As the time for the implementation of the National Curriculum in Music approaches, will the tail of assessment begin to wag the dog of class-room music and dissipate all that has been achieved in providing the dynamic, challenging and fulfilling experiences that now characterise many class music lessons? This article sets out some proposals for an assessment strategy which, it is hoped, is faithful to the intentions of the National Curriculum Music Working Group in allowing practical music to flourish but with a greater sense of direction and enhanced awareness of the power of musical expression for teachers and students alike.

This article considers ideas and issues raised by an examination of the function of education, particularly music education in Ghana. There are many musical traditions in Ghana that the people want to pass on to the younger generation. How are these to be taught or learned? Where are the duties and boundaries of formal education to be drawn? What can be expected of parents and family? What is the situation for the teacher, given that few teachers return to their native area after training at a centralised institution? The article is based around an interview with the Paramount Chief (Naa) Puoure Puobe Chiir VII of Nandom in the Upper West Region of Ghana. He is one of twenty-five members of the National Council of State of Ghana (a non-elected Upper Chamber) and, as mentioned in the interview, vice-president of the National House of Chiefs and Chairman of its Research Committee.

The author, troubled by doubts about the value for pupils’ general education of violin teaching, sets about finding out, by interview and open discussion, what the problems are, for teachers and pupils alike; and having analysed them, sets herself the task of trying solve some of them.

Encouraging pupils to compose music that will help them overcome their own technical difficulties is a fruitful start, and one that can lead to further developments of great promise for the future of music education. By evaluating the processes and outcomes of this creative work it is possible to throw light and understanding on learning and teaching processes in both violin playing and composition.

Music and language are often seen to be similar, and this has led to numerous music education methods based on language models. This paper describes a commonality between music and language at a semiotic level, compares their relevant syllabuses, and discusses a number of possible transfers between language teaching and music education.

This article presents part of a five-year Australian study, the purpose of which was to look at learning singing in a pedagogical environment designed using sociocultural theory. The classroom environment was transformed over 5 years in consultation with other staff members and used the reflective journals that students wrote during that time as a way of refining and changing the design. Themes emerging from the journals were analysed to inform changes to the design. One of the main themes to emerge was student reflections about the scientific concepts they were taught and the ways the concepts were introduced. These reflections became the basis for the discussion in this paper. The study demonstrated that the students' acquisition of scientific concepts of singing affected both their singing performance and their ability to learn in a positive way. The study suggests that scientific concepts of singing could become part of the students' toolbox that helps develop their singing by making meaning of what they are experiencing kinaesthetically and aurally while they sing.

This study aims to shed light on the motivation governing instrument choice. To collect data, we designed, piloted and administered a survey to a population of students enrolled in a music teacher education programme in Sweden. In line with previous, Anglo-centred research, we identify the instrument’s timbre and parental influences as relevant motives for this decision. Uncommonly, however, taking part in a testing session is suggested to have a similarly influential effect. Accordingly, our study supports the value of offering free-to-all sessions where children may try different instruments and openly discuss them with music teachers. Further insights from our results include families exerting more influence than peers, genre preferences bearing little relevance and potential tendencies regarding the influence of gender and socio-economic background for instrument choice. In addition, we uncover several motives that counteract this decision, music provision being the main impediment to pursuing one’s original preference, thereby underscoring the urgency of reducing the Swedish communal schools’ waiting lists for specific instruments. Our results further suggest the presence of mediating factors, including the musician’s starting age, family environment (beyond parents/guardians) and the availability of the instrument at home. This finding opens a new path in the study of instrument choice and challenges the way this topic has been traditionally researched, given that such factors could function as confounding variables in the study of instrument choice.

Meyer and Land’s work (among subsequent others) on threshold concepts (TCs) has been influential in numerous subjects, particularly in higher education. However, despite its growing international interest, its application into the domain of music in schools is a highly under-researched area. This article draws on the notion of TCs focusing on the context of lower-secondary school (Key Stage 3: ages 11–14) group composing. Using video-recorded and interview data from three case-study schools in the English Midlands, examples of TCs are presented and how formative assessment was, or could have been, a key process in them being crossed is discussed.

This paper builds on the concept that fusion – the blending of styles and traditions resulting in new or hybridised genres – takes place in social interaction in the ‘transformative zone’ (Bresler, 2003). First I explore the issues surrounding the tension that can occur between the need, or desire, to maintain cherished traditions and the need to create and adapt forms of expression (Bebey 1969/1975) that are meaningful to practitioners. Next, I describe a spontaneous act of fusion that occurred during a music pedagogy workshop that I gave to music teachers in Cuba. Blending the tranquil mood of a Hebrew blessing, with lively Cuban polyrhythms the participants created a hybridised genre that reflected Cuban musical traditions and values. I suggest that while the blessing was transformed stylistically, its meaningful aspects were retained in the sense that the experience provided the conditions for a feeling of communion with others and the feelings of happiness that can arise from such communion.

The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how one classically trained musician adapted his pedagogical practices to accommodate the needs and interests of his students. A case-study methodology was employed to explore the perceptions and practices of this teacher, and data were collected over a two-year period through interviews and observations. Findings indicated that students were engaged in music-making throughout the lesson, and that many of the lesson characteristics aligned with Lucy Green's (2002, 2008) descriptions of an informal pedagogical orientation. The overarching aim of the teacher's instruction was to support students’ development of musical knowledge and skills that would enhance their learning, and to expand their understanding of musical genres and performance practices.

The writer has conducted an extensive historical investigation into music in the Irish primary school system. One individual, Peter Goodman, Ireland's first music inspector, emerged as being a character central to the introduction of music to primary schools in 1900, and to the subsequent in-service education provided for teachers. This paper outlines Goodman's work in this area, and traces his promotion of the Curwen sol-fa system, and his contribution to the promotion of church music. Goodman wrote prolifically describing his work, and his reports were included in the annual Reports of the Board of Commissioners of National Education. From these archival sources emerges a picture of an individual full of enthusiasm and zeal for his mission, and with some ideas and aspirations that are just as valid today as when he first conceived them a century ago.

Although there are many examples of notable string programmes there has been relatively little comparative analysis of these programmes. This paper examines three benchmark string programmes (The University of Illinois String Project, The Tower Hamlets String Teaching Project and Colourstrings) alongside Music4All, an innovative string programme run over three years in five primary schools in regional Australia. The paper discusses difficulties encountered in the Australian experience and gives recommendations for future programmes including allowing adequate time and resources for the planning phase and the importance of ongoing professional development for staff.

Looking back to the editorial in the very first edition of BJME, back in 1984, there are a number of striking resonances which belie the thirty years which have passed since Volume 1, Issue 1. Take this paragraph as an example:

Limited consideration has been given to the challenges young composers and performers face when learning to communicate through notation in contemporary classical music, and the specific opportunities presented for peer learning. This article describes a project at a Swiss music conservatory in which two student composers wrote pieces for solo piano which were performed by three student pianists. Students were deprived of collaborative opportunities, with communication limited to score markings and legends. Results from individual interviews are discussed in relation to categories of approaches drawn from existing studies on learning new piano works, on notation and on collaboration, plus new categories arising from this research. The challenges and potential opportunities arising from this approach are examined here, highlighting specific areas to be targeted for future peer learning.

It is quite possible that the so-called ‘creative’ activities espoused by proponents of recent approaches to music education are endangering the production of great music by the next generation of composers because as children they are not being given the necessary foundation of skills to develop the craft of composition.

Isolated examples of genuine educational conviction have only served to legitimise these questionable trends by lending a certain historical authority to a modern philosophical disaster.

The major problem with the recent approaches is that they fail to recognise that craftsmanship is a fundamental requirement for genuine artistic achievement.

This article discusses the first year of the Project for Introductory Piano Education (the PIPO project) at The Hague, a training programme for young pianists starting at age 5–6. The programme combines general music activities, aiming at the development of general musical skills, with piano lessons in small groups. Rather than working from notation, the project takes an auditory approach to piano playing. After having described the principal characteristics of the PIPO project, the article reports on the musical progress of the children, and concludes by discussing some major educational issues that emerged during the first year.

This paper reports on a small-scale study in an elementary school in Southern Ontario, Canada. The study investigated relationships between students’ perceptions and practices of gender in popular music education with particular attention given to communication, instruments and technology and development of freedoms and constraints. The findings present a more opaque picture than previous research, suggesting that students frequently transgress binary gendered patterns of practice and perception in this particular field. Gender monoglossia and heteroglossia provide a useful explanatory framework for analysis, indicating that further application of these concepts to issues in popular music education might be most fruitful.

In this article I expound my method of teaching the language of music to my pupils. I aim to enable them to express themselves through music, just as they are expected to use the tools of language for creative writing and art materials for original work.

My class organisation and the syllabus by which my pupils learn to compose is explained in some detail for years seven to nine and in more general terms thereafter.

I include examples of compositions, from Year Seven and from GCSE pupils. I hope I can encourage other teachers to adopt similar objectives and therefore reap similar rewards.

A common conclusion drawn from publicly available Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data releases is that Higher Music Education (HME) courses have a predominantly male population. However, HESA data has key issues when examining HME courses: which courses are reported as ‘music’ courses to HESA; how do universities decide which courses are ‘music’ courses; how many different topics are contained within the umbrella of ‘music’ courses? To address questions of gender representation in HME, universities in the UK were approached with Freedom of Information Act requests for the gender demographics of student populations on “music-related” courses. Information was gained on 3456 courses populations between 2014 and 2020, which was categorised by the subject of study. Six core undergraduate topics were identified: generic music degrees (female bias), degrees combining music and technology (male bias), degrees combining music and business (no gender bias), degrees on popular music (male bias), degrees combining music and theatre (female bias) and major conservatoire courses (no gender bias). No area was accurately represented by HESA data, and gender representation varied significantly between areas. These findings have implications for discussions of gender representation in HME across the UK.

Despite a renewed interest in educational practices to develop future music educators in South Africa for a rapidly changing professional landscape, little is known about the meaning students themselves ascribe to these practices towards their own development as music educators. This instrumental case study investigated the learning experiences of second-year BMus students creating a musical for pre-schoolers. Data were collected through interviews, observations and reflective journals. Six themes emerged through a thematic analysis of student experiences, namely interaction, preparation, skills development, stagecraft, performance and enjoyment. A conceptual model that explains the production of a musical as a pedagogical praxis connects these themes with existing literature on three teaching and learning approaches that framed the study, namely authentic arts-based pedagogy, project-based learning and community of practice.