This study explores the career paths, employment, business opportunities and community contributions made available through the provision and development of the contemporary performance bands' culture in the State of Victoria. It is framed with the support given to live music performers by Arts Victoria, Small Business Victoria and Music Victoria.…

The City of Melbourne's ArtPlay is open to children and young people aged 3-13 years, and provides a wide range of artist-led programs that serve a broad community within and outside the municipality. Its sister facility, Signal, caters for young people 13-22 years. An Australia Council of the Arts funded Creative Community Partnership Initiative,…

Previous research has demonstrated a benefit of music training on a number of cognitive functions including verbal memory performance. The impact of school-based music programs on memory processes is however relatively unknown. The current study explored the effect of increasing frequency and intensity of classroom-based instrumental training…

Primary schools are such busy demanding places. Educators are concerned with a crowded curriculum and high emphasis placed on the development and cultivation of literacy and numeracy concepts. Teachers are generally concerned with the delivery and teaching expectations of all key learning areas of the primary school curriculum. However, the…

Pre-service teacher degree programs are increasingly crowded with subjects covering the wide gamut of knowledge a teacher requires. Ensuring musical knowledge and language for classroom teaching poses a difficult problem for teacher educators. This article examines the challenges of including in the pre-service classroom teaching program a music…

The current paper retrospectively evaluates the efficacy of implementing a large-scale music education program into a regional cluster of Victorian primary schools. The program's primary aim was to increase access and quality of music education for students in these rural schools. The methods utilized to evaluate the program and the discrepancies…

This article reviews and analyzes selected past and current research approaches in the study of music teacher effectiveness. Early "teacher characteristic studies" are discussed along with the role of these first-generation studies in attempting to identify personal qualities and characteristics of apparently effective or ineffective teachers.…