This study uses observations and interviews to investigate how the leadership at three Swedish preschools in Sweden has impacted the didactic choices made. Two of these preschools use music as a tool for stimulating language and social development, while the third preschool serves as a comparison. The inspiration that the leadership has brought to each institution is of crucial importance to incorporating music and other activities into the everyday work. This influence has been both restrictive and supportive. Music is said to function as a teaching tool, while other functions remain in the background. This contradiction and its implications are discussed, and it is argued that further training should include developing the teachers’ musical-didactic awareness. Principals are most certainly role models at preschools and need to be aware of it.

Generalist educators in South Africa shy away from music in the subjects Life Skills (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art, Physical Education and Personal and Social Well-being) and Creative Arts (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art) and universities are not delivering generalist students for the subject demands. In-service educators, as well as subject advisors, often have had no music training. The twofold purpose of this study was to determine the extent of challenges experienced in the music component of Life Skills and Creative Arts in South Africa and how this can best be dealt with. In the current study, mixed methods research was conducted to ascertain the problems experienced with music tuition in Life Skills and Creative Arts classrooms. It was found that generalist educators have to teach music, whether they have the requisite skills or not. The subject has low status and is frequently used as a filler subject for teachers. Lack of music knowledge, scarce resources, limited support and ever-changing educators are some reasons for the absence of quality music tuition. Mentoring by competent subject advisors and senior educators and the re-alignment of school and university curricula will assist music in enjoying its rightful place in the school curriculum.

During the 1980s, the International Journal of Music Education (IJME) ran a series of articles under the general heading ‘Personalities in World Music Education’. Each article was written by an author who was well acquainted with the distinguished personality upon whom the editors, Jack Dobbs and Anthony Kemp, wished to focus. I was privileged to be asked to interview John Paynter whose influence upon musical education in the UK and in many other countries was profound. Among his many positions he was co-editor of the British Journal of Music Education (BJME) at that time. The article about him was published in the IJME number 12 (pp. 28–32) in 1988.

Attend a conference of music educational researchers and you will have entered a field of enquiry concerned to understand and explain the issues and problems identified by those who move within the field of enquiry. The inhabitants of this realm sometimes speak of young people, sometimes reveal the ways in which they have consulted them, probed their ways of seeing and allowed their voice to speak. In rare circumstances the researcher may have negotiated a relationship involving a shared interest enabling the young person to work alongside them as co-enquirer. However, in general, social enquiry has been slow to move from treating young people as objects of enquiry to co-enquirer. The researcher will be speaking from a position of power with the authority to make legitimate some knowledge and not other. It is the adult researcher who poses the questions and presents the problems and who works in response to data and findings that accrue from the efforts of other adult researchers. Beyond this the adult researcher engages in research activities with a particular view of childhood, with a construct of how children are and in what ways they can inform an adult world. While childhood is of course a contested concept, it is suggested that the notion of child as dependent remains the most enduring and durable.

In this paper, we provide a reflection upon the influence of the Swanwick–Tillman (ST) model (1986) from the perspectives of music research in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this paper we take stock of where music education in New Zealand currently sits in relation to the Swanwick Tillman theory of musical development. We examine the strengths and the weakness of the model 35 years on to ask what it might still offer music educators in a context where issues of culture and colonisation have taken centre stage. We also reflect upon the impact of a visit to New Zealand by Keith Swanwick in 1989. Despite the postmodern or colonial critiques we might make now, we consider if the model may still signify a holistic way of conceiving music development and might still have implications for curriculum design and curriculum making in the 21st century.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to existing literature about how activity theory might be used in music education research. It draws from the author's doctoral action research into the assessment of group composing for New Zealand's secondary school qualification, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). It outlines and explains how activity theory was used to examine three interacting activities: social jamming, group composing and achievement in the NCEA. Analysis revealed a relationship between students’ identities, their achievement in NCEA group composing, and socio-economic disparity.

COVID-19 presented many challenges while the shift to online learning also provided unexpected opportunities for music teachers. During the pandemic, two researchers who are teacher educators undertook a composing project with music teacher education students in Scotland and Australia in response to the theme: My Life in Isolation: A World Apart or Same Difference? Turino’s (2008) theory of participatory music making will be drawn upon to analyse this collaborative online music and video creation project. What participation means as a music-maker will be discussed. The paper argues for greater attention to the affordances of digital collaborative music technology tools to build the confidence of pre-service teachers to facilitate real-world composing projects to promote participation, collaboration and social interaction.

Teaching traditional art forms in schools and the community has proven an effective way of ensuring the transmission of traditional culture. But due to the lack of valid and normative assessment guidance, the assessments of Cantonese operatic singing are still developing, impairing the instructiveness in its teaching and learning and restraining the education and development of this traditional genre within contemporary society. Accordingly, to guide the design of a holistic assessment, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy was adopted to form a theoretical framework from which a criterion- and standard-based assessment framework with four domains has been proposed. Four teachers and 24 students of Cantonese opera institutions in Guangdong, China, were invited to pilot the assessment framework. Afterwards, semi-structured interviews were conducted from which two research questions were answered satisfactorily: 1) proposing a criteria- and standard-based assessment framework is necessary, for the traditional assessment practice is weak in guiding teaching and learning and 2) positive feedback supported the proposed assessment framework facilitates the teaching and learning of Cantonese operatic singing.

Amongst the most fascinating discoveries made in recent years was the identification of the Egyptian songstress Iti (2450 BC) as the first woman composer to have been mentioned by name in musical history. This paper examines the status of professional women musicians in Ancient Egypt, their role in society and their contribution to various aspects of life and death. Reviewing the range of styles, practices and variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles in which women took part as composers, performers and instructors, the author traces the development of a musical tradition which would appear to throw light upon some long standing prejudices, and to have important implications for music education in multi-cultural schools today.

This article is a summary of a report and survey commissioned by the London Arts Board (LAB) and Yamaha-Kemble (UK) in August 1994. The survey followed the progress of a year-long music education partnership between seven schools and three music organisations in the capital. The aim of the survey was to monitor pupils' learning outcomes in order to evaluate the effects of the musicians' and teachers' work on pupils' progress and to identify the core elements for effective collaboration between music organisations and schools. Of the seven partnerships, four had largely favourable outcomes. This article summarises the findings and conclusions which may be drawn from the project.

This article aims to capture how the Swanwick and Tillman (1986) spiral model of musical development influenced my work as an Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) music coordinator (advisory teacher). It discusses my professional position in a period of teaching prior to the implementation of the National Curriculum for Music, to illustrate dichotomous pedagogical approaches in a developing re-positioning of aesthetic knowledge in music education. Using the example of two Key Stage 2 (KS2) music projects, a brief reflection concludes how the model of musical development and an adapted pedagogic approach facilitated my work in supporting music teachers to embrace music teaching with confidence and to consider what meaningful musical activity for musical learning is and how this might be planned.

Recent research on practice-based doctorates in Australia has revealed an institutional preference for ‘theorised’ research approaches aimed at situating studies of practice within established academic paradigms. In this article we examine how the aim of communicating with artistic peers steers the research design and the production of text-based artefacts for a group of practice-based doctoral students working on jazz topics (n = 11) away from theorised approaches and towards what is commonly referred to as a ‘commentary’ approach. This finding reveals the extent to which the values of an artistic community can influence the scope of what is discussed within practice-based doctorates and highlights the need for ongoing discussion related to how such values might best interface with what institutions view as best-practice research frameworks.

This article is a narrative inquiry of the lived spiritual experiences of students participating in Dalcroze Eurhythmics training. Previous studies have located Jaques-Dalcroze’s own writings and thought within the context of spirituality and have explored the spiritual experiences of Dalcroze teachers, but students’ perspectives remain to be investigated. We interviewed seven students, broadly defined as anyone currently attending regular Dalcroze training or who have recently attended Dalcroze courses and still consider themselves Dalcroze students. Various strategies for narrative data analysis were synthesised into our own coding scheme. Themes emerged from the data analysis: situation, continuity, personal interaction, social interaction and significant moments. The themes helped us construct a fictive conversation between the participants, using direct quotations from the interviews. Implications for practice focus on what inhibits and promotes experiences of spirituality in the Dalcroze class. This research will be relevant to music educators, as it gives clear, evidence-based guidelines on how opportunities for spirituality can be created in the Dalcroze classroom. It also offers an original synthesis of existing coding schemes for other researchers undertaking narrative inquiries.

Teachers describe work with pupils aged 10 to 15 which explores the connection between listening, appraising and composing and other aspects of listening as a learning process. These case studies provide evidence of how a group of Berkshire teachers make connections that were envisaged by the architects of the National Curriculum but not necessarily encountered in practice.