In this case study, the author investigated intersections of secondary students' musical engagement in a Songwriting and Technology Class (STC) and outside of school. The study traces the experiences of three individual participants and three participant groups (six embedded cases in total) in the creation, performance, recording, and…

This article, based on my PhD empirical study, was conducted in a qualitative and holistic approach. It had examined how students had used formal and informal strategies, styles and situations while improvising and composing for the research task. Eighteen research groups made up of a total of 40 males and nine females had participated in…

This article examines the wider meanings of collective inquiries, creative collaboration and learning at work through analyzing a teacher's learning process when plunging into collaborative inquiry and creation with the students in primary classroom context. The incorporation of "songcrafting" into the existing practice of singing…

This article reports on the practice and evaluation of a music education model, In Harmony, which utilizes new technologies and current theories of learning to mediate the music learning experience. In response to the needs of twenty-first century learners, the educational software programs Teach, Learn, Evaluate! and Impromptu served as central…

This article explores the relationship between ideas about the role and purpose of music introduced in the major publications of Charles Darwin, and the fields of child development, music education and pedagogy. It also considers the significant influence on Darwin's work of his own biography and family life. In the global village of…

Since its publication in 1995, a significant literature has developed around David J. Elliott's praxial philosophy of music education, as explained in "Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education." This literature includes a range of commentaries in journals, books, edited books, and dissertations. Although Elliott has…

The decline in the status of the classical guitar is, for many, a cause of concern, calling for viable answers to restore its place in the expressive arts tradition. In this article, I explore a pedagogical style specifically intended for young and/or inexperienced players. It is argued that this endeavor could prospectively benefit a range of…

The myth of Orpheus is intricately implicated in the origin of song. For centuries, myth and music have cooperated in a variety of genres, foremost among them in opera. The myth, open to reinterpretation across linguistic, national, and temporal boundaries, served as a starting point for an extracurricular opera project in the metropolitan region…

This article reports on a study of 21 Australian and United States (US) tertiary/university students involved in training to become professional music therapists. The study aimed to identify the learning outcomes--musical, professional, and personal--that occurred when students participated in collaborative peer songwriting experiences. Student…

Despite emerging efforts to teach from within authentic music making contexts, electronic music in schools generally remains detached from the practices of actual composers. Often electronic technology is regarded merely as a set of tools for learning and, as a result, many view active engagement in technology-based music making as a…

Idea generation is an integral component of jazz improvising. This article merges theoretical origins and practical experiences through the examination of two seminal works from Pressing and Sudnow. A comparative analysis yields three common sources with distinct characteristics. The greater body of jazz literature supports this potential link…

Artistic research output struggles for recognition as "legitimate" research within the highly-competitive and often traditional university sector. Often recognition requires the underpinning processes and thinking to be documented in a traditional written format. This article discusses the views of eight arts practitioners working in academia by…

Finding new repertoire poses endless obstacles for musicians. Often the search for an unknown piece or composer presents such an unforeseen challenge that the actual aesthetic and technical success of the work becomes secondary. A major contributing factor is the lack of an accessible and centralized database. Many notable bibliographic reference…

Despite national initiatives in the UK such as Creative Partnerships, an organization formed in 2002 for exploring creative approaches to learning in the classroom, there is still a gap between aspiration and practice. This is especially evident in the teaching of musical composition in primary schools, partly because there seems to be a profound…

This study aims to investigate and identify the criteria and parameters for assessing compositions, and how assessment can help students' learning. Participants in the study include three composer-assessors and six undergraduate music students. An assessment framework for music composition based on both the macro and micro philosophies of…