Exploring Musical Rewards in Music Teacher Education: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Musical experience offers psychological, social, and emotional benefits, which depend on individual variability in response to music. These benefits are known as musical rewards. This article examines the musical rewards experienced by future music educators across different educational levels (primary, secondary, and conservatory) during their undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) was administered to a sample of 164 future teachers. The results indicate that students score highly on musical rewards, particularly in music seeking and emotional evocation. Furthermore, differences between groups and genders were identified on certain BMRQ scales. The article concludes that understanding these rewards can contribute to improving the training of music educators at various educational levels and provides some teaching guidelines to enhance the development of these competencies.