Critical Thinking and School Music Education: Literature Review, Research Findings, and Perspectives

The most up-to-date validations of educational praxis propose that teachers and learners should engage together in a process of understanding life and the world, should share their anxieties and their problematic issues, look for solutions, make plans for action, express themselves creatively and take a critical stance toward every new datum before accepting it as knowledge. For many years, the dominant view was that the study of certain subject areas--and nothing else--was sufficient to promote students’ critical thinking skills. This conviction was overturned by John Dewey, who pointed out that any school subject may promote critical thinking if teachers base their teaching on challenges and issues presented for investigation, as well as encouraging reflection. As music offers the repeated challenge of situations in which there is no standard or approved answer, it can promote critical thinking. This article presents a review of the literature on the definition of critical thinking, points out the importance of the promotion of critical thinking in general education as well as in art and music education, and, finally, proposes for the teaching and learning of music a framework of applications within which critical thinking skills may be developed.