In her contribution to our Special Issue in 2003, Estelle Jorgensen called for ongoing conversations between university lecturers and school teachers, to avoid the danger of music educators, historians and theorists being ‘like ships sailing past each other in the night’. We believe that one of the functions of BJME is to develop such collegial relationships and thus help to establish a strong music education community at all levels, both nationally and internationally. Certainly this present issue reflects a range of contexts from nursery schools to universities, with papers from researchers in Australia, England, France, Italy and Scotland.

This article derives from a research project investigating the singing behaviour of a group of Australian boys in their first year of school. The project showed that the genesis of the ‘missing male’ trend in singing at school may be occurring in early childhood. The impact of hegemonic masculinity in early childhood is explored here by examining the intersection between this group of boys' perceptions of masculinity and their singing behaviours. Peer modelling was found to be an effective motivational ‘tool’ for improving singing behaviour and illustrates the importance of finding strategies to support boys' success in singing long before adolescence.

The relationship between new technology and learning is gaining increasing relevance in the field of music education (Webster, 2002; Folkestad et al., 1998). However, only a few studies have considered the nature of the interaction between children and musical machines. This article describes an observation study of children aged 3–5 years confronting a particular interactive musical system, the Continuator, which is able to produce music in the same style as a human playing the keyboard (Pachet, 2003). The analysis of two case studies suggests that the Continuator is able to develop interesting child/machine interactions and creative musical processes in young children. It was possible to observe a ‘life cycle’ of interaction, as well as micro-processes similar to those observed in child/adult interactions (Stern, 1985; Imberty, 2002). The ability of the system to attract and hold the attention of children has been interpreted through Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) ‘flow theory’.

This study investigated modes of communication adopted by six student jazz musicians during rehearsal and performance. Six one-hour rehearsal sessions and a performance were observed and videotaped for analysis. Results revealed six modes of communication that formed two main categories, verbal and non-verbal, each containing three distinct modes of communication: instruction, cooperation and collaboration. Non-verbal collaborative mode displayed empathetic attunement, which is a vehicle for empathetic creativity. Empathetic creativity is a theoretical concept proposed by the author based on the concept of empathetic intelligence (Arnold, 2003, 2004). Practical applications of empathetic creativity are discussed with reference to music education, focusing on evaluation of individual contribution to group creative performances.

While most of the students who graduate each year from the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London build performance-based portfolio careers that include some teaching, very few of them enter secondary school class music teaching. This article describes how young musicians' concerns about the career of secondary class music teacher develop as they move from sixth former to first year RCM undergraduate to third year undergraduate, and proposes some ways in which these concerns may be addressed. RCM students often agree strongly with statements consistent with a positive attitude to teaching, such as feeling a sense of achievement when pupils learn, and considering that teaching is about helping pupils realise their musical potential. However, they also tend to think that secondary class music teaching is not ‘doing music’. Successful secondary music teachers may take a different view, and the effect on RCM students of working with such teachers is reported descriptively.

Popular Music Studies (PMS) is now taught in over 20 higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and numerous others across the world. This article outlines the constituent parts of PMS in the UK and questions its status as a discipline in its own right. It concludes by arguing that, having established itself, PMS will need to deal with two key pressures in modern academic life – those of conducting research and widening participation. In the former instance, PMS might have to be pragmatic, in the latter lies potential for radicalism.