We have become used over the years to a growing literature addressing the question ‘What's wrong with school music?’ Recently there has been a well-publicised addition to the debate in the form of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's Royal Philharmonic Society lecture, given on 24 April, 2005, and entitled ‘Will serious music become extinct?’

The cultural contexts of home, school and community all have important parts to play in the music education of children, but at present in Australia, these three entities are insufficiently connected on a number of fronts, not the least being an understanding about the purpose(s) of young people's engagement with music. This paper puts forward two specific proposals for action aimed to help build linkages among the three cultural contexts and ensure young people's on-going engagement with music. These proposals, which call on the education sector to assume leadership for action, have implications for policy makers, school personnel, as well as parents, individual artists and community arts organisations.

This study is based on interviews carried out with 13 adult learners of traditional fiddle playing. The average age of the learners was 56 and they had been learning to play for between 2 and 20 years. All of the interviewees had taken music at school but none of them had been stimulated to participate further in any significant sense. The aspiration to learn to play the fiddle had various sources. Learning usually took place through traditional workshops and through the medium of the tune rather than through scales and exercises. Only one of the participants took regular conventional individualised lessons. They tended to take a pragmatic stance with regard to technique, looking for technical advice when they came up against barriers to progress. The music they played was within an aural culture and most of them learned by ear although they tended to regard notation as a useful supplement. All of them played in some sort of social context and all of them described an immense sense of pleasure and achievement from their playing. It is suggested that this kind of informal learning may have implications for learning to play instruments at school.

This article discusses music service teachers' notions of pedagogical competence and occupational prospects as they approach mid-career. Respondents were drawn from a comprehensive life history study of 28 Local Education Authority employees. Of this larger cohort, 20 individuals contributed to findings discussed here. Data were collected and analysed between October 2002 and March 2004. Findings suggest a critical phase between 36 and 42 years of age. The episode entails reaching a professional apex, plateau or crisis in light of high pedagogical efficacy and career limitations. It culminates in a transformation of self-identity. Owing to respondents' unease about this period, the career structure of music service teachers is questioned.

This study addresses the baseline assessment of pupil composing competencies at age 11+. It asks whether it might be possible for these to be evaluated by the use of a whole-class listening task. A rationale for this proposal is discussed. Results from a pilot study which administered an original audiated puzzle-task to a cohort of pupils, followed by a related composing assignment, are presented, analysed and discussed. This methodology is shown to reveal information about pupil composing competencies.

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in schools is now commonplace and, for many, an unquestionable part of everyday teaching and learning. But detailed studies of the use of ICT in classroom-based music education are rare. This article explores how pupils aged between 11 and 16 used ICT to create and perform music in new ways. Working as a teacher-researcher, the author used the methodologies of action research and case study to investigate how pupils engage with and organise sounds with ICT.