In this issue, we witness different ways in which to illuminate the changing relationship between music education research and practice and how that relationship is understood. In studies drawn from as far as afield as Belgium, USA, Canada, and including the UK, authors locate current debates about practice within a range of theoretical frames of reference (including Foucalt, Marx, Piaget, Vygotsky) and relate their work to a range of contested areas. The articles move between self-reflection (in rehearsal contexts) to teacher reflection (on teaching composing and movement) to reflective research techniques which look at how children make sense of their musical listening through figurative representations or musical mapping tasks. We are also invited to consider afresh Orff and Kodaly from critical theorist standpoints.

An important part of the process that enables us to improve ourselves as musicians in group music making involves developing an awareness of our personal attributes as they are displayed in the rehearsal. In order to help students become more aware of themselves and of their band members’ personal attributes as they rehearse, a peer assessment system was established. The project was piloted and developed at Barnsley College and University of Huddersfield (Barnsley Campus) with first year undergraduates on the BA Popular Music course across 2000–2008. Individuals agreed to allow their bands to identify particular personal attributes for each member that, they felt, could be improved and used as peer assessment criteria. In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 students over a 4-year period and the following areas emerged as a focus of these: self-knowledge, feedback, confidence, honesty. The study has implications for devising peer assessment systems that are responsive to individual learners and their unique needs. It also suggests the desirability of providing peer assessment activities that might foster trust among participants and, if so, supports the provision of exceptional feedback. Now in its ninth year, this system has been refined into a model.

This article reports a case study of an experienced teacher of composing working with secondary school students in a large urban centre in Ontario, Canada. Results suggest authentic assignments connect student composing to the ‘real world’, and so have meaning and life beyond the music classroom. Teachers can facilitate the development of theoretical music knowledge by supporting and enhancing the experiential learning that students accomplish on their own, through composing. Offering suggestions for change to compositions-in-progress, and cultivating a classroom ethos where students exchange this service amongst themselves, serves to enhance composing potential. By helping students infuse their work with personal knowledge, experiences, and interests, teachers can increase students’ meaningful involvement in classroom composing.

Understanding physical movement is an integral part of learning to make music. This article presents the action research that the author has pursued while teaching movement to musicians. The narrative provides a theoretical underpinning for the teaching practices discussed. It provides examples of musicians’ movement with analyses of the anatomical structures involved, and it discusses the influences of bodily perception on observing and learning movement (e.g. the body map). The implications of the study are to provide a somatic foundation for music education and thereby to enhance the understanding of music as embodied experience.

What began as an exploration of student learning while listening to music evolved into a study of learner agency in a music classroom. Whilst students used and developed strategies that enabled their own success while listening to, performing and creating music, it became evident that they were proactively seeking musical understanding and growth in their own musicianship. Their intense desire to share their musical ideas and to be valued for their role in the music learning community within the classroom illustrated the learners’ agency for affirmation and valuing of self and others. These qualities are closely connected to the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) and perezhivanie (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2000, 2002; Mahn, 2003). As educators may seek to enable students to grow in conceptual understanding (competence) and self-efficacy (confidence), a reflexive relationship occurs as students, too, seek to grow in musicianship (competence) and to be valued for who they are (confidence).

This article tries to answer two related questions: (i) what do children hear while listening to and making sense of music? and (ii) what kind of representational tools can be used to assess this sense-making? To answer these questions, we set up two empirical studies in which 89 children – 8–9-year-olds and 11–12-year-olds (first study) – and 331 children – 8–10-year-olds and 11–13-year-olds, with and without extra music training (second study) – were exposed to a music listening task. The aim of the studies was to get an overall picture of the variety of children's musical representations by means of their graphical notations, and to investigate the impact of age, formal musical training and the characteristics of the musical fragment on these notations. A major finding of the first study was the emergence of two main categories of notations, namely ‘global’ and ‘differentiated’ notations, with a very strong dominance of global over differentiated ones and a negligible impact of subject and task variables. The second study, in which we presented researcher-generated instead of existing musical fragments, yielded a larger number of differentiated notations, and a considerable impact of age and formal musical education as well as of the musical characteristics on these notations. Both studies were ascertaining studies with the aim to describe and analyse the development of children's graphical notations under given instructional conditions. To account for some of the limitations of these studies, some additional design-based research is suggested. Extensive findings/exemplars of both studies can be found on the Cambridge University Press website.

Using Marx as a lens through which to interrogate music methodology, in particular those espoused by Orff and Kodaly, this article suggests that rather than the free play and creativity Orff and Kodaly intended, the implementation of these methods in a strict and unmindful manner, often alienates both teacher and student from musicking. Thus these methods have become more real than the music itself and as such, music making within them is abstracted from the use-value of musicking and consequently exchanged as a commodity. The article explains how methods become a form of production that serves to reproduce systems of domination as well as a very particular form of cultural capital. This lens also allows us to realise that, as we move farther away from the process of inquiry originally embedded in the conception and construction of these musical engagements, the educative process becomes more and more myopic. This, in turn, determines, delineates and narrows possibilities of and for meaningful learning.