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.

Many music teachers in Secondary Schools, when designing schemes of work, use music elements, concepts and musical devices as a focus for choosing holistic practical activities. The idea behind such a practice appears to be to enable pupils to understand more clearly these concepts through reinforcement in listening and performing activities and through the application of the device to their composing tasks. While still retaining an important place in the curriculum for concepts/music elements, it is suggested that curriculum schemes might be built around the mastery of a wide range of skills. A new way of thinking about curriculum design in music is sought, to enable a more effective musical experience for pupils.

A UNESCO Commission reported that many conflicts originate from cultural incompatibility. One of the four principles drawn up in Chicago (1993) by leaders of the world's religions was that people must commit themselves to a culture of tolerance. Such a commitment would improve our capacity to move towards greater understanding. Wide ranging views of recognized educators and ethnomusicologists lend support to the notion that increased comprehension, sensibility, even unity, is derived from intercultural education through music.

This paper sets out to interrogate the assertions contained in Malcolm Ross's What's Wrong With School Music? (British Journal of Music Education, Vol. 12, No. 3). Whilst resisting the tone of Ross's piece and rejecting its philosophical underpinnings, the author finds that there is some substance in its polemical thrust, even though Ross's caricaturing style does as much to mask as to analyse problems. Using ethnographic data collected over a number of years, Dr Gammon focuses on the relative unpopularity of music, the music curriculum, resourcing and the problems of music teachers in an attempt to identify areas for examination, discussion and progress.

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.

The chief, but by no means the only, means of communication in the classroom is language. Simply because the range of activities in the music lesson are so varied, it follows that teachers and pupils will use language and communication skills in a multiplicity of different ways. This article is an attempt to highlight some of the ways in which language is used in music teaching at different ages and stages, and in different educational settings.

The traditional basics of elementary education – the three R's: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic – whilst problematic, not least in the poverty of alliteration involved, are seriously limiting in the promotion of technique at the expense of creative thinking. There appears to be a corresponding situation with current trends in musical analysis. Here, events have moved a notch further with the three S's: Schenker, Semiology and Set-Theory. No doubt the quality of alliteration has improved, but we should still be wary of adopting techniques which may be used as a substitute for the essential creative processes involved in coming to understand how music works. If a back to basics approach is seriously to be considered, then perhaps we should return to the three A's: Analysis, Awareness and Accessibility.

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.

With colleagues in Japan, the author, a composer and improvising musician, developed novel techniques of collaborative composition. Subsequently – in Japan and in Britain – he explored ways of developing those techniques with school pupils. In this article he writes about the background to that experiment, the professionalism of composers and performing musicians, and the relative importance of boundaries of all kinds (e.g. different frames for the reception of music). In particular, he reflects upon compositional ideas and processes generated by his work with children.

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.

So far, the ever-increasing popularity of music technology has had little effect on the way we conduct performance studies. However, with the appearance of Computer Controlled Player Pianos, such as the Yamaha Disklavier and Bosendorfer SE, the technology is just waiting to be used. In this article, the authors examine various ways in which this technology can be used to enhance traditional methods of piano teaching.

Music graduates choosing secondary school teaching as a career and training through one-year post-graduate courses are drawn from an increasingly wide range of degree studies in music and embark on their training year with diverse specialisms and music skills. Yet these students will need to operate as generalists in schools with an ever-widening music curriculum. In this account of procedure in one institution, a view is given of the applied musicianship needed by new teachers and discussion of this invited from all providers of post-school music education and training. Data collected from students who may soon be responsible for music in a school indicate a trend towards improvement in only some areas of musicianship.

The article looks firstly at research into early human communication and secondly at the learning experiences of successful musicians in a range of fields. It underlines the idea that music learning and language learning have much in common. Musical improvisation is seen as having a central role, similar to that of talking in relation to verbal language. Recognition of this role forms the basis of an approach which builds on children's early musical development and can enable them all to fulfil their potential as musical communicators. Directions for further research are suggested.

This paper reflects on the musical skills and abilities required of the improvising musician and suggests some possible strategies to help school music teachers enable children to develop improvisational skills. The writer includes musical materials which exemplify his own suggested teaching and learning approach and which aim to develop the musical memory of performers.