Music listening occupies a central part of music studies at all levels of education. However, according to the relevant research, teachers have been emphasizing students’ cognitive responses with limited connection to the affective domain during. Undergraduate music majors have little interest in those teaching materials chosen by their teachers. This study is based on motivation theory, which emphasizes cognitive and affective responses during the learning process as well as requiring teachers to understand students’ behaviors, thoughts and feelings. The aim of this study is to investigate and explore teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies toward students’ affective responses during music listening in higher education under the context of mainland China and Hong Kong. The following two research questions guide the whole study: a) what are university music teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies toward affective response during music listening and learning in higher education? (b) How do their teaching pedagogy represent their belief? This study uses a mixed-method approach and includes two phases. Phase I aims to investigate the current situation regarding teachers’ belief and pedagogy towards affective responses while listening and learning to music. A questionnaire surveyed the views of 185 university music teachers recruited from 17 universities in mainland China, together with ten university music teachers from two universities in Hong Kong. From the questionnaire survey findings, three major issues were identified by teachers and considered critical to informing their beliefs and pedagogies when teaching music: (1) the correlation between teachers’ beliefs and pedagogy, (2) perspectives and pedagogic strategies toward affective response in music listening and learning, and (3) the factors influence teachers’ beliefs and pedagogies. Phase II aims to explore what the teachers’ actually teaching and the influences upon teachers’ belief and pedagogy towards affective responses

Critical thinking is regarded as a higher-order thinking skill, which is important in developing a comprehensive competency in modern times. Nurturing children’s critical thinking at an early stage thus becomes an essential target that should be pursued by all school teachers. Facing such a trend, the Education Bureau of Hong Kong started to reform the school curriculum in 2000 in order to develop students’ generic skills through eight Key Learning Areas (KLA), one of which is Arts Education that includes Music. Nine generic skills, including critical thinking, have been identified that should be nurtured through all KLAs. Published in 2003, the Music Curriculum Guide (Curriculum and Development Council, 2003) proposed four learning targets for music. Among all, cultivating critical responses in music is the target achieved by the integrated learning activities of creating, performing and listening. Nevertheless, there are very limited studies investigating the extent to which current primary music teachers can nurture students’ critical thinking in Hong Kong. Furthermore, Hong Kong music teachers may not be capable of developing students’ critical thinking through these integrated activities. This study aims to examine the current situation of cultivating critical thinking in music in Hong Kong’s primary schools and explore how critical thinking skills can be effectively developed. A questionnaire, interviews and class observation were used to collect data for current situation of nurturing critical thinking skills in primary music lessons. The results of the study demonstrate a positive indication of the acceptance of and beliefs in the implementation of critical thinking skills in Hong Kong primary teachers. Difficulties are found that impeded the effectiveness of the implementation, namely, teachers’ professional commitments by using critical thinking skills, teachers’ understanding of and abilities for the implementation, students’ involvement and differentiation