Back in 2013, in the BJME editorial for issue 30(2), we considered the place of knowledge in the curriculum (Fautley & Murphy, 2013). Things have not stood still since that date, certainly in England, and other parts of the world too. What we have now is a situation where the idea of knowledge as assuming supremacy over skills is on the increase. For those of us concerned with music education, many aspects of this increasingly fractious debate are to be viewed with concern. Allied to this, we have neoliberal-leaning governments in many parts of the world, Britain included, who seem to find it difficult to understand the important role that music education has – or should have – in the education of our children and young people. Indeed, in the UK, the education secretary is on record as making this observation:

Music education is a worldwide activity. Gatherings and conferences where music educators from around the globe meet together are always interesting arenas, with as many discussions going on in the various watering holes near the conference venue as take place in the sessions themselves. But what we actually mean by music education often becomes an absorbing topic in its own right, and one we have discussed previously in these editorials (inter alia Fautley & Murphy, 2015). Differences are not just about matters of delivery, however; they also reflect often complicated local contexts and histories. They are at once philosophical, concerned with policy, concerned with curriculum, with progression, with assessment, with delivery, with modality, with jurisdictional requirements, and with regulations. All this makes for an interesting subject base.

We have discussed in these editorials before the broad range of interests that music education encompasses (Fautley and Murphy, 2015a). The range that we described therein is a strength of our discipline. We are, however, now living in troubling times, and the global downturn in the economy is having effects in all sorts of ways on many aspects of our lives, both personal and professional. Music education is not immune from these changes. We are living through a time of austerity, and in many jurisdictions, the refrain has been ‘we're all in this together’ as a way of explaining away government decisions or unpopular economic strategies. But are we? It is in times of austerity that we often feel that we need to make the case for music education even louder than we have done before. Yet herein lies one of our problems. Many music educators feel in these times of austerity that music education is under threat, and that the proper course of action under such circumstances to take is to increase activities related to advocacy. This is problematic in a number of ways, as we shall now discuss.

This study examines how interactions between policy, institutions and individuals that reinforce inclusive music education can be framed from an activist standpoint. Resonaari, one among many music schools in Finland, provides an illustrative case of rather uncommonly inclusive practices among students with special educational needs. By exploring this case, contextualised within the Finnish music school system, we identify the challenges and opportunities for activism on micro, meso and macro levels. On the basis of our analysis, we argue that Resonaari's teachers are proactive because, within an inclusive teaching and learning structure, they act in anticipation of future needs and policy changes, engaging in what we call teacher activism. We claim that this type of activism is key for inclusive practices and policy disposition in music education.

This research aimed to provide an account of the impact of the Musical Futures approach on the wider school community in Musical Futures ‘Champion Schools’. Questionnaires were completed by 344 non-music teachers. Interviews were undertaken with members of senior management teams. The majority of staff indicated that Musical Futures had had a positive impact on student motivation, well-being, self-esteem and confidence and had encouraged students to work together. There was less agreement that it had improved student concentration, organisation and students’ attitudes towards learning and academic progression. The interviews provided deeper insights into the issues relating to implementation.

There is increasing international evidence that playing a musical instrument has a positive impact on attainment at school but little research has been undertaken in the UK. This study addresses this drawing on data on attainment at age 11 and 16 relating to 608 students, 115 of whom played a musical instrument. The findings showed that the young people playing an instrument showed greater progress and better academic outcomes than those not playing with the greatest impact for those playing the longest. The findings are considered in relation to the possible reasons for this, and the implications for education.

The publisher regrets to announce that the institutional affiliation listed for Patrick Schmidt in the above article (Laes & Schmidt 2016) was incorrect. The proper address is given below.

The publisher apologises for this error.

The University of Western Ontario, Talbot College, 1151 Richmond St., Office 119, London, ON N6A 3K7 Canada. Patrick.schmidt@uwo.ca

This study compared primary student preference for competitive and non-competitive singing games. Students in three intact classes of second graders (n = 65) and three classes of fourth graders (n = 67) at one school in the USA served as subjects. After playing a pair of games, one competitive and one non-competitive, over the course of five classes, students anonymously named their preferred game and reported reasons for their preference. Results indicated that the students significantly preferred the competitive game, regardless of grade level or gender. The most common reason students provided for their preference was the higher level of kinaesthetic activity.

The study reported in this article investigates students’ experiences (n=41) of their primary school songcrafting, examining the potential to support creative agency within school music education programmes. Songcrafting refers to a collaborative composing practice in which everyone is considered to be a capable creator of melodies and lyrics, and where negotiation, collaboration, and openness to the situation are essential. Through semi-structured individual interviews with students who had experienced songcrafting in the past, analysed with qualitative methods, it was found that the students' narration of songcrafting included meanings related to general agency, creative agency, musical participation within the classroom community, and documented and shared collaborative musical products, or ‘oeuvres’.

The results of this study illustrate the various often unforeseeable meanings produced through participation in collaborative musical activities. Furthermore, they highlight the potential to enrich meaningful teaching practices and pedagogy through the examination of students' experiences, and exploring the potentials in narrating one's musical stories. These findings suggest that music education practices could benefit from the inclusion of a broader range of opportunities for the students to create their own music, and the sensitive facilitation of collaborative music creation processes.

This article examines the sociocultural learning of popular and jazz music in communities of practice as part of secondary vocational music education in a Finnish conservatory. The research is based on performance workshops which were implemented as a joint effort between professional musicians and music students. These workshops are suggested as a method of utilising communities of practice. Research outcomes show that the workshops include opportunities for learning and developing musicianship on many levels. The potential of sociocultural learning should be recognised in music schools and teachers should develop learning environments which utilise it. Learning from playing experiences and from the evaluation of learning outcomes are largely the students' responsibility who require autonomy, initiative, the ability to solve problems and collaborate, and a readiness to reflect on experiences.

This paper critiques a traditional approach to music theory pedagogy. It argues that music theory courses should draw on pedagogies that reflect the diversity and pluralism inherent in 21st century music making. It presents the findings of an action research project investigating the experiences of undergraduate students undertaking an innovative contemporary art music theory course. It describes the students’ struggle in coming to terms with a course that integrated composing, performing, listening and analysing coupled with what for many was their first exposure to the diversity of contemporary art music. The paper concludes with suggesting that the approach could be adopted more widely throughout music programs.

The music industry in the 21st century uses digital technology in a wide range of applications including in performance, in composition and in recording and publishing. In this article, I consider how the impact of digital technologies may be affecting pedagogical processes adopted by secondary music teachers, particularly in the area of composition. This paper examines qualitative data gathered from teachers in four schools participating in a larger research project. Data collected in this paper came from a number of semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate that although the majority of teachers involved in this research remain fundamentally conservative in their approaches to teaching composition, focusing on more procedural rather than creative activities, some music teachers do make radical changes to their pedagogy in contexts where this is important to their students’ engagement and supported by their school.

Music education in formal settings has the last decades been characterised by informal methods borrowed from outside school. In this study we analyse situations in Swedish secondary school where pupils’ experience of music outside school becomes visible in music class. Pedagogical challenges in these situations are identified that concern how to (i) coordinate perspectives on music in classrooms when arenas for learning music is increasing in number, (ii) make space for new musical movements in school, and (iii) consider the situated nature of learning that complicates the transfer from musical experiences outside to inside school.

Theoretical approaches to learning in practice-based jazz improvisation contexts include situated learning and ecological perspectives. This article focuses on how interest-driven, self-sustaining jazz learning activities can be matched against the concepts of stolen knowledge (Brown & Duguid, 1996) and landscape of learning (Bjerstedt, 2014). Based on an extensive interview study with Swedish professional jazz musicians, it argues that the multidirectedness involved in jazz improvisational practice calls for a rich learning ecology framework including several didactic loci.

The catalyst for this paper is the ongoing debate concerning formal and informal approaches to pedagogy within the music education literature. I utilise a chapter by Philpott (2010) as a means to continue discussion about the apparent dialectic between formal and informal approaches to music learning and the case Philpott raises for radical change in ‘three moments’ of music education history. In engaging with the concerns in Philpott's chapter I also seek to bring to a wider audience the ideas developed by a group of sociologists of education who draw on the work of Basil Bernstein (2000) and critical realism (Moore, 2013) to argue for a realist theory of knowledge. I utilise these social realist ideas as a means to engage with the theme of access to what Michael F.D. Young has recently termed ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2012). As Bernstein (2000) suggests we must have an understanding of the recontextualising principles that come into play whenever the classification of knowledge undergoes change, as ideologies shift and change. I argue for a balance between powerful forms of pedagogy and powerful forms of knowledge based on an awareness of the essentially differentiated nature of knowledge.

Recent literature suggests that traditional approaches in folk music education are not necessarily compatible with the pedagogical conventions of formal music education. Whilst several recent studies have tended to define these non-classical-music learning contexts as ‘informal’, the practice of folk music that was recently introduced into Chinese Higher Music Education appears to be much more complex and fluid, at least in its real world setting. This case study presents a detailed example of the teaching and learning of folk singing in contemporary society in Western China. In this particular context, both ‘informal learning’ and ‘formal’ music practices were observed and compared, based on research data collected from four music lessons and subsequent interviews with the participants. Drawing upon the analytical evidence, the research discusses a possible pedagogical model where two apparently contrasting approaches to learning (i.e. a conservatory model vs. traditional folk learning) could coalesce to ensure more effective learning outcomes of traditional folk music in higher education contexts.

The objective of this study is to address the important questions raised in literature on the intersections between formal and informal learning. Specifically, this will be discussed within the concept of ‘productive dissonance’ and the pedagogical tensions that arise in the effort of experienced teachers to transition from the formal to the informal. This case study discusses the issues that ensue when strict demarcations between formal and informal are perceived, and demonstrates that the former is vital to the facilitation of the latter. The blurring of formal and informal pedagogical approaches has shown that the concept of ‘critical musicality’ becomes more apparent in student learning and that engagement increases especially among at-risk students.

Recent efforts to increase workplace readiness in university students have largely centred on undergraduates, with comparatively few strategies or studies focusing on higher research degree candidates. In the discipline of music, a wide diversity of possible career paths combined with rapidly changing career opportunities makes workplace readiness a moving target. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from semi-structured interviews, dialogue forums, an online survey and pre-existing literature, this paper explores perceptions of higher degree research (HDR) music students about their work readiness, and critically examines these perceptions against graduate capabilities frameworks. It recommends ways to better prepare HDR music students for life beyond their studies, advocating in particular a more collaborative model of research education than is currently the norm. The findings may help improve the student experience and graduate outcomes among HDR students, both in music and more broadly.

This qualitative research examines the influence of learning Javanese gamelan on aspects of musicianship, attitudes and approaches relating to the learning and performance of Western instruments experienced by a sample of UK university music students. In addition to benefits to musicianship, students delineated positive developments in attitudes and approaches to learning and performance. While bi-musicality may be the prerogative of only those who can maintain expertise concurrently in more than one musical style, the concept of dialogical-musicality is proposed as a construct emphasising productive inter-relationships arising from practical engagement with different musical styles at any level.

The benefits of lifelong musical participation have been repeatedly demonstrated through research and anecdote, and yet the challenging question of why more people are not engaged in these activities is rarely addressed. This project used interviews with eighteen current and past amateur ensemble members to explore themes of social acceptance, musical satisfaction and confidence, and to consider how personal determination and circumstances affect adults’ continuation of musical activities in the face of competing demands. By understanding how musical participation is viewed by those who no longer engage, or who have had long gaps in their engagement, the research aimed to reconsider the challenges of sustaining participation, and the perceived long-term effects of musical learning and experience. Conclusions are drawn about the role of music education in laying foundations for lifelong participation, and the benefits of providing all children with experience and understanding of making music.