Why should bringing the power of music into student learning be a challenge--even more so when the class comprises students deemed in need of "special education"? To address this question, three case studies are presented of Hong Kong special schools music teachers experienced in teaching students with intellectual disabilities at senior…

In Wales, one of the seven core aims of the Welsh Government is the importance of allowing the voices of young people to be heard. This investigation placed pupil voice at its centre, exploring the impact of "Musical Futures" during the 2011-2012 pilot in three schools in Wales. Semi-structured interviews with focus groups of six to…

The purpose of this study was to estimate, at a national level and over time, the participation rates of males and females among those students who formally enrol in American high school music ensembles. Ten cohorts of nationally representative samples of students from 1982 and 2009 were analysed using data from High School Transcript Studies…

This paper evaluates three teaching approaches to improving sight-reading skills against a control in a large-scale study of advanced pianists. One hundred pianists in four equal groups participated in newly developed training programmes (accompanying, rhythm, musical style and control), with pre- and post-sight-reading tests analysed using…

This article discusses the conceptual framework that leads to the design of a teaching and learning model as part of a recent ethnographic study that considered the effectiveness of current Victorian government secondary school music teaching and learning practices when engaged with technology. The philosophical and theoretical basis for this…

This article reports on a study into factors that contribute to the employability of music graduates as teachers. By considering the results of a survey that covered a range of contexts, as well as interviews with secondary school head teachers, it considers the relationship between self-identity and employability. It finds that, in developing…

In Chinese society over the last two decades, modernisation and globalisation, together with the transition to a market economy, have created new imperatives and challenges for the school music curriculum. As a result, the 2011 reform of the Curriculum Standards for Primary Education and Junior Secondary Education marks the first time that the…

Seven teachers from three schools in a major metropolitan community in the upper Midwest region of the USA participated in this case study designed to better understand the nature of music teacher isolation and interaction in the urban setting. Data analysis revealed several themes: "experiences of isolation," "urban factors,"…

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of seven music educators who conducted teacher research in their classrooms and to document whether the teachers and the local school district considered the project as professional development. Research questions included: (1) How do these music educators describe the experience of planning…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of student/teacher demographic differences, teacher quality indicators (TQIs), teacher preparation and school/community support on urban music teacher attitudes toward and the expectations of their students. The study aimed to verify the psychometric appropriateness of the researcher-created…

This paper reports findings from the Ear-Playing Project in relation to the teaching strategies that 15 instrumental teachers adopted during one-to-one instrumental lessons whilst helping their students to copy music by ear from a recording. Overall, the teachers used a variety of strategies including singing and humming along with or without the…

This article investigates the nature of enterprise pedagogy in music. It presents the results of a research project that applied the practices of enterprise learning developed in the post-compulsory music curriculum in England to the teaching of the National Curriculum for music for 11-14 year olds. In doing so, the article explores the nature of…

The research on which this paper is based was a mixed-methods investigation into the factors affecting rates of singing participation amongst early adolescent boys and girls in schools in the UK. The academic outputs that resulted presented the findings of a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews using, respectively, conventional quantitative…

Previous research into adolescents' musical role models has shown that young people are more likely to identify a celebrity figure due to their image and perceived fame, than because of their musical ability. The current research is a development of Ivaldi and O'Neill's (Adolescents' musical role models: Whom do they admire and…

Within a theoretical framework drawn from Bourdieu, this article explores the relationship between undergraduate students' experiences of music in higher education and their musical backgrounds and prior music education experiences. More critically, this study aims to discover whether ideologies surrounding musical value impact on the student…