Concepts of informal learning in music education have been developed from adult interpretations of the ways in which young people are perceived to learn. Informal learning can therefore be reified or transformed into pedagogy that prioritizes an adult understanding of the processes of learning. This article presents the first part of an analytical…

By identifying three main sociologies that characterise broad movements in the field since its inception, this paper provides a background to considerations of music education from the perspective of sociology. A fourth sociology is then proposed that may be useful to interrogate the complexities of the field of 21st century music education. This…

In this article, we aim to develop a theoretical model to understand what we refer to as "musical gentrification" and to explore how this model might be applied to and inform music education research. We start from a Bourdieusian point of view, elaborating on the connections between social class and cultural capital, and then move on to…

Studies on sociology and music education are important because they can enlighten how music education relates to social change. By studying how music education changes and is changed by society we enable ourselves to describe how it can contribute to the understanding of social change generally. This may lay the ground for us in contributing to…

In different ways and in different contexts it has been and still is argued that music education should be prioritized because of its positive impact on pupils in terms of general development as good citizens and in terms of skills in other disciplines. In this article, the authors discuss whether this tendency is best interpreted as an example of…

This article traces the formation of community music through professional and scholarly articles over the last century in North America, and argues that community music has been discursively formed through social rationales, although the specific rationales have shifted. The author employs an archaeological framework inspired by Michel Foucault to…

In this article I discuss a case study of how a music teacher in a postcolonial context has addressed and resisted colonialist practices in education/socialization processes. The case study addresses preliminary findings from a broader ethnography on the social organization of music learning from the standpoint of music teachers. The ethnography…

This article presents a meta-analysis of one area of sociological literature in music education: Where are the women and "others"? Where do we raise concerns about social values? Institutional Ethnography provides the basis for the meta-analysis, presented in two historical periods, pre-1960 and 2007-2012. A short story of an actual…

The purpose of this study was to determine relationships among social identity, value of music education, musician-teacher orientation, selected demographic factors, and self-concept as a music educator. Participants (N = 968) were volunteer undergraduate music education majors enrolled at four-year institutions granting a bachelor of music…

Cosmopolitanism is basically a moral stance requiring every human to be concerned with the wellbeing of every other human being on earth. As such, it tends to privilege cosmopolitan--urban and culturally elite--populations while suppressing more "place-bound" groups. Cosmopolitan education constitutes a form of abjection whereby…

In this article I discuss children's everyday uses of recorded music (such as CDs, Mp3-files) in the light of sociological notions of "children" and "childhood". The discussion provides perspectives on musical engagement and musicality that supplement perspectives within developmental psychology. The study is based on…

Elite classical music programs continue to focus teaching in Western Classical traditions where the emphasis is on technical virtuosity in instrumental or vocal performance. In this paper we discuss group activities and assessments used in two Creative Arts disciplines (Performance and Journalism), at an Australian regional university, as examples…

This article is a response to Shuler's 2001 article predicting the future of music education. The respondent assesses Shuler's predictions, finding that many have come true but critiquing Shuler's overall positive assessment. The respondent then goes on to make one prediction about the future of music education: that algorithms will…

Changes in education policy--particularly at the federal and state levels--during the current era of ideologically and profit-driven "education reform" threaten balanced education in general and music/arts education in particular. Emerging answers to a number of pivotal questions will determine the future of the arts, arts education, and…

In considering how policy work might forward arts education, it is helpful to reflect on the present state of music and arts education while looking ahead at future challenges and possibilities. This response to Shuler's (2001) set of predictions related to music education and policy in the twenty-first century addresses such work in the…