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…

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…

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…

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,…

In her new book "Music, Informal Learning and the School" (2008), Lucy Green consolidates many ideas presented in her previous writings. There is little doubt of the significance of her approach, but it raises epistemological and pedagogical issues that must be addressed to better understand where music teachers go next with informal learning, so…

In her book "Informal Learning and the School: A new classroom pedagogy" Lucy Green notes: "The issues ... centre around the importance of listening to young people's voices and taking their values and their culture seriously" (Green, 2008, p. 185). It can be argued that for young people, "their culture" is frequently construed as the popular…

Lucy Green's latest book, "Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy" (Green, 2008) posits that the learning taking place among popular musicians, developed out of a need to create and perform pieces of music, and found "everywhere in everyday life" rather than in the formalised settings of the majority of music classrooms,…

In her book title "Music, Informal Learning and the School," Lucy Green has ineluctably taken teachers to a place where potentially, students can really participate in an interactive pedagogy where student-centeredness is applied in its full sense. For this reason, the author found the potential contribution of the book to music education…

Lucy Green's (2008) "Music, Informal Learning, and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy" gives rise to an interesting corollary. Does the manner of music's transmission inform one's understanding of a musical category? While categories of music can be difficult to define according to strict musical characteristics, a better understanding of…

This article presents the author's response to the six authors in the special issue of "Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education" concerning her book "Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy." In this response, the author focuses on some general observations that came to mind whilst reading the valuable set of…

Most people think of the teaching and learning of music as taking place in formal, institutional contexts like schools and universities. This study looks at the transmission of music teaching and learning that takes place in a more informal, musical environment, namely at a "popular music festival." In particular, it discusses the OM music…

Since 1988, the author and his colleague Stephan Bladh, from the Malmo Academy of Music, have followed the student teachers that started their music teacher education that autumn (Bladh, 2002; Bouij 1998a). They started their research project with 169 hopeful students. The music teacher education program was then four years long, but some of the…

Musicality is a loosely used term with many meanings. It can be applied to a small child who chants a nursery rhyme, or to a harmonica player who plays by ear, or to a conductor like Toscanini. Some educators and philosophers believe that musicality is manifested in the technical achievements of musicians. Others believe that technique is…