Originally, the creative music workshop involving professional players was intended to give direct support to school teachers and to enhance music in the classroom, but today's large-scale, high-profile projects mounted by orchestras and opera companies appear to be developing into a full-scale industry on their own. Their role in partnership with schools and colleges now requires clarification: a survey of education policies has revealed some confusion of aims with few bodies looking closely at objectives, outcomes and effects. Music companies could profit from the experience of museums and art galleries.

Against the background of current debate concerning the proposed national curriculum, a number of questions remain unanswered. This paper examines the issue of how, and indeed whether music education is practised from an expressivist point of view. The expressivist position, as evidenced for instance in the work of Herbert Read, Louis Arnard Reid and Suzanne Langer, is analysed in the more recent work of Robert Witkin and Malcolm Ross.

The paper continues by questioning whether there is an expressivist future in music education, discussing the work of Keith Swanwick and John Paynter alongside recent guidelines from HMI and the DES. Official utilitarian arguments are questioned and evidence of developments in Scotland and the United States are examined. The American tradition of developmental psychology in music leads to a discussion of the work of David J. Hargreaves in this country, and finally recommendations are made concerning the relationship between music and the other arts, with particular reference to curriculum structures and programmes of learning.

In 2005, the Barenboim-Said Foundation launched the Early Childhood Music Education project in Andalusia (Spain) to promote music education for young children. Ten years later, an initial study was performed to evaluate the influence of the project on the development of the participating children. The results of this study form part of a broader ongoing research project, in collaboration with the University of Seville, aimed at investigating the influence of the Early Childhood Music Education project on general aspects of child development. This study has a quasi-experimental design, framed in Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, consisting of an experimental and a control group (n = 1101) and the administration of a questionnaire, adapted to measure and compare means between the two groups, as the sole measurement tool. The results, analysed using an independent samples t-test for the comparison of means and Cohen’s d effect size, reveal statistically significant differences in the means of the dimensions of the experimental and control groups. This confirms the hypothesis that the Early Childhood Music Education project has a positive impact on the different dimensions, in accordance with Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

A-level music, a qualification taken most often in English and Welsh school contexts around the age of 18, has been a long-standing feature of the musical training of many musicians. Historically bound up with Western European Art Music, the qualification has somewhat broadened its horizons in recent times, though with mixed success in opening up new ways of thinking about music. Recent research has highlighted the seemingly precarious nature of A-level music in many English schools. The reasons for this picture of decline are highly complex and difficult to disentangle, and are part of a much broader diminishing of creative subjects in the school curriculum. Decreasing numbers of A-level music entries run somewhat counter to popular policy discourse, which celebrates flagship announcements of £79 million given to Music Education Hubs in 2019–2020, and 2018 survey results that reported more than 700,000 children learning to play a musical instrument through music hub provision. However, behind these headlines, although there are many children having the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, few continue through to A-level and beyond. Despite its declining numbers, A-level music is recognised as a valuable qualification amongst music teachers, offering something distinct from graded music examinations and other Level 3 musical qualifications. This article presents the results of a recent nationwide survey of A-level music teachers to offer an insight into teacher perceptions of current A-level music specifications, the extent to which it prepares students for entry into higher musical education, and its appropriateness for aspiring young musicians.

A review is made of the contents of the Australian Journal of Music Education from 1969, and of conferences in the early history of the Australian Society of Music Education. The categories of music education theses 1936–78 are described. A review of the research presentations is made from reports of the conferences of the Association of Music Education Lecturers. The paper identifies seminal summaries of music education research issues over a twenty-five-year period. It traces the lines of reported research, distinguishing standards for identification of research. It is concluded that although awareness of research issues has been consistently present amongst music educators in Australia, a lack of research orientation, together with inadequate planning and organisational structure has left the field to haphazard individualism. Proposals for current research priorities and procedures for their pursuit are made.

A teaching method is described which is based on activity and participation in relation to recorded musical performances. The principles of repertoire choice are that it should represent various styles; that the expressive content should be in the realm of the emotional world of children; that there should be at least one compositional device in the music which is perceivable from the point of view of students. The relationship of participation and listening is explored through practical illustrations.

In this paper I explore the musical general knowledge of 46 applicants for places on a secondary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) music course. The applicants took a 35-question quiz designed to indicate something of their subject knowledge in connection with aspects of the Western art music tradition, knowledge of Western musical instruments and world musics. I will discuss methodological problems related to the use of the quiz results, then analyse the results. The analysis reveals patterns of strength and weakness in the subject knowledge of the applicants that are related to their educational and other musical experiences. Significant absences in areas of knowledge needed to teach the National Curriculum are detected. I then move on to consider the findings in the light of the new Benchmark Statement (QAA, 2002) for music degrees in the UK. Noting that no given body of knowledge is prescribed in the Benchmark Statement that both describes and governs the content of music first degrees, I raise questions about the difficulties this creates for all concerned.

This article explores the significance of context and discourse from a gender perspective within three different studies of the Swedish music classroom, conducted in lower secondary school, upper secondary school and higher music education respectively. The theoretical point of departure is that gender performances as well as the music classroom are discursively constructed within a specific context. The result suggests that if discourse and context are directed towards music as identity and skill, gender is performed in music, but if the music classroom is constructed as educational, gender is performed beside music. A conclusion is therefore that the impact of gender in the music classroom has to be understood as a matter of school discourse and school context in close relationship. It is argued that studying the interplay between context and discourse can be a way ahead for understanding the complexity in the relationship between music education and gender.

This article examines research on the specific training of musicians before they begin work as players in professional orchestras. Most of the research is in the area of education. The present article suggests that little research exists that is specific to the development of a traditional orchestra musician from an early age through the music education system, although considerable research exists on the development and broadening of the actual role of the professional musician in a changing world (portfolio careers).

‘Music is both a creative and a performing art’ (Hallam, 2006, p. 70). Many musicians and music educators maintain that composing and performing, although related, are essentially different aspects of musical activity. In the professional musical sphere, composition and performance are almost invariably separated; academic studies have treated them discretely; GCSE and ‘A’ level specifications assess them distinctly, and many music teachers assess them in the classroom as if they were separate disciplines. It is common practice for students in the lower secondary school in England to work in a more integrated way, however (Philpott, 2001; Major, 2008), composing, performing to the class, and appraising each others’ work. Recently produced assessment guidelines for secondary school music teachers in England (NAME, 2011) encourage this more integrated view, accepting the assumption made by Swanwick and Franca (1999, p. 12) that ‘musical understanding is a broad conceptual dimension’ by considering composing and performing as inter-linked ways of demonstrating and communicating musicality. This study sets out to investigate the links between composing and performing in the secondary school classroom, through peer-rating, teacher rating and students’ self-report attitudinal questionnaires, analysing these using a multi-trait, multi-method technique.

Evidence for convergent validity was found between performing and composing in the classroom, suggesting that they are closely linked and may indeed be related parts of the same trait. This may have implications for the ways in which composing and performing are taught and assessed. A larger-scale study could be undertaken to investigate this further.

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether children who possess speech and voice disorders could benefit from engaging in singing activities in educational settings, based on the psychological benefits of such activities. The impact of singing on children's psychological state and well-being was investigated with a participant population of 76 pre-pubertal children. Voice recordings, interviews and a survey were conducted. The main finding was that singing has a positive effect on children's overall vocal functioning and on their psychological well-being. Thus, singing could be exploited in educational settings with children suffering from speech and voiced disorders in order to achieve improvement in such domains.

Curriculum is currently a big issue in England. What a school-based music curriculum should entail, what sorts of things should be taught and learned, and what makes for good learning experiences are all under consideration. One of the issues that crops up in England, and possibly in other jurisdictions too, when these sorts of discussions take place, involves considerations of what sorts of music children and young people should be involved with, what should they learn, and what is important for schools to be teaching. This immediately places discussions beyond what might be termed the strictly musical, and into the area of values. What music is valued by education systems, and what music should be foregrounded in educational settings become a significant arena of contention. This is especially the case when politicians become involved, as they will often have fixed or politically-motivated views about what they think should be taught and learned in school music classes. As ever, the pages of the BJME provide some interesting views on this matter, and so it is worth a brief trawl through the archives. The BJME home page search engine on the website produces 168 results for the term “curriculum”, so clearly this will be a highly selective sampling from these rich pickings in this editorial.

In this article, I explore how neoliberal economic discourses and techniques have profoundly influenced the way that music education in early childhood has developed in recent years in the UK. I focus on two dominant models of practice that have been shaped by market thinking; the private music session (the ‘branded product’) and short term, stand-alone projects funded by charitable organisations (the ‘funded project’). The prevalence of these two models has resulted in highly fragmented and unequal provision accompanied by narrow conceptions of music in early childhood that give rise to impoverished practice. While I base my discussion on the early childhood sector in the UK, this discussion can nevertheless warn music educators beyond this one sector and one location of the negative consequences of abandoning music education to market forces.

This paper explores secondary school music teachers' current practice with regard to the organisation and assessment of composing at Key Stage 4. It draws on research undertaken on a nation-wide basis in England, via the use of two online surveys and face-to-face interviews. In terms of the organisation of classroom composition, the study found that the place of staff notation is currently under-theorised in terms of a developmental musical thinking tool, as opposed to what might be termed a ‘storage system’. The research also found that ICT has brought composing to a wider range of participants. Considerably more time is spent on composing than other musical processes within a typical Key Stage 4 music classroom. The study found that music teachers are, in general, satisfied with the sorts of assessments which are being done at Key Stage 4. Examination Board criteria for assessing composing are universally utilised but there is a feeling that whilst these criteria are fit for purpose, they do not always reflect the effort that students have put into their work. Some styles which are ‘set’ by examination boards are seen as being inappropriate for some students to access.

This article is written to show that composition can become an integral part of an instrumental teacher's methodology. Current musical education in schools in England and Wales is trying to give children a broad understanding of what music can contribute to the lives of all - listeners and performers. The starting point for this is composition. If instrumental teachers can introduce children to this discipline along with the disciplines of instrumental technique and a love of performing, we can create true, well-balanced musicians.

Through this approach it is possible that we can develop an integrated music curriculum that joins together the expertise of the classroom music teacher and the instrumental teacher, with resulting benefits to children, who can then see that music is not divided between the creative classroom and the re-creative instrumental and performing worlds.

One of the many roles of music teachers is to stimulate creative thinking and creative activity in their pupils. This obligation to help unlock latent musical talent in young people is no less applicable to the disabled than it is to the able-bodied. Music technology has a central place within this process. There are conditions for creativity, some of which may be precluded from the disabled. It is necessary, therefore, for the special needs music teacher to be aware of these conditions and the way in which a particular disability may bar access to any of them. Those involved in the design of either music hardware or software need to be responsive to these factors, through ongoing collaborative work. This paper was presented at a Conference of the Drake Research Project, University of York, November, 1990.

Whilst public music-making is generally perceived as largely a male domain, the perception of school music is that, at all levels, it is dominated by females. This article describes the author's attempt to find out how A-level music students see themselves in relation to their past experiences as musicians, their current work for A-level, and their potential musical future. The aim of the research was to identify differences that might exist between the perceptions of girls and boys in the sample, and between those at state-maintained and private schools.

Apart from generating a psychological and autobiographical profile for the cohort as a whole, results from the students' responses were analysed by using a quantitative statistical measure. Then the autobiographies of the constituents of these groups were examined, and this threw up interesting and unlooked for similarities within them.

An increasing amount of research emphasises the influence of body movement on the perception of music. This study contributes to the research by investigating whether varied qualities of body movement, when aligned to music may affect the way children attribute meaning to that music. To address this question, 34 children (aged 9–10) were divided into two groups, each of which engaged in distinct listening activities by aligning with discrete versus continuous movements on diverse pieces of music. As a pre- and post-test, children were first invited to move freely to a piece of music and subsequently to draw a visual representation of the piece. Finally, they were asked to verbally explain how the drawings were linked with the music. Findings, based on the children’s drawings and verbal explanations, offer interesting insights on the way different qualities of body movement can influence the categories of visual representations, arousal and voices of the music described. Moreover, the role of visual representation emerges as a way to gain insight into a child’s musical sense-making, principally when the product is analysed together with the process and the gestures employed to accomplish it. The findings of this study may offer relevant insights for music education. Firstly, in the way movement may influence music sense-making and secondly, how multimodal interaction (bodily, visual and verbal) may inform the process of musical understanding in children.

The language of music shares a number of basic processing mechanisms with natural languages, yet studies of learner autonomy in music education are rare. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of fostering music students’ learner autonomy in performance practice through a series of curriculum changes. A mixed-methods approach, including a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, was used to investigate two cohorts of music education students (N = 74) from Hong Kong. The analysis reveals the students’ autonomous learner characteristics, including the ability to formulate their own learning strategies, identify both musical and non-musical weaknesses and take appropriate steps to improve their performance skills.

This article, based on research for an MA (December 2000), investigates the connections between the private teacher and music in the National Curriculum. In the process present perceptions and practice are explored to gain a clearer understanding of the situation as it is today. Various ways of improving communications between schools and private teachers are looked at, with a view to helping the pupil feel that school and private lessons are working in harmony. From the research it has been found that an awareness exists of the need to develop teaching philosophies that relate the private lesson to music in the National Curriculum.