The catalyst for this paper is the ongoing debate concerning formal and informal approaches to pedagogy within the music education literature. I utilise a chapter by Philpott (2010) as a means to continue discussion about the apparent dialectic between formal and informal approaches to music learning and the case Philpott raises for radical change…

School music has a comparatively low take-up rate as a qualification among English secondary school pupils. Existing research on the issue has proffered possible reasons for this phenomenon but has generally been piecemeal and undertheorised. This paper sets out a fresh theoretical perspective capable of providing a basis for systematic empirical…