It might be presumed that a journal which contains the words music education in its title, might have a coherent view as to what its main topic of interest ought to be! But as we have often said in these pages, BJME is a ‘broad church’, and all sorts of interpretations of the terminology are welcomed. But sometimes, especially for students embarking on academic study of the domain, definitions can be helpful. With this in mind, let us think about what the terminology might mean nowadays.

This paper explores teachers’ and students’ perceptions of one-to-one pedagogy, in the context of tertiary vocal and instrumental tuition. Teachers and students at one Australian conservatoire participated in interviews and focus groups that explored their experiences and perceptions on the nature, value, effectiveness and challenges of one-to-one learning and teaching. Four key themes emerged: customising teaching to the learner, the teacher–student relationship, negotiating issues of student dependency versus self-sufficiency, and situating one-to-one in a broader institutional context. Aside from an undisputed view that one-to-one is essential to students’ learning and development, findings indicate diverse perceptions, including discrepancies between intentions of teachers and their pedagogical practice, and between teacher practice and student expectations. By drawing on voices ‘from the inside’ to characterise one-to-one practice, the study contributes to evidence-based research about learning and teaching in the conservatoire environment.

Instrumental teachers in higher music education in Norway and elsewhere traditionally organise their teaching as individual lessons with one teacher and one student. This paper takes a closer look at how a horn teacher at the Norwegian Academy of Music has organised her weekly teaching in individual, small group and master class lessons with all her students. The project being described in the paper has since been extended to other instruments, but this paper concentrates on the horn model. The main focus is on small group lessons where the students themselves play and comment on fellow students’ performances. The evidence suggests that a combination of teaching in individual, small group and master class lessons is the best way of educating students as responsible, reflective and professional musicians.

This study analyses 10 Swedish music teachers’ descriptions of how a new music syllabus and a new credit scale have influenced their practice. In the new curriculum, grading is introduced in year 6 and not, as previously, in year 8. We have therefore focused on the effects of this change on school years 5–7. The new syllabus is much more precise and explicit than the earlier one, and it is reported to have strongly affected both teachers’ and pupils’ work in the classroom. Teachers are facing a number of dilemmas when trying to combine the demands of the syllabus with their conceptions of quality in music education.

The purpose of this study was to validate a measure of creative identity with a population of pre-service teachers in the USA, to further validate the measure with a Finnish population, and to compare both populations regarding their perceptions of themselves as creative musicians. The researcher developed a tool, the Creative Identity Measure (CIM), based on the work of Isbell (2007) to examine this area. The specific research questions were as follows: 1. What factors can explain creative identity in music? 2. What is the internal consistency within the factors that explain creative identity in music? 3. Do differences exist between the two populations with regard to each sub-scale? Results of factor analysis reveal that the CIM can be meaningfully divided into four sub-scales with a US population (n = 159) and a combined US and Finland population (n = 277). Significant differences were discovered for sub-scales one (Creative Music Making Self-Efficacy), two (Value of Creative Musicianship Areas), and four (Value of Popular-Music Making/Listening in the Classroom), suggesting that the Finnish pre-service music teachers possess a stronger creative identity than their contemporaries from the USA. Significant differences were not found for sub-scale three (Willingness to Allow for Creativity in the Classroom), suggesting that both populations of pre-service music teachers are equally willing to allow time for creativity.

The binary opposition between ‘own music’ and ‘other's music’ is the ‘result of deep conditioning’ (Drummond, 2010, p. 118) and is almost impossible to overcome.

By exploring the underlying constructs that influence students’ and teachers’ perceptions of minority cultures and their musics, this paper explores the notion of ‘the other’ in Australian music education. In particular, how the many factors which play a role in cultural identity serve to both promote and prevent musical understanding and appreciation. An examination of Australian multicultural policy and music curriculum documents in the state of Queensland provides a foundation for the discussion of data obtained from interviews with teachers from state and private primary schools in the capital Brisbane. The results reveal that while music educators are generally inquisitive about incorporating musics of ‘other’ cultures into their lessons, they are less comfortable with crossing cultural boundaries, and do not wish to threaten the position of Australia's own musical culture – ultimately highlighting a disconnect between policy, rhetoric and practice in the area of culturally diverse music education in classrooms today.

This article reports analysis of interviews with 85 boys from England, Greece, Ireland and Spain about the voice change, school singing and choral music instruction. Consistent, former and self-described non-singers were included. Data suggest consistency with much of the existing narrative literature about the experience of voice change. Unique topics included a sense of identity loss during voice change. Issues related to gender and sexuality-based bullying were explored. Boys offered numerous recommendations for teachers, including that teachers focus on vocal technique specific to male changing voices. Boys’ comments suggested a pattern of identity development consistent with the Possible Selves construct. This suggests that teachers can support adolescent male singers by addressing specific issues at specific points in a boy's process of voice change and identity development.