When novice music educators abandon their expressed dedication to forward-looking ideas like equity, epistemological distinctions between belief and knowledge, or lack of such distinctions, may influence such action. Political philosopher Russell Hardin argued that it makes sense for people to hold false, conflicting, and even extreme beliefs.…

In this paper we discuss the musical work of classical composer Benjamin Britten as a lasting legacy for public music education. Our starting point is the contemporary urgency to rethink both public music education in general, and the public-educational significance of Western classical music in particular, in the face of the dual threats posed by…

What forms of practices can we observe in music education settings? Is it always music just because there are instruments in the room and some sounds are produced or because we can identify some pieces of a musical work now and then? Or is it because the children are engaged in self-determined activities? Or does the verbalization of behavior in…

In this essay, I explore the recent cultural and epistemological turns in sociological music education research. Changes in the economy--and most specifically in the modes of production aided by changes in technology--provide a frame for understanding the cultural and epistemological turns within music education research in sociology. The economy…

Over the past quarter century, charter schools have evolved from a fringe educational philosophy to a prominent academic option for American school children and their families. While the history and political positioning of charter schools have been well documented, the tenet of choice continues to be central in the debate regarding the merit of…

Contemporary music education leaders suggest ambiguous definitions of "diversity," often assuming it both unquestionably good and compatible with equity. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore the assumptions underlying such discourse. First, I use the legal history of diversity in education to examine the American National…

In 1851-2 the Trustees of the Reid bequest at the University of Edinburgh undertook an investigation into music education. Concerned that the funds which supported the Chair of Music should be spent as efficiently and effectively as possible, they consulted professional and academic musicians in search of new forms of teaching music at university…

In recent years, comparative education and comparative music education became important fields of research. Due to globalization, but also to international student assessments, it is most common to compare the outcomes of entire school systems or specific subject areas. The main goal is to identify the most successful systems and their best…

Despite calls for the inclusion of the body, emotion, and sociality into music education theory and practice, the complex interplay of these aspects of being remains largely unarticulated and ignored. Deleuze and Guattari assert the importance of ongoing interconnections, arguing that multiplicities rather than singularities comprise humans. In…

Are there qualities of sound and the experience of listening that educators can extrapolate to inform the philosophy and practice of music education? In this essay, I imagine a music education where sound--how it behaves and how we experience it--serves not only as the subject of study, but generates the framework of the pedagogy. A sonic music…

This paper is an invited response to a one published by David Elliott in The Music Educator in 2012 in which music teachers were enjoined to encourage children to use music's expressive power as a political tool in pursuit of social justice. While in agreement with him that this can be an appropriate use of music, there is a curious avoidance…

At present, instrumental music education, defined in this paper as the teaching and learning of music through wind bands and symphony orchestras of Western origin, appears embattled. Among the many criticisms made against instrumental music education, critics claim that bands and orchestras exemplify an authoritarian model of teaching that does…

Informal instructional approaches have long been an important component of a complete education in general and of music education in particular. But informal approaches have often been subject to bandwagon over-enthusiasm, with proponents inflating their virtues beyond what the concept appears to warrant. In this paper I will, first, examine the…

When searching for justification for music education, researchers often make an analytical distinction between ends and means as well as between intrinsic and extrinsic values as related to them. These distinctions are often combined with a view in which ends with stable intrinsic values are seen as above means as extramusical. The article…

Writing and speaking are essential means of understanding, studying, and sharing music in the Western art music tradition. The papers presented in this symposium were the outgrowth of authors' dialogue during the summer of 2004. Each of them worked independently, yet each of them was also aware of the direction, the themes, and the ways of the…