The quality of music teaching that pupils receive when they enter a new secondary school at the age of 11 years varies. The article considers the characteristics of unsuccessful and successful approaches to teaching in Year 7.

After working with many groups that have been culturally displaced, from victims of the holocaust to black teenagers from the ghetto, Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist, has come to the conclusion that we learn everything through cultural transmission. Without a common value system young people do not have the necessary tools to connect with mainstream education. From this starting point Feuerstein believes learning has to be ‘modelled’ and mediated by the teacher to ensure understanding and progression. Above all, Feuerstein sees knowledge and skills as transferable, so that children who develop skills in one activity should be able to examine what they've accomplished and apply this in other areas of activity. Feuerstein's ideas have been seen to be universally applicable in education as a whole, and these principles have much to offer the class music teacher.

This article is concerned with music pedagogy, especially in relation to world music. The process of learning music varies with musical culture and is an integral part of musical style. Learning musicians bring training and concepts from their own musical background, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. The author examines aspects of the pedagogic process for indigenous and foreign musicians, considering the nature of the experience and understanding from their different viewpoints. The article results from a period of field research in Ghana during 1994–5 which was supported by grants from Dartington College of Arts and the Elmgrant Trust.

This article explores the influences on preservice teachers' planning decisions in a study conducted during Semester I, 1994 at an Australian University. A group of second year Bachelor of Education (Music) students and Diploma in Education (Music) students were placed in a local school under the supervision of their university specialist methods lecturer and were required to teach a specified lesson to a junior secondary class on three occasions. Before teaching these lessons, every preservice teacher was interviewed and asked to justify each of their planning decisions. Responses for the planning decisions at each stage of the study were grouped into categories. The results show that some categories of responses remained the same, while others changed throughout the study. The study also revealed that the preservice teachers operated on two sets of lesson agendas: the written agenda which was influenced by the university pedagogical programme, and the unwritten agenda influenced by the preservice teachers' beliefs about teaching.

The rationale for this article lies in a perceived need for instrumental teaching to take on positively some of the opportunities that the National Curriculum represents; in particular, the need for music-centred approaches encompassing improvising, composing and appraising as central activities in instrumental lessons in addition to performing. Its background is the belief that traditional approaches to instrumental teaching have tended to favour development of technical skills in preference to imaginative responses to musical encounters. Pragmatic realities as well as potential curriculum benefits now demand a shared outlook from class and instrumental teachers who have tended to travel on different, if parallel, tracks. This article provides a tentative model for instrumental learning in the National Curriculum which will enable the unique character of what instrumental music has to offer to be maintained whilst enriching it with wider curriculum perspectives. Note: Throughout this article instrumental teaching refers to that provision offered by specialist teachers whether of instruments of the Western classical tradition, those of non- Western cultures, or of the pop, rock, jazz or folk traditions. Exemplars are indicative only and are not drawn from specific cases. It is intended that readers will interpret exemplars according to their own particular instrumental specialism.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the background to the introduction of peer assessment at the University of Ulster and to report on how the project has operated and developed over the past three years. Initially assessors were drawn from the same student year group as the performers (BMus, year 2). The process was monitored by the authors who subsequently met with each assessment panel to discuss the performances before marks and reports were finalised. In the following years the assessment of second-year performances was conducted by panels of final-year students; this resulted in more objective reporting.