Editorial

Abstract

The extent to which musical learning takes place beyond the school curriculum presents a challenge to music teachers, requiring them to frame their classroom activities within the broader context of their students' diverse musical interests and experiences. At times, young people's self-directed musical education has been held up as a criticism of institutional approaches: the often-quoted comment from the 1963 Newsom Report that ‘out of school, adolescents are enthusiastically engaged in musical self-education’ was contrasted at the time with the view that classroom music was becoming increasingly out-dated and irrelevant – a charge that subsequent generations have also been called to answer.