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…

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…

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…

This paper explores the effects and problems of one highly influential default setting of the "normal style template" of music education and proposes some alternatives. These do not require abandoning all traditional templates for school music. But re-setting the default settings does depend on reconsidering the promised function of…

This paper begins with a premise that each person's musical education is made of multiple and diverse experiences that occur in settings both in and out of school (Campbell 2002, 2003, 2008; Green 2002, 2005; Jaffurs 2004, 2006). Nevertheless, when speaking and writing about music education, one often restricts the kinds of music, ways of…

This article presents the author's views on the concepts of the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari on striated (sedentary) space and smooth (mobile) space, asserting that "nomads" can move freely about their space. She relates these concepts to music education, incorporating Deleuze and Guattari's concept of mapping as it…

Music educators have the potential to educate student musicians to be ethically involved citizens of the world. Educators can promote worldwide understanding by nurturing sensitivity and fostering sympathy within and between human beings and thus help students become agents in the creation of alternative globalizations. From an ethical…

Music education is generally equated with the act of teaching music. In "The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice," the remarkable book that orients the essays in this issue of "Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education," Chris Higgins argues, among other things, that the view of teaching as a helping profession--one…

In his recent monograph, Chris Higgins (2011) offers a remarkably original, thoughtful, and provocative argument for "an ethics of professional practice" for teachers. His study brings together a wealth of ideas and authors not often discussed in relation to each other, and it draws out elusive themes and ideas often overlooked in most analyses of…

"Poor white trash" is likely the most enduring and degrading in a long line of "stigmatypes"--"stigmatizing boundary terms that simultaneously denote and enact cultural and cognitive divides between in-groups and out-groups"--such as "redneck," "cracker," and "hillbilly." Some people apply these terms in reference to poor or working-class, usually…

This article examines the process by which the author came to accept music education as something that she does, enjoys, and respects. The primary data used for this inquiry were brief autobiographical narratives outlining two time periods of the author's life. The first described her musical experiences in public school and as a performance major…

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…

Unlike the other arts, music has no direct connection with the rest of the human world. True, there are bird songs and natural "melodies" in the gurgling of brooks, but these are hardly the materials of music in the way that landscape can be the subject of painting. And no natural sounds can stand alone as quasi-artworks the way that the deeply…

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,…