has been applicable or provides deterministic guidance for better performance practice from many of these observations. In addition to these subjective topics that have engulfed the majority of musical research, many academicians have begun to formulate and conduct research in the neurologic and physiologic domains in hopes of "saving" music education or finding a correlation or causation for intelligence, cognition, or other subjectively observed characteristic. In some instances and to some degree, these efforts dilute the enjoyment of the musical activity by attributing neurological pairing with other disciplines for more significant achievement in academic subjects. With advancing digital technologies, scientific research has begun to see the neurological activity of music in the central nervous system, but to what end is still being determined. While a correlation between music-related activity and cognitive enhancement may exist, it has yet to be definitively proven as the "golden goose" to improve cognition.

 

In addition to a pairing of music and cognition, other music-related endeavors within the research spectrum have seen promising advancement with special needs and aging populations that improve observable behaviors. Music therapy for intellectually and developmentally divergent and aging populations is building momentum after research has yielded socially significant findings after evaluating music-related treatment. Much of the research in this scope of practice has been stringently monitored, implemented, and reported in publications like The Journal of Music Therapy. However, a technological approach to the acquisition and learning practices of music-related endeavors with the general population has yet to take flight. Current research practice in music psychology and education still debates the semantic definition of musical aesthetics accompanied by Likert scale surveys of preference and attitudinal changes. Unlike music therapy (and sports psychology), professional music educators and psychologists have yet to embrace analytic methodology that can provide data to support efficacious pedagogical practice.

 

Traditionally, behavioral psychology has focused on human (and nonhuman) observable (overt) behaviors. Many music educators may recall the late 19th-century physiologist Ivan Pavlov's experiment with dog salivation elicited by the sounding of a tone or of the early 20th-century psychologist John B. Watson's "The Little Albert" experiment, where a small child was conditioned to fear furry objects. These early behaviorists developed the principles known as classical conditional and began setting a foundation for modern behaviorist principles. Twenty years after Watson, the dedicated and rising psychologist, B.F. Skinner advanced research and applied relations of behaviorism. This new developmental construct, termed by Skinner as operant conditioning, has been incorporated in almost every facet of educational, commercial, personal, and social settings. Behaviorist principles and techniques have defined and guided the implementation of the Individualized Disabilities Education Act, special education services, Functional Behavior Assessment, and Behavioral Intervention Plans within schools, Organizational Behavior Management, commercial advertising, gambling, aviation, pharmacology, business administration, ecology, conservation, and research practices within applied and performance psychology. Skinner envisioned the development of a science of human behavior to improve daily living and educational systems with positive reinforcement and eschew the punitive measures of the past by defining a technology that can describe all aspects of human life.

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B.F. Skinner devoted his entire adult life to developing and refining the science of human behavior. After his passing in 1990, psychologists, researchers, and educators continued the advancement of behaviorist principles, which contributed to the development of what is now known as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In 1998, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) became the collective governing body that certifies practicing applied behavior analysts and advances behavioral therapy and research across various human and nonhuman related environmental settings and conditions. The tenets of ABA and the BACB were defined in 1968 by Baer, Wolf, and Risley's seminal article in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. The aims within the behavioral paradigm should be applied, behavioral, analytic, technological, conceptually systematic, practical, and generalized to various settings and situations (Baer et al., 1968). These principles guide the behavioral psychologist to maintain rigid research standards, make ethically guided decisions, and contribute to enhancing the human condition.

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The latter half of the twentieth century saw changes in philosophical thought and educational trends. This "cognitive revolution" may have been formed as a response to the behavioristic majority of the first half of the 20th century. Like other artistic domains in education, music education was not left untouched by the attitudinal shifts of philosophy and continues to find a concise scientific model for inquiry into pedagogical practices in applied and experimental settings. To discuss the influences of educational psychology specific to music, one must consider the historical writings of music education researchers R. Douglas Greer and Clifford K. Madsen. In 1975, Research in Music Behavior: Modifying Music Behavior in the Classroom was published by Teachers College Press (Madsen et al., 1975). Within this compendium are twenty-two chapters dedicated to music research with an attempt to consolidate the definition and scope of behaviorist principles in music education.

 

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      "The fact that the teacher and the researcher deal with observable behaviors makes both need to use operational or behavioral terminology rather than relying solely on construct or conceptual. This procedure is more difficult in music education because of the frequent use of aesthetic or other phenomenological models….scientific methods are essential to successful objective educational practice, and the procedures of scientific methods are similar to those undertaken by a responsible teacher" (Madsen et al., 1975, pp. 5-6).

 

The research of "aesthetic or other phenomenological models" was supported by the cognitive movement within education, which promoted the use of metaphorical verbiage without the ability to objectively quantify and verify findings of what was then referred to as mentalistic unobservable behavior. "Although teachers cannot observe cognition, many teachers are interested in theories of cognition and find a [behavioral] learning theory approach to be lacking in theoretical constructs about cognition" (Madsen et al., 1975, p. 8). Though unobservable behavior cannot be quantified in a classroom, supporters of this paradigm continued to develop metaphorical and allegorical constructs and paradigms. In stark contrast to these unobservable and speculative conditions, Greer recommends:

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      "Research that investigates music instruction as behavior modification is not a stagnant concept, but a dynamic field that deals with observable behaviors and assumes some responsibility commensurate with that at hand for learning. Continued research should increase that responsibility as more factors influencing music learning and the influence of much on other learnings are identified" (Madsen et al., 1975, p.9). 

 

In support of Greer, fellow professor and colleague of music education, C. K. Madsen stated, 'If aesthetic education, or any other general goal, can be operationally defined into specific observable behaviors, then these behaviors might be able to be learned and in some way measured' (Madsen et al., 1975, p.15).

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Five years after the publication of Research in Music Behavior, R. Douglas Greer independently developed a blueprint for operant conditioning practice to be used in music classrooms and maintained congruence with the emerging vocabulary and methods of ABA (Greer, 1980). It is believed this is the only resource dedicated to behavioristic methodology for music education and proved to be a rare find to review for this study. After acquiring the text and digesting the content, it may be considered the foundation for a canon of music behavior. Titled Design for Music Learning, Greer supports the notion that a philosophically divergent dyadic relationship of learning theories within psychology and education exists – behaviorist (e.g., Thorndike, Pavlov, Skinner, among others) and behavioristic (e.g., Freud, Piaget). "Behavioristic theories are concerned with lawful predictions of the relationship between behavior and the environment. Behavioristic theories describe the behavior and environment to describe internal processes" (Greer, 1980, p.19). More simply stated, this philosophical dichotomy may have the behaviorist asking, "What do we teach?" and the behaviorist asking, "How do we teach?"

 

In Chapter 8 of the Greer blueprint, the author alludes to the discussion of the aesthetic movement within music education, much of which is still relevant 40 years hence:

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      "[It] has been proposed that music education is to be aesthetic education. Most of the notions of what constitutes the nature of the aesthetic in music have been based on rationales that exclude human behavior, with the expectation of a few hinted at in the psychology of music texts. Perhaps Suzanne Langer's influence on music education philosophy in the fifties and sixties led to the exclusion of behavioral rationales since she dismissed their work out of hand. There seems to be sufficient need to redress this lack of representation, particularly when some theorists propose that the au courant position of absolute expressionism should be, indeed, proposed as the philosophy of American music education" (Greer, 1980, p.113).

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It is essential to note that this observation from 1980 is still accurate today. Thousands of music education-related studies are focused on unobservable and subjective topics (e.g., aesthetics, feelings, emotion, and others) and only sometimes generalize to a broader population. Additionally, these studies may have little relevance or do not offer pragmatic findings to enhance music education and performance practice. Stated, music education pedagogical practice…" should make evident the importance of the behavior change, its quantitative characteristics, the experimental manipulations which analyze with clarity what was responsible for the change, the technologically exact description of all procedures contributing to that change, the effectiveness of those procedures in making sufficient change for value, and the generality of that change" (Baer et al.,1968, p. 97). Greer's (1980) text has contributed a large amount of procedural and conceptual knowledge that covers many aspects of music in the public classroom setting. The foundational principles of ABA are described in great detail within this text and how they are generalized to music performance and learning. Though written in 1980, all of the conceptual frameworks delineated by Greer are still relevant today.

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This website's intent is to inform performers, educators, and therapists about how the principles of ABA can benefit all persons in the field of music. 

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Reference 

 

​Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91–97.

 

​Greer, R. D. (1980). Design for music learning. Teachers College Press.

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Madsen, C. K., Greer, R. D., & Madsen, C. H. (1975). Research in music behavior: Modifying music behavior in the classroom. Teachers College Press.

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Madsen, C. K., Prickett, C. A., & Gates, J. T. (1987). Applications of research in music behavior. University of Alabama Press.