Global and societal changes present profound challenges and complexities for the future of music education practice and research. In these times of rapid change, four members of the MER editorial board reflect on the need to challenge normalising discourses of music education and encourage new understandings and/or territories within the field. In…

In this paper, four interrelated questions are addressed: What counts as research? What are some present challenges to music education research? What should be the relationship between theory and empirical data? What ought to be the distinctive features of music education research? The purpose is to elucidate how philosophical inquiry can be…

I am nurtured by indigenous African musical arts education philosophy and practice, and encountered literary music education and scholarship in adulthood. It is with dual musical sensibilities that I ponder the human mission of school music education. My reflections will derive from experiences of applying African indigenous musical arts in…

While social justice concerns of feminist research in music education have been mostly ignored or rejected by the profession, democracy based on paternalist Enlightenment concepts of humanism and liberalism is generally understood and accepted with little or no consideration of its social and economic implications. More nuanced accounts refer to…

In western musical contexts at global and local levels, musicians are becoming increasingly involved in what might be termed multicode music making and are expanding their musical competences. In this article I consider the practical and cognitive implications of such an expanding of competences for music education at various levels. Combining…

Over recent years, jazz as an academic discipline has grown in volume and stature--indeed, jazz studies now plays a significant role in a number of higher education music programmes within the university and conservatoire sector. The proliferation of jazz education programmes has, inevitably, brought about the publication of specific pedagogical…

In the light of an apparent paradox that has resulted from the integration of 'world music' into the school curriculum in many countries, the present paper proposes a tri-partite approach to music education. Such an approach would clearly distinguish between the teaching and learning of: 'inherent meaning', or the study of music for music's sake;…

To address the question of musical identity, the research the author mainly draws on takes the form of qualitative, in-depth interviews with people about how music fits into their everyday lives and musical biographies. In this the author adopts a largely biographical and social constructionist perspective, asking people to reflect on important…

In this viewpoint it is suggested that recent research and authorship in the evolutionary psychology (EP) of music can provide musicians and educators with an enriched understanding of the adaptive role of music in human life. Within a climate of continual educational reform in which music is often marginalised from other mainstream curricular…

In this article, the author argues that researchers and practioners aiming to improve practice in our institutions are called upon to "open up" the field of instrumental teaching. Music educators need to reflect on how particular lesson behaviours or types of teacher-pupil interactions are influenced by the specific institutional,…

This article examines a change in the procedures for developing beginning teachers' (trainees) subject knowledge on a music teacher training course. The change, provoked by the response of an extraordinary trainee, prompts the author to ask, 'to what extent are changes in teachers' practice provoked by extraordinary learners?' and, 'how might such…

This paper argues that the processes involved in making, listening to and creating music can teach us about the processes of research. These processes include form, rhythm, harmony, timbre, melody and polyphony. A second set of ideas addresses ways of doing (which, following Dewey, are inevitably ways of becoming) in interviews, observations and…

This essay examines the shift toward a globally interdependent world, starting with the ontological premise that thinking, identity and action are subsumed by culture. The author explores the view that globalism, with its break from modernist constraints, may enable liberation. The post-Soviet borderless economy implies a shift of rule and a new…

From the work of sociocultural theorists like Rogoff (1990), Vygotsky (1978) and Wenger (1998), it is widely understood that learning is an act of the individual resulting from experience in a sociocultural context. Within this context, following Dewey (1998), learners need to take an active role, engaging and constructing their own understanding.…