Technology has historically presented music educators with myriad challenges, and it is perhaps salutary to recollect that back in the 1920s and 1930s the development of the gramophone generated considerable misgivings amongst music teachers. As Colin Symes points out in his paper ‘A Sound Education’, many feared that recorded music would discourage individuals from reading books, and it was a commonly held view that the phonograph was counter-educational. With hindsight we know that this new technology affected music education profoundly, contributing to the rise of the music appreciation movement and the central place afforded to listening. It enabled music educators to broaden the tastes of the population, and eventually made accessible a range of music that had remained a closed book to Western ears.

This article argues that changes of gendered attitudes towards IT among students may be related to recent educational reforms focusing on incorporating computers into the classroom. Data are drawn from an interview survey with 430 students attending 26 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. The results reveal no significant differences between females and males in three aspects: (1) their belief in the effectiveness of using technological facilities; (2) their confidence in handling technology when learning about music; and (3) their motivation towards learning about music with the help of information technology (IT). Primary boys and girls in this study reported obtaining a higher degree of motivation for learning about music with the help of IT than secondary students of both sexes. The potential implications of these findings for educational policy in Hong Kong are to find out how to motivate students' musical learning with the help of IT, and to make technology relevant to the content of the music programmes of primary and secondary schools.

The advent of the gramophone transformed the cultural conditions of contemporary music, including the way it was taught. For a considerable period of time, musicians and music educators disparaged the gramophone. The members of the musical appreciation movement were more sympathetic and helped transform the gramophone's educational image during the 1920s and 1930s. They argued that the gramophone, contrary to its detractors, might stem the appeal of popular music. As is clear from the sentiments of those espousing the pedagogic uses of the gramophone – which are analysed in this paper – their advocacy went far beyond music and was part of a broader cultural agenda, which included arresting the moral dangers associated with popular music.

This article describes an innovative approach to analysing, describing and evaluating the careers of musicians, and applies it in the case of 37 ‘professors’, that is, instrumental teachers, working at a conservatoire in the UK. The professors emerge as flexible and committed musicians who enjoy teaching conservatoire students, and who nearly all feel that they benefit musically and personally from this work.

This paper examines how body movement within the frames of Dalcroze Eurhythmics can facilitate musical knowing. Merleau-Ponty's philosophical ideas seem to correspond with the specific empirical findings of Jaques-Dalcroze. Hence, our viewpoint is based on Merleau-Ponty's notions of ‘knowing the world through the body’ as well as of gesture, habit and reversibility. We argue, along with Merleau-Ponty, that the body is our primary mode of knowing. Furthermore, we suggest that body movement represents pre-reflective knowing and can be understood as physical metaphor in the process of musical understanding from the concrete doing/musicing to the abstract and (or) conceptual.

In this short article I present a case for developing a new theory of music education, arguing that advances in music technology have undermined some of the most basic conceptual frameworks we currently possess. I describe some problems that might make the development of a new theory difficult and suggest some ways in which they might be overcome. My hope is that this paper will inspire people to consider the development of such a theory.