This article examines the fortunes of music education programs in rural and regional Australia. It argues that the two key national reports on music education across the nation undertaken in 2005 and 2019 have tended to focus on metropolitan and urban settings and formalised school education at the pre-tertiary level at the expense of music…

In 2019 the Society for Music Analysis commissioned a report to find out if stakeholders in music education agreed that knowledge and/or skills in music literacy had declined for those applying to study music at university in England. The ensuing mixed methods study collected data from a range of stakeholders through interviews (N = 33),…

Between 2007 and 2017, El Sistema -- Venezuela's national system of youth orchestras -- enjoyed a seemingly unexplainable meteoric rise, followed by an equally spectacular sunset. Although it would be easy to dismiss this Sistema decade as being no more than a peculiar aberration of music education history, I assert that El Sistema more accurately…

The academic context of Romanian higher education music lecturers has not yet completely overcome the influence of the socio-political scenario from before the fall of the communist system. This contributes to the international isolation of Rumanians higher music education, marginalising its institutions from the European Higher Education Area.…

A skilled music education workforce is essential to ensure longevity of music-making for future generations of young learners and access to high-quality instrumental music tuition remains crucial for school-aged pupils. Yet, Higher Education providers, including conservatoires, are not held accountable for providing high-quality pedagogical…

In a report commissioned by the Society for Music Analysis to address a gap in music literacy, McQueen (2020) identified instrumental teachers as an important part of music education both within schools and in the community. This article takes as a starting point McQueen's (2020) proposal that 'it is through instrumental tuition that music…

This article argues that coloniality is an ongoing feature of university music education in Nigeria. It uses a multiple colonialisms framework in exploring Nigerian higher music education systems as historical and contemporary sites of colonialism within which Nigerian universities engage in music knowledge generation to reach this conclusion. It…

This multi-authored article offers accounts of how programmes for teaching music theory within the Western-notated tradition were created in two UK higher education institutions. These accounts are followed by two more discursive reflections on the nature and purpose of music education today, advocating the importance of listening skills and…

This article introduces an analytic strategy or thinking tool called the 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' (WPR) approach and suggests its usefulness for reflecting on important debates in music education. First developed as a mode of policy analysis, WPR has since been adopted in many fields and topic areas. The WPR approach consists of…

Music education in England has been in a state of flux for a number of years due to the complexities and variability of its delivery. Many of the issues surrounding music education in England are associated with policy and practice in schools, and the complexities of funding and deployment of music activities. This creates contextual, structural…

This study presents an analysis of hidden elitism in music education through the free choice argument -- that individuals are fundamentally free to choose to study music -- as a meritocratic power structure. Qualitative Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is applied to understand music education as a social system with a special structure in which its…

While writing is undeniably an essential part of higher education, in music education, musical performance skills form the core of assessing students' results. However, higher music education is experiencing growing demands on research activities parallel to heightened requirements on music performance students' abilities to formulate themselves…

This study explores the impacts of popular music education in classroom practices from different aspects such as learning by ear, motivation, musicianship, peer learning and creativity. The Sing by Ear approach was created based on the concepts of informal learning in singing a cappella. A total of 323 participants aged 11-14 were invited to…

This article investigates policy and provision of music in initial teacher education (ITE) in Ireland and Northern Ireland through a novel approach to comparative music education in ITE. Employing literature reviews and a survey of music ITE policy and provision in the two jurisdictions, it draws on a range of primary and secondary sources and…

This article explores some of the intersections and relationships between 'knowledge' and 'social justice' particularly as manifest in the context of English school music education. It takes as its starting point the tensions resulting from different understandings of these terms as revealed in the Society for Music Analysis's (SMA) report…