This issue – the first of our 21st anniversary year – has two clear themes: the teaching and learning of world musics, and the assessment of musical performance and understanding. Within these themes, the papers present accounts of research at all levels of music teaching, from nursery to higher education, and range across diverse geographical contexts: Australia, China, the UK, the USA and Zambia. There is evidence here of a wide-ranging research community in music education, which would have been hard to imagine when the British Journal of Music Education was founded in 1984.

The general aim of this article is to explore South Asian music and culture in an educational context. The fieldwork on which it is based mainly consists of semi-structured interviews with pupils of South Asian origin (aged 11–18) who attend a secondary school in Ilford, Essex. The learning methods of South Asian musicians are considered and a detailed investigation of the socio-cultural environment in which these learning methods are related is undertaken, focusing on the role that music plays in the formation of concepts of culture, ‘identity’ and ‘place’. The majority of the musical material is drawn from the South Asian genre of bhangra, concentrating on the improvisations and rhythms of dhol players.

This paper focuses on the establishment of a curriculum model, as part of a larger study concerning the role of Chinese music in secondary school education in Hong Kong. The study employed a two-pronged approach, consisting of (i) a questionnaire survey conducted among 209 secondary school music teachers, and (ii) interviews with 26 professionals from the cultural sector of Hong Kong. From the results a curriculum model was established which underpins a comprehensive approach to the teaching of Chinese music. This model could further be adapted to address general problems in the selection of curriculum content and teaching approaches.

This article describes inshimi – a musical storytelling practice of the Bemba people in Zambia. It gives a general perspective on the whole practice and some details on the ‘MUSIC’ as contained in the practice. The article further encourages the idea that inshimi represents a nucleus of the ‘MUSIC’ practices of the Bemba people and therefore plays a vital role in the transmission of musical arts practices. Embedded in musical storytelling are educational principles that could and should guide musical arts education in Africa and the rest of the world.

This paper reports the development of a discrimination task to investigate the sensitivity of children aged 3–8 years to a range of timbral stimuli. The paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of other research exploring timbral perception and explains how the findings from these studies shaped the methodological approach of this study. Specifically, it describes how the qualitative data collected gave rise to deeper insights concerning the quantitative data, so questioning the rationale of continuing research in this area through a single quantitative methodological approach.

Music education inherently relies on a process of providing and receiving critical feedback. Students who are very sensitive to criticism, however, may present a unique challenge for the music educator. This study investigated the ways in which sensitivity to criticism affects the educational experience of music students. Nineteen students were assessed for sensitivity to criticism, self-reported motivation, and perceived quality of performance early and late in the semester. High scores on the Sensitivity to Criticism Scale (Atlas, 1994) were associated with decreases in ratings of importance of the activity and mildly connected with decreases in enjoyment and confidence levels. Highly sensitive students were more hurt by their instructors’ criticisms, felt they improved less in response to criticism, and found it more difficult to communicate with the instructor following criticism. These results suggest that being sensitive to criticism can have an impact on music students’ motivation and performance – and that instructors should be particularly careful in considering the effects that critical feedback may have on highly sensitive students.

This article outlines the development and trial of peer assessment procedures for implementation within a music performance context in the Australian tertiary environment. An overview of the literature on peer assessment is presented, followed by reference to specific trials of peer assessment within a tertiary music student context. The paper then presents the rationale for and methodology applied in developing two forms of peer assessment of music performance, for trial across one academic year. Student evaluation data obtained via mid- and end-of-year questionnaires are analysed and discussed, as are implications for further research.

This paper discusses a project in which third-year undergraduate Performance majors were asked to assess their second-year peers. The impetus for launching the project came from some stirrings of discontent amongst a few students. Instead of finding the assessment of their peers a manageable task, most students found the breadth of musical focus, across a diverse range of musical styles on a wide range of instruments, daunting and difficult. Despite this, students and staff believed the task had proved valuable for learning about the assessment process itself and for understanding the performance process.