LEA re-organisation is in many places bringing instrumental teachers into closer contact with people whose background is that of classroom teaching and curriculum development. Initially there may be some suspicion on both sides, but our experience in Wolverhampton suggests that this is potentially an enjoyable and immensely fruitful relationship.

This article looks at some of the issues surrounding the notion of a European dimension and ways in which it might be developed and applied in Music education.

Much speculation exists as to the prospect Music and the Performing Arts face in the wake of the 1988 Education Act. Research shows that interaction and fusion, which exist between Music and the Performing Arts, intensify expressive character for young people, and generate more powerful and sustained responses, in comparison with single art forms.

Results of experiments show the value of fused artefacts with significant implications for future Arts education, as regards both making and appraising.

This article examines the musical structural processes used in songs invented by 32 children over a period of 18 months. It takes the view that the organisation and relationships of musical events in time are fundamental to music's meaning, and that we should expect structural considerations to be important as soon as a child begins to be musically articulate.

I have been continuing my study of young children's invented songs (Davies, 1986), analysing them in the light of recent writings on music as mind. If music is an activity of mind, the question arises, what are musical thought processes, and can we find them in the musical inventions of young children ?

One of the many roles of music teachers is to stimulate creative thinking and creative activity in their pupils. This obligation to help unlock latent musical talent in young people is no less applicable to the disabled than it is to the able-bodied. Music technology has a central place within this process. There are conditions for creativity, some of which may be precluded from the disabled. It is necessary, therefore, for the special needs music teacher to be aware of these conditions and the way in which a particular disability may bar access to any of them. Those involved in the design of either music hardware or software need to be responsive to these factors, through ongoing collaborative work. This paper was presented at a Conference of the Drake Research Project, University of York, November, 1990.

The author calls for the physical, kinesthetic sense, to be recognised and understood for its role in all musical experience, on a par with our mental capacities, and also suggests that it is the missing, yet essentially vitalising part, of what might be called a ‘whole human’ response to and engagement with music. This thinking is applied to support an emerging theory of practice, which takes its original inspiration from the principles of Dalcroze Eurhythmics: principles which have been adapted and developed to meet the changing needs of contemporary education.

The Percussion Band method is part of our methodological heritage. The method was carefully based on contemporary educational theory and its advocates argued convincingly for its inclusion in kindergarten and school curricula. Critics of the method were heard from the first. This article seeks to examine the arguments for and against the method, the educational beliefs that underlie these positions and to note the influence of the method in the Australian school curriculum.

In this article I expound my method of teaching the language of music to my pupils. I aim to enable them to express themselves through music, just as they are expected to use the tools of language for creative writing and art materials for original work.

My class organisation and the syllabus by which my pupils learn to compose is explained in some detail for years seven to nine and in more general terms thereafter.

I include examples of compositions, from Year Seven and from GCSE pupils. I hope I can encourage other teachers to adopt similar objectives and therefore reap similar rewards.

This paper explores the proposition that kinaesthetic gesture is at the root of art making and is thus an integrating factor in both a music and an arts curriculum. Examples of art making are examined and a basis for collaborative arts learning established before implications for teaching and learning style in the arts are considered.

Over the past decade, some major changes have taken place in the policies of Britain's symphony orchestras towards the communities within which they operate. Responding to local needs, most have now evolved enterprising educational activities. This ‘community’ brief has itself generated enthusiastic commitment from the participating musicians; but it has also highlighted the new responsibilities of orchestral management to the personal and artistic development of the players who must work in this somewhat different cultural climate. The author, Gresham Professor of Music and Director of the Department of Performance and Communication Skills at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, examines these issues and their implications for the future of orchestral musicians.

As the time for the implementation of the National Curriculum in Music approaches, will the tail of assessment begin to wag the dog of class-room music and dissipate all that has been achieved in providing the dynamic, challenging and fulfilling experiences that now characterise many class music lessons? This article sets out some proposals for an assessment strategy which, it is hoped, is faithful to the intentions of the National Curriculum Music Working Group in allowing practical music to flourish but with a greater sense of direction and enhanced awareness of the power of musical expression for teachers and students alike.

Musical sense is examined at two levels; in relation to human experiences or activity, and by virtue of its ‘form’. Reference in music to experience and activity is discussed in terms of its relationship to musical form. From an analysis of sense in language it is suggested that the social understandings of which music is a part are a source of sense. The origins of this social understanding are examined.

How does this sensible quality come to have aesthetic significance? Music may achieve significance from the way in which it refers to experience. Music that achieves sense by virtue of form is examined in terms of the way that it relates to intellectual needs.

Education Departments in Arts organisations have traditionally taken on the role of explaining the repetoire to young audiences; forward-looking education officers have sought to bring in new audiences by engaging them in the processes involved in their particular art form. The ‘Opera On The Pier’ project, which became known later as Hastings Spring, achieved this end with spectacular results.

There have been numerous calls for the use of qualitative research in music education. Music educators have been slow to heed these calls, despite the wide acceptance of qualitative methods in other areas of education research. This paper describes the place of qualitative paradigms in the gamut of research methodology and assesses the potential of the ethnographic techniques of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing for music education. In doing so it responds to Swanwick's (1984) critique of participant observation method by, (a) describing some of the techniques' philosophical bases, (b) citing several model ethnographies in other disciplines, and (c) reviewing some of the ethnographic research literature which, the author argues, has recognised the particular strengths and weaknesses of qualitative method and developed a strong philosophical and empirical rationale for its use. The author argues that ethnographic method has much to offer as we seek solutions to the problems of understanding music education in its social context in the late twentieth century.

This paper addresses the musical needs of people with disabilities, taking two specific issues – entitlement and access to music experience. While there are increasing examples of good practice, for various reasons the needs of many individuals and groups with special needs are not being adequately met. The argument that all people, regardless of ‘ability’, should enjoy equal access to music is fundamental to the discussion.

Whilst the roles of music providers may differ in various contexts, if disabled people are to enjoy the right to music at all levels, access from primary age through to adulthood has to be ensured. The implication for training to fulfil this need cannot be ignored.

With the introduction of the new Revised Higher Grade Examination in Music, the proposed Certificate of Sixth Year Studies in Music and the plethora of modules and short courses available from the Scottish Vocational and Educational Council and the Scottish Examination Board, teachers now have the opportunity to tailor courses to suit individual student needs. Those involved in planning have been meticulous in ensuring that performing, inventing and listening are present at all stages of certification. This ‘comprehensive musician’ approach ensures that students have breadth of experience in playing more than one instrument and that they are all involved in inventing – improvising, composing or arranging. In addition, having adopted a concept-based approach to the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, the whole process is very clearly associated with the philosophy of the ‘spiral’ curriculum.