This is a rather different Editorial. It marks the end of five years of editorship. So, a few valedictory remarks will begin and end this piece. When we first took over co-editing the British Journal of Music Education in 2007–2008, from the distinguished editorship of Stephanie Pitts and Gordon Cox, we introduced ourselves alongside contributing authors in the editorial for Volume 25 with articles in a series tackling the contribution of music education research and theory to practice and so signalled our intention as an editorial team to strengthen further the remit of the journal. In this Volume 29, four years on, we feel very pleased to report a significant increase in submissions to the British Journal of Music Education and a welcome further internationalisation of contributions. We now web publish and feature teacher-researcher and school-based research in each issue. The British Journal of Music Education is now featured in the Thomson Reuters Arts & Humanities Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index. We both feel privileged to have been given the opportunity of working for this highly regarded journal whose reputation has continued to grow and strive to strengthen connections between research and practice, and offer informed and passionate engagement with music education research for empowerment and advocacy.

Amartya Sen's capability approach offers a new perspective for educators throughout the curriculum. This new insight has the potential to promote a music education that is inherently tailored to the individual. In essence it asks the question: What is music education going to offer to this student? This article represents an initial enquiry into the capability approach when applied to music education. With a theoretical understanding of the capability approach its application can provide insight into pupil voice, teacher voice, growing student autonomy and differentiation.

Transition from primary to secondary school in the UK has received considerable attention in educational research over the last few decades, although specific focus on transition in music has only been relatively recently addressed. Research by Mills (1996) and Marshall and Hargreaves (2007, 2008) draws upon both general and music-specific studies to provide insights into the educational value of common transition practices for pupils and teachers. While evidence from the recent surveys indicate significant progress in promoting successful transitions compared with earlier research, there continue to be areas requiring further enquiry, particularly that of curriculum progression and pupil achievement in music.

Since the 1960s, there has been a growing awareness of the need for cultural plurality in Europe (Drummond et al., 2005). Globalisation and technological development stimulate rapid exchanges between today's diverse and hybrid societies.

This paper discusses recent developments in the senior music curriculum in New Zealand. I suggest that school music is in transition from its clearly defined origins to its ‘regionalisation’ by new content and knowledge. The concepts of knowledge differentiation and verticality are considered in relation to the subject's now diverse range of curriculum segments, and I argue that the varied progression requirements of these segments combined with an ‘emptying out’ of significant aspects of knowledge within an outcomes-based curriculum presents significant challenges for curriculum construction and pedagogy. Also vying for space within the curriculum are elements of informal music learning. These challenges need to be carefully considered in light of recent social realist critiques which highlight the significance of the relationship between knowledge structures, curriculum, pedagogy and student access to powerful knowledge.

In many countries it has become commonplace for students at school to undertake their own composing in the classroom. At the same time students often develop their own creative musical interests outside school hours. This paper looks at how teachers might re-evaluate students’ self-initiated compositional activity. By utilising Martin Heidegger's writing, this paper seeks to contextualise a philosophical position in relation to the musical work and to question how we as educators envision the student's music, and ultimately how we come to understand and evaluate a student's work. With reference to the field of music theory and music education the intention of this paper is to open a discussion examining how we might view music as an art object seen within its own context. With reference to a case study of a student working in an online environment parallels are drawn between Heidegger's depiction of an art object as a ‘thing’ located and valued in its own context, as opposed to music seen as an object that is de-contextualised from an audience or its place of making.

This paper reports on the compositional processes of an Italian rock band whilst composing a new piece over seven group composing sessions. The band members were videotaped during the group composing sessions in their rehearsal room. A qualitative analysis of the video recordings was performed using the Constant Comparative Method. In the analysis, 59 different behaviours emerged, which were subsequently reduced into 13 categories. When analysing the categories, five themes (activities) were defined. The five activities were: context definition, experimenting, constructing, playing and evaluating. The activities were employed as a coding technique for time coding the videotaped data, which revealed the time percentages spent by the musicians in each of the group composing activities. Results from the joint qualitative and percentage time analysis indicate the importance of the strategies adopted by the musicians during group composing. The results are discussed by taking into account the impact of the processes employed in a group composing setting as well as suggestions for future research. The implication for music education involves the possibility to apply approaches based on the development of cognitive processes rather than the product of collaborative composing activities.

This article explores the relationship between how popular musicians learn and how they subsequently teach, and considers the extent to which they incorporate their own informal learning practices into their work as teachers. A group of eight UK teachers was recruited and data collection, involving interviews and lesson observations, took place between January 2006 and December 2008. Findings are reported here in relation to two teachers in particular, whose learning histories were similar but whose teaching practices were very different. The ways they valued the results of their informal learning practices seemed to determine the extent to which they sought to replicate them in their teaching. There is evidence for the significance of learning histories, and implications for training and professional development.

Guided by three theoretical frameworks in vocational psychology, (i) theory of work adjustment, (ii) two factor theory, and (iii) value discrepancy theory, the purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish pre-service music teachers' values and the role of fit between person and environment in understanding vocational satisfaction. Participants were 85 students enrolled in the department of music education in a Turkish university. The Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ) was used to examine the participants’ values in six dimensions: achievement, comfort, status, altruism, safety and autonomy. Results revealed that the pre-service teachers value achievement most followed by autonomy, which suggests that they would like to have a sense of accomplishment and control in their future job. The degree to which their values fit their predictions about future work environment was found to be highly correlated with vocational satisfaction. These results provided evidence that the vocational theories used in the current study offers a helpful and different perspective to understand the pre-service teachers' satisfaction with becoming a music teacher in the future. We believe that researchers in the field of music education may use these theories and MIQ to examine the role of values in pre-service and in-service music teachers' job satisfaction.

This paper explores patterns of interpersonal behaviour amongst teachers and pupils during one-to-one instrumental lessons. It was hypothesised that these patterns might differ in systematic ways, according to an existing model of six interaction ‘types’ developed within a systems theory perspective and based on measures of interpersonal control and responsiveness. Eleven violin teachers and their pupils aged 10–16 were observed. Digital recordings of 23 one-to-one lessons were analysed using the overarching categories of teacher talk, teacher questioning, scaffolding, pupil talk and pupil playing. Behaviour style was found to correspond with the model of interpersonal interaction in instrumental teaching. Highly directive teachers were found to engage most often in scaffolding, while the most responsive teachers allowed space for the pupil voice to be heard and provided more feedback that was attributed to specific strategies or effort. These findings suggest that teachers and pupils may become entrenched in fixed patterns of interaction behaviour that potentially place constraints on teaching and learning outcomes. The implications for practice lie in teachers’ awareness and reflections on their own interaction behaviours. Being cognisant of fixed patterns of behaviour, teachers may choose to re-frame their style of interaction, thus effecting positive changes in teaching and learning.

This article considers some paradigms of educational research, and their relation to teachers’ action research in their classrooms or studios. The positivist/scientific paradigm and the interpretive/naturalist paradigm are examined, with reference to two cases of music teachers’ action research studies. These studies are found to be flawed because the paradigms underpinning them are inappropriate for classroom-based action research. The critical theory approach is also discussed but only briefly, because no instances of music teachers’ action research in this paradigm have been found. The participatory paradigm is explained, with reference to a third case of music teachers’ action research. The article argues that, for teachers’ classroom-based action research, this paradigm is more appropriate than others. It suggests that music teachers’ action research in the participatory paradigm: (a) includes self-study, (b) involves students, (c) considers the influence of context, (d) involves more than one turn of the action research cycle, and (e) engages with, and contributes to, the development of theory.