This article presents the author's response to the reviews of his book, "The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice." He begins by highlighting some of the main concerns of his book. He then offers a brief response, doing his best to address the main criticisms of his argument and noting where the four reviewers (Charlene…

This article examines how notions of freedom are linked to popular music practices in previous research literature. The author discusses how two competing discourses depict popular music practices on the one hand as "freedom," and on the other hand as "constraint," and how these ideas relate to gender. She also argues that unproblematized…

Once an area of debate, there is now general consensus among media and social science researchers that online communities represent community in the traditional sense of the term, albeit with some important epistemological differences. If one considers online communities as genuine functioning communities situated in a legitimate cultural context,…

Elizabeth Parker's reflection on her experience as a musician educator working with children in an urban non-profit context is an uncomfortable read for me. In a courageous act, Parker makes public her private misgivings about her past experience and allows scrutiny of them in the form of two public commentaries as well as the private musings of…

The place of popular and multifunctional media in the musical life of young people has been addressed in several studies. Music can aid in understanding youth cultures through the identification of musical preferences: inform about new lifestyles, fashions, ways of acting, work as motivation for personal dreams and aspirations, and build…

For many individuals, engagement with the arts and music in later life plays a significant role in identity formation. Research indicates that music engagement facilitates successful aging. While participants may or may not establish identities as musicians, musical activities provide interactions and opportunities that facilitate their…

In this paper the author makes a short presentation of an ongoing longitudinal research project in Sweden. However, he wants to focus on the theoretical perspective he has found fruitful for his understanding of music teachers' professional socialisation, and on the question whether the music teacher must also be a musician in order to possess…

Since 1995, the author has been the university music educator responsible to a professional development partnership. Over an 8-year span, she has collected narratives of experience from approximately 100 pre-service music teachers, following, to some extent, the research model of Connelly and Clandinin. In developing their notion of "personal…

Learning to negotiate the "personal war between oneself as a musician and as a teacher" is an important part of the identity construction of pre-service music educators. In this article, the author shares some preliminary findings from a study related to the needs of in-service music teachers. This study did not begin as a sociological inquiry; it…