This article focuses on children's experiences of differences between improvising (i.e. creating spontaneous single-event performances) and composing (i.e. creating revised pieces). Eighteen self-selected children participated from a multi-ethnic, comprehensive Middle School in West London. Twenty-one weekly music-making sessions were conducted over a period of six months. A model mapping qualitatively different ways of experiencing improvisation and composition is presented using data drawn from the analysis of in-depth interviews, observation and recorded performances. The categories also form the arrangement of a model where improvising and composing are distinguished as being orientated towards (i) time, (ii) body, (iv) relations and (iv) space. These findings can be applied to the development of a pedagogy, which challenges some of the assumptions about what it is (and can be) to improvise and compose.

This article sets out to investigate the language used by pupils in the appraisal of their own compositions. One objective of the research was to reveal how children used the language of the musical elements as defined by the National Curriculum as pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure. The results suggest that the pupils' perspective gives a more differentiated understanding of progression both within and across the musical elements than that presented by Music National Curriculum documentation. The research confirms the view that listening, language and assessment are highly complex and takes issue with the proposals of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) to provide level descriptions for music.

Primary school teachers have had to endure a great many changes in the profession over the last decade. Since the advent of the National Curriculum – the most significant change of all – there have been further alterations to the teaching programme. The first was a revision of the National Curriculum itself, followed by the election of a new Government, which rapidly introduced another major change: the prescriptive teaching of literacy and numeracy. To accommodate this, primary schools have had to juggle to maintain a broad and balanced curriculum of foundation subjects. As a result, the position of music has become precarious in some schools; in a study made last summer, evidence from ten respondents shows how it has survived in others. This paper looks at the way these respondents perceive music education, and how the literacy hour, in particular, has affected it. In September 2000, yet another revised curriculum will be introduced. The main problem facing teachers is pressure, but basic training is a key indicator of successful music teaching in primary schools. Since music is such a fundamental education – a belief expressed long ago by Plato, it is vital that we music educators maintain its position in the present-day curriculum.

This article examines the variety of meanings attributed to the concept of authenticity, first in interviews about teaching world musics with high school music teachers, and second, in the music education literature. More recent theorising about authenticity in folklore and anthropology introduces several issues that may help music educators to understand the concept differently, including the dichotomous, constructed and popular conceptions of authenticity, and strategies for pursuing the study of it. This interdisciplinary approach to authenticity suggests that, rather than a deterrent to multicultural music education, the concept can become a useful tool in our teaching.

The learning of music can transform the lives of young school children and youths in a Johannesburg township. This article describes the background to the pioneering work of the South African Music Education Trust (SAMET) in its attempts to kindle interest in musical literacy, to fund its projects, and to create a culture of trust and partnership between donors and recipients, some of whom are learning about fund management and accountability for the first time.

Inappropriate assessment of children's voices may be responsible for the high incidence in many societies of adults who label themselves ‘non-singers’. Research into the evolution of human behaviour supports the adoption of a new model of vocal development which illustrates the relationship between the instinctive and the acquired. In setting aside the potentially damaging criteria of age-related Piagetian stages, it may become possible to explain the extraordinary success of voice teachers who have transformed adult non-singers into competent performers through accessing ‘the child within’.

This paper is based on a presentation given to the Early Childhood Commission of the International Society for Music Education seminar ‘Respecting the Child in Early Childhood Music Education’ held at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa in July 1998.