Critical thinking, a major goal of education, is an important factor in becoming an independent musician. This study explored dimensions of critical listening including: a) what do students think and audiate when they are listening, b) how do they respond to certain types of music, c) what decisions do they make while listening, and d) how does their level performance experience relate to their listening responses? A case study format was used to carefully observe the listening patterns of students. Three case members chosen from the private studio of the researcher heard a 3-5 minute musical example. The instructions to the student were to listen carefully to the example. After the first hearing students instructed that during the second hearing they were to stop the recording at any time to share what they heard. Upon the completion of the second hearing, students were interviewed about what they heard. Each listening session followed this procedure three times, once for each musical selection. Case members were video-taped while they were listening to capture any non-verbal communication that took place during listening and interviewing. The analysis of the data involved dividing the case evidence into several areas of interest for each piece. Several of the areas were identified before the study through the interview questions. Others were identified because all case members attended to those areas in some way. The results of this analysis presented several factors which seemed to affect the students’ listening responses. Responses were apparently affected by each student’s personality, verbalization ability, gender, physical reactions to music, aptitude, experience, and extramusical interests. These results provide guidelines for a model for exploring the listening patterns of high school students. They also provide the researcher and other high school teachers with qualitative information about the listening patterns of these students. Studio teachers will be able to use this information to better plan listening lessons.
