This article discusses the results of a nation-wide survey of the extent to which A-level music is valued as a preparation for higher education and for employment in the music industry. The survey was carried out with music lecturers in higher education, personnel in the music industry, and present A-level and undergraduate music students. The investigation revealed a mismatch between what is looked for in a music education at A-level and what is being studied and achieved at this stage. This raises questions about the core of A-level music in relation to our changing social, cultural, economic and educational climate.

The introduction of a ‘Points for Debate’ section in BJME is a welcome innovation. It provides a context in which important aspects of music education can be discussed in a friendly and temperate manner. It is in this spirit that I offer this response to Vic Gammon's interesting article concerning the subject knowledge of intending PGCE music students and how such knowledge might be identified.

Looking back now at my first year of teaching I am amazed at the wide diversity of activities on which I was launched. As well as teaching the 11–18 age group, I was also organising visits, arranging musical performances both in and out of school, serving on a local committee of the Schools Music Association, organising and accompanying Associated Board practical exams, helping with the day-to-day running of the department when the head left for another job, and still trying to increase my own abilities as a musician. My overwhelming impression is that I was always tremendously busy and nearly always under pressure as the days sped by bringing exams and concerts nearer and nearer.

Since January 1984 a thoroughgoing reform in Soviet education has been under discussion, and decisive steps have already been taken. The ‘Guidelines for Reform of General and Vocational Schools’, approved by the Supreme Soviet on 12 April 1984, indicated a firm intention to improve curricula, teaching methods and materials in all subjects. The arts figure prominently in the new proposals, and it is the purpose of this article to examine what is happening in music education, which has been a leader in the field.

The chief, but by no means the only, means of communication in the classroom is language. Simply because the range of activities in the music lesson are so varied, it follows that teachers and pupils will use language and communication skills in a multiplicity of different ways. This article is an attempt to highlight some of the ways in which language is used in music teaching at different ages and stages, and in different educational settings.

The study examines the impacts of a project-based learning (PBL) methodology on the development of emotional skills involved in the learner’s individual and social well-being. This paper summarises the preliminary results of the case study in which the project ‘Opera as a Vehicle for Learning’ (LOVA) was implemented with a key stage 2 group in Mexico City. This project fostered the development of the students’ intra- and interpersonal skills, group decision-making, critical reasoning, active listening, oral and written expression and emotion sharing. Findings suggest that LOVA has proved to be a powerful methodological resource for the development of collaborative learning, emotional education and social interaction in groups. Findings also suggest that music learning can be used as a highly effective device for the development of social skills.

Student motivation has been conceived as a crucial factor in the learning processes. However, research in motivation and creative learning in the secondary education music classroom has been limited. Student motivation is explored in this article through a collaborative action research study, in the form of several projects centred on the creation of music through group improvisation and cooperative composition, conducted over the course of five 1-year cycles, from 2008 to 2013. The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the aspects determining student motivation during creative learning processes. Three secondary schools in the region of Madrid (Spain), eleven third-year secondary school classes (n = 267), teachers, researchers and artists participated in the study. Data were gathered through participant and non-participant observations, interviews, a classroom diary, and a questionnaire. In the findings, six intrinsically linked connected forms of motivation are grouped in three levels and are related to different factors emerged during the teaching and learning processes and connected to creativity.

In this study, the author examines the relationship between tone production and language among children from Ghana. The results suggest that linguistic content influences melodic movement. To a large extent, the singing development of these children is made possible through play and the other culturally acceptable repertoire that they hear around them. The author concludes that teachers should be encouraged to develop exercises that enhance vocal development while rooted within the children's musical cultures.

The articles in this Issue of the BJME are all focused on the education of music teachers, though from different parts of the world. Betty Hanley, writing from Canada, is concerned especially with students' involvement in their own learning and with the development of student competencies and the ability to be critical; while another Canadian colleague, Hugh Johnston, investigates the importance of feedback and peer-assessment in teacher education, with special reference to acquiring the skills of rehearsing and directing performance groups.

This study investigates the in-service training needs of the primary school generalist teacher in Botswana. The findings established that singing is a major cross-curricular activity in schools. Dance on the other hand, despite being the most popular form of entertainment in and outside school, is not regarded as an aspect of music education. Instrumental teaching is virtually non-existent. Teachers' interests in further musical training are influenced by a misconception that singing should be the main activity in music lessons. As a result most are only interested in improving their skills in areas that will improve their singing, such as theory of music to aid sight reading.

Conceiving the construct ‘social-emotional learning climate’ as an embodiment of Illeris’ contemporary learning theory, this paper serves dual purposes. First, it examines recent music education literature, which identifies issues of competence and institutionalised pedagogic practice in secondary school music settings that result in adolescents’ inability to target and develop personal locus of control over learning, and the subsequent rejection of the learning environment. Second, it details findings, discussion and pedagogic implications from the author's dissertation study exploring music teacher formative influence upon and student experience of Illeris’ theory of learning process within three Canadian secondary school learning settings integrating informal learning practices.

Research about the delivery of music teacher education programs indicates a number of areas which should be addressed. The report below describes innovative practice in an advanced elementary methods course at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. In Music Education 306, theory and practice were connected through student-directed discussions of foundation issues; the development of personal musical competencies; observation, teaching in the schools, and reflection on practice; the challenge to examine issues critically; and student involvement in the planning of their own learning and assessment. Excerpts from student reflections illustrate some of the learning which occurred.

This article is a summary of the influence on the author's practice of classroom observation of four- and five-year-old children working in music. It suggests that a strong emphasis on music in the Reception year is important both for musical and aesthetic development, and for the development of basic formal and social skills across the curriculum.

This paper presents research carried out in a kindergarten in Catalonia with the aim of studying the different kinds of musical activity that take place during one school day. This is an ethnographic study where the researcher became an extra teacher in a group of one to two-year-olds and interacted with them musically. The methodology is based in a participatory observation approach and data are collected via video-recordings, field notes and a daily exchange of impressions and reflections with the teacher. The results show four different kinds of participation that determine the type of musical activity carried out when children are placed in the spotlight: (a) active audience, (b) performer pointer (c) performer proof with expert, and (d) performer proof without expert.

Reflecting upon the relationship between people and music, the author is led to adopt a new position on musical education. His ideas are based on the work of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the pedagogue and paediatrician, Janusz Korczak, and the composer R. Murray Schafer – all of whom focus upon the ‘dialogue’ of education. From Korczak is borrowed the idea of the child as ‘a present-state being’ rather than a ‘future-state being’; from Arendt the concepts of labour, work and action; and from Schafer his ‘Wolf Project’ for a musical community. On the basis of these three influences, the author advocates a ‘new manner of enacting music’ instead of ‘simply enacting new music’, basing pedagogic practice on a psycho-analytical approach to education. The pupil–teacher relationship turns on identification and projection. Teachers must nurture pupils' aesthetic choices and opinions as well as their commitment, so that ethical and aesthetic considerations can be brought together in the same musical act. Only in this way can musical education be worthwhile.

Recent research and theory in the area of classroom management indicates that there is a relationship between the task organisation of the classroom and teacher management behaviours. That is, classroom settings such as seatwork and recitation are related to different kinds of pupil behaviour and different kinds of teacher response. A review of related literature and a study of music student teachers in secondary classrooms indicates that music teachers spend considerably more time in recitation-type settings than do teachers of other subjects and are thus required to be more constantly alert and more authoritarian in their behaviour. The implications of these data for teachers, teacher educators and administrations are discussed.

There have been a number of links established between music and language. As two of the major symbols systems developed by and specific to humans, music and language share a number of characteristics. For example, in their most natural form – i.e. song and spoken word – music and language share the same vehicle for expression, the voice, with a consequent emphasis on the aural medium; indeed the child's first experiences of music and language are often linked.

This paper reviews a number of the perceived commonalities between music and language and discusses the implications these may have for education. The major concepts of music, those duration, dynamics, pitch, tone-colour and structure, are discussed in connection with the ways in which these may be utilised in order to foster linguistic competency.

This article critically engages with the discipline of African musics in the academy. It examines the process of curriculum transformation of the African music section at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town since 2005 as an emergent curriculum model for an integrated approach to the teaching of African musics at universities. The adoption of this curriculum predated the 2015–2016 fervent calls in South Africa to decolonise the university, which necessitates an approach to teaching African musics not rooted in its colonial past. As is known, the study and research of African musics in the academy partly stemmed from the efforts of European (and later US) researchers who often received support through the British colonial administration and much of their output seemed to be focused on convincing their peers about the virtues of ‘African music’ and the study thereof. Despite this history, there is evidence to support the fact that in most African universities, the music departments are far more interested in teaching Western art music and its virtues. In recognition of the calls by students for radical changes to the curricula in South African universities, the article seeks to answer the question ‘how do we consider ongoing changes to the knowledge both received and produced in this field?’

This article considers the impact that the Swanwick-Tillman spiral article (Swanwick & Tillman, 1986) has had on contemporary thinking in music education in England. Building on a discussion concerning the antecedents of the notion of a spiral, the ways in which a generalist music curriculum can be planned and organised are discussed. Drawing on the contemporary example of the Model Music Curriculum (DfE, 2021), and then charting this thinking as arising from a graded music examination repertoire-based way of planning, this article goes on to explain why the Swanwick-Tillman spiral still has relevance, as well as much to teach us in today’s very different music education world where assessment, measurement and accountability are dominant. Although centred on the situation in England, there are nonetheless implications for curriculum planners in many other jurisdictions too.