One of the fascinating things about the articles in the BJME is that they come from many different countries, with many different music education systems in place in them. Each country has its own way of doing things, and its own way of thinking about what music education means in its own circumstance. One of the issues we face today is that with increasing globalisation unique ways of musicking can be under threat from non-indigenous commercial interests. For music education this can have implications. One of the questions that it raises is about the purposes of music education. Is music education about passing on a historic culture whose existence is threatened? Is it about learning to play western classical instruments? Is it about learning to play pop and rock music? These are not simple questions, and they do not have simple answers.

Developing emotional skills is one of the challenges that concern teachers and researchers in education, since these skills promote well-being and enhance cognitive performance. Music is an excellent tool with which to express emotions and for this reason music education should play a role in individuals’ emotional development.

This paper reviews the results of previous studies that explore the connections between active engagement with music and the development of emotional skills, specifically in the field of music education. A sample of 21 investigations was analysed.

The results from the selected studies show that music has multiple benefits for the development of certain aspects of emotional skills and positive implications for education. Suggestions for music educators gathered from the previous research are presented and potential areas of interest for further exploration in the field are identified.

This study aims to provide new insights on the nature of the embodied and collaborative processes related to the emergence of new musical ideas that occur when children are composing in groups.

Data was obtained by participant observation of the teacher/researcher and by ten videotaped one-hour musical sessions dedicated to the development of a music composition by two groups of children, all of whom were eight years old.

It was found that when composing in groups a) children use embodied processes to transform what they experience on diverse realms of their existence into musical ideas, and that b) while creating music, children engage in several improvisatory moments where new ideas emerge through the diverse ways they enact the surroundings where the activity is occurring. Findings suggest a conception of music composing as a multidimensional phenomenon that entails cognitive processes that are distributed across and beyond the physical body. Findings also suggest that composing music in collaboration with others nurtures a set of creative possibilities that would otherwise, not occur. Considerations for music education theory and practice are addressed in the last section of the article.

This work aimed to analyse factors related to conceptions and beliefs about expressivity in music among students and teachers. A questionnaire with 11 Likert-type items was developed covering the main factors included in the literature of teaching-learning of expressivity and emotion in music. Through exploratory factor analysis three factors were identified: expressive technique (ET), emotional expression (EE), and self-learning of expressivity (SLE). Comparisons between teachers and students showed that teachers had significant higher scores in EE with no differences in ET or SLE, although the effect size for SLE was high. The three factors are proposed as a tool for the assessment of conceptions of expressivity and its learning in both teachers and advanced students of music for teaching and research objectives.

This article explores how group playing by ear (GEP) through imitation of recorded material and opportunities for inventive work during peer interaction was used to support first year undergraduate western classical music students’ aural, group creativity and improvisation skills. The framework that emerged from the analysis of the data describes two routes taken by the students, whilst progressing from GEP to group improvisation and it is compared to Priest's (1989) model on playing by ear through imitation and invention. The article concludes with suggestion on how these two routes could be used to scaffold the development of western classical musicians’ improvisation skills.

This article examines a unique music curriculum and assessment environment through the findings of a practical action research project carried out in secondary schools. I address two current international educational issues: the relationship between formal and informal learning in music, and how individuals’ contributions in collaborative groups might be summatively assessed. Following this I present a model of group composing and explain how it was used as a pedagogical tool in secondary music classrooms. The purpose of this was to help students and their teacher to conceptualise collaborative composing, thereby leading to a clearer understanding and more valid assessment of the processes in which they were engaged.

The National Curriculum for Music in England at Key Stage 3 (KS3; age 11–14) declares its purpose that pupils should be inspired to ‘develop a love of music and their talent as musicians’ (DfE, 2013: KS3 Music). The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) have criticised secondary schools for a lack of progress in the musical development of pupils (e.g. Ofsted, 2012). This paper reports on an exploratory study into how far class music lessons at KS3 provide for the development of the musician and the relationship between the musical values of music teachers and classroom practice. The research centres on an investigation into the place of musical competencies in music learning and the contexts within which musicianship can develop. It concludes that classroom music lessons have a tendency to focus more on presenting pupils with a range of ‘taster’ musical experiences than in the development of musicians.