Following a music philosophy debate deriving from the 1990s, this article puts the extra-musical and social outcomes of situated music educational practices at the fore. The Swedish replica of the choir and orchestra school El Sistema, a programme globally asserting social change and social impact, appeared useful for elaborating such outcomes in…

Expressiveness is an important aspect of an excellent music performance as it adds quality and interest to the playing and listening experience. Although several studies have investigated tertiary students' learning of expressiveness, little is known about effective approaches for teaching children to perform expressively. In the present project,…

Improvisation is a fundamental aspect of musicianship and an important pursuit in music education. Children in music classes throughout the world are engaged with improvisation in a variety of modes and settings. Whether singing, physically moving, or playing an instrument, the act of improvising in front of others may raise one's…

We examined the associations between academic achievement and arts involvement (access to a musical instrument for the child at home, participation in unspecified after-school arts activities) in a sample of 2339 11-12-year-olds surveyed in the USA between 1998 and 2008. We compared the contributions of these variables to other kinds of cognitive…

In this article, I visualize the relationship between tonewood exploitation and the import of musical instruments for Venezuela's El Sistema, with the participation of the Venezuelan State, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and manufacturing companies from China and the Global North. My basis…

This article reports on a study of collaborative music-making on instruments among 3- and 4-year-old children. An area equipped with musical instruments was provided as a free-choice play option in an early childhood setting and a fixed camera recorded the children's play continuously during a number of visits. From the total 17 h of data five…

Although teachers work constantly with parents, discussions concerning parental roles in children's music learning are often left at the margins in music teacher training programs. The aim of this article is to offer a review of musical parenting research from an ecological perspective. Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory of human development is…

For children born in the 21st century, the enmeshing of natural and human forces in the survival of the planet requires conceptual and practical innovation. This paper comes from a project funded by the Australian Research Council investigating the integration of literacy and sustainability in early years learning. The methodology employed was…

Designed for use as supplementary instructional material in a cultural anthropology course, this learning module uses a systems approach to allow students to see the connections and similarities which most cultural groups share on the basis of the type of economic organization that they exhibit. The module begins with a general discussion of…

Children have a natural curiosity about sound. This is particularly evident in the context of musical play. The potential of play for music learning may be overshadowed by a teacher-led and performance-focused approach to music education rather than an organic, self-initiated approach. By bringing together the child's natural curiosity about…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is common in the United States. All age groups are at risk for TBI, but there is a larger occurrence among school-age children and young adults. No matter the severity of a student's injury, he or she can benefit from music education, whether listening to music, singing, or performing on an instrument. Students can…

Kenyan parents want their children to have an education that will maximize their full potential, and they are prepared to make tremendous sacrifices to ensure their children get that education. However, the best schools cost far more than most families can afford, and even the most humble local schools require parents to pay for school fees,…

Parental involvement in schoolwork has been shown to positively correlate with academic achievement in the classroom. It is widely accepted that parental involvement has a positive effect on student musical learning. Through the past 50 years, music education researchers have been examining how parental involvement affecting their student's…

This article reflects upon the potential mediation of medical and social interpretations of disability through informing instrumental tuition with the strengths recognised in the learning profile of children with Down Syndrome. The learning profile is explored and critically discussed, and its reductionist, deficit-based potential identified;…

Mental training has been employed successfully by experienced musicians, but rarely explored with younger learners. Considering its benefits, however, including the use and development of predictive, feedforward processes, identified in neuroscience as being central to playing a musical instrument, this mixed qualitative-quantitative study…