Campbell, P. (2008). Musician & Teacher, an Orientation to Music Education. New York, NY: Norton.
In Chapter 6 of Musician and Teacher, Patricia Campbell gives a broad overview of the foundations and principles of several learning theories. She gives a rundown of, generally, how students develop musical aptitude through both cultural/environmental and biological factors, such as developing the ability to keep a steady beat, discern high from low pitches, and eventually read and write notation. These factors of development are reflected in learning theories that include how and when children can learn new content. The progression of development are manifested in Jean Piaget's Stage theory and Jerome Bruner's enactive, iconic, and symbolic stations. The chapter is finished by discussing various applications of the learning theories in the progress of a lesson.
The greatest value I found in this chapter came from the connections made between the different learning theories to demonstrate that oftentimes, they depend primarily upon students' differing ability levels as they develop. A concept that stood out the most to me is the idea of "conservation" -or application of one concept to other identical or similar ones. This could manifest in music through learning one rhythm in a given piece of repertoire, and then recognizing and performing that rhythm in subsequent repertoire. That's learning as it occurs in music a lot of the time, or often as it doesn't occur, as teachers often have to reteach components for each selection. Students developing the skill of conservation is the key to individual skill development.
Questions for Dr. Campbell:
What learning/concept situations might be best for group work in differently abled/experienced student groups?
How can a teacher effectively use, but not overuse, positive reinforcement?