Twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

The field of conceptual change (starting with Posner et al., 1982) has tried to describe and explain the interaction between a student’s current ideas and new, incompatible ones. Although conceptual change has been studied in instrumental music teaching (Bautista et al., 2009 and 2012), it has been overlooked in the teaching of music theory (“systematic musicology”). A prerequisite for studying conceptual change is the identification of “misconceptions,” erroneous beliefs that can outlive instruction (McCloskey, 1983). This paper examines misconceptions in the chromatic harmonic unit of the core undergraduate theory curriculum. This unit expands the definition of chords to include chromatic notes or other exceptional situations. Students did an analytical assignment on chromatic excerpts (Schumann, Chopin). I classified their errors into the smallest number of possible categories, then linked each category to a likely mental schema. The errors were then tallied by chordal position in the excerpts (1-40) and by category (A-K). The results were averaged between myself and a colleague to minimize bias. The seven schemata, centered around a parent schema, the seven Roman numerals of the major scale as taught in Theory I, show that students are reducing out chromatic detail in favor of typical, stable chords, leading to harmonic errors, most commonly in biases toward small, consonant chords (16.8%) and stable inversions (14.2%); Tonic occurrences, however, are accurate (0.0%). This study suggests a renewed focus on chromatic chord spelling, and earlier in the curriculum (Theory I) than currently done.