In recent years, the study of musical cultures has gained popularity as a curricular intervention for increasing cultural diversity in school music curricula. Informed by Michel Foucault's analytics of power-as-effects, this paper examines some of the underlying epistemic premises of the notion of musical culture as it operates in music curricula.…

In this paper, I offer my reading of John Dewey's Art as Experience and propose implications for music education based on Dewey's ideas. Three principal questions guide my task: What are some key ideas in Dewey's theory of art? How does Dewey's theory of art fit within his larger theory of experience? What are the implications of Dewey's ideas for…

In the last two decades, Spain's general music education curriculum has moved beyond the exaltation of so-called Western art music to also include some instances of non-Western musical traditions. This process of diversification is often articulated as entirely positive. The present paper interrogates such discourses, following a post-structural,…

The point of departure in this article is the hegemony of technical rationality when it comes to the justification of music education. This is considered as an example of uniformity, sameness, and homogeneity, or worse, simplicity and naivety--or even worse, a sweet innocence--regarding understanding and thoughts about life, society, and culture…

We are living in a time of social and cultural changes. As in other disciplines, the foundations of music education are being increasingly challenged. Thus, it is no longer possible to specify reliably the aims and contents of music education and their implementation in school by simply basing them on lasting musical traditions and changeless…

The times we live in are described as pluralistic and diverse. In the Nordic countries, societies are often described--even officially--as multicultural. People with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds are expected to coexist and respect each other. Different values are set free from hierarchical conceptual models. Many stories about the…

The quality of education is currently considered to be a concern of the highest political priority. However, quality assurances of all kinds seem to be built on and result in a number of quantitative measures. In this essay, I discuss the traditional and philosophical meaning of the concept of quality and how it is being used today, but above all…