It might be presumed that a journal which contains the words music education in its title, might have a coherent view as to what its main topic of interest ought to be! But as we have often said in these pages, BJME is a ‘broad church’, and all sorts of interpretations of the terminology are welcomed. But sometimes, especially for students embarking on academic study of the domain, definitions can be helpful. With this in mind, let us think about what the terminology might mean nowadays.

Coming from Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Kenya, the papers in this Special Issue on Music Education in Africa cannot portray a definitive story of music education in all 54 sovereign states in the Continent, but as a first step towards understanding what matters in this region of the world, the range of topics in this issue provides us with a focal point for dialogue.

In the last editorial of the British Journal of Music Education (Fautley & Murphy, 2015) we gave some thought to the various ways in which music education manifests itself in teaching and learning situations in a variety of contexts. One of the many roles that the BJME fulfils is to document the changing nature of music education, as represented in the articles which are submitted to it, and subsequently published. But this does not mean that we should not also be asking difficult questions as to what the purposes of music education are, or might be. This is particularly the case when we consider the international nature of the readership of the BJME. What counts as music education in one national context may be very different from that which is practised elsewhere.

This paper draws on three different research projects to demonstrate the use of an expanded model of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), developed as part of a doctoral research study. The first project is an evaluation of the impacts of a Music Partnership Project within Primary and Secondary schools. The second project is an evaluation of the Good Vibrations Javanese Gamelan project in male and female prisons. The third project is an exploration of the learning processes within a Good Vibrations Javanese Gamelan Project in a young offenders' institution. CHAT provides a lens for analysing activity, placing the interactions between the individual, individual cognition and the socio-cultural environment at the heart of the analytical framework. Although a useful way of looking at activity in order to understand the individual and social processes occurring in a learning activity, criticisms of CHAT include the rigidity of the unit of analysis, its inability to view progression and transformation and the focus on one individual without taking into account the labour power that a group offers.

Contrary to government policy, schooling in Botswana remains largely teacher-centred, with music teaching being no exception. However, other possibilities for classroom dynamics arise under the pressure of practical examinations and when some students have better instrumental facility than their teachers. This article describes initial explorations into action research with music teachers in Botswana and outlines the possibilities and potential for change – both in teachers’ views of their work, and for approaches that bring students’ knowledge and skills to the forefront of music classrooms. Researcher mistakes and learning are also explored, demonstrating the need for ongoing critical reflection and adaptation in this complex setting.

This paper explores teachers’ and students’ perceptions of one-to-one pedagogy, in the context of tertiary vocal and instrumental tuition. Teachers and students at one Australian conservatoire participated in interviews and focus groups that explored their experiences and perceptions on the nature, value, effectiveness and challenges of one-to-one learning and teaching. Four key themes emerged: customising teaching to the learner, the teacher–student relationship, negotiating issues of student dependency versus self-sufficiency, and situating one-to-one in a broader institutional context. Aside from an undisputed view that one-to-one is essential to students’ learning and development, findings indicate diverse perceptions, including discrepancies between intentions of teachers and their pedagogical practice, and between teacher practice and student expectations. By drawing on voices ‘from the inside’ to characterise one-to-one practice, the study contributes to evidence-based research about learning and teaching in the conservatoire environment.

Instrumental teachers in higher music education in Norway and elsewhere traditionally organise their teaching as individual lessons with one teacher and one student. This paper takes a closer look at how a horn teacher at the Norwegian Academy of Music has organised her weekly teaching in individual, small group and master class lessons with all her students. The project being described in the paper has since been extended to other instruments, but this paper concentrates on the horn model. The main focus is on small group lessons where the students themselves play and comment on fellow students’ performances. The evidence suggests that a combination of teaching in individual, small group and master class lessons is the best way of educating students as responsible, reflective and professional musicians.

This study sought to examine the quality of teaching practice (TP) mentoring in the teaching of music at primary school level through the distance mode of training at one college of education in Zimbabwe. The study examined the experiences and perceptions of lecturers and student teachers on TP mentoring in music within the context of a distance mode of teacher training. A purposive sample of 17 music student teachers and 11 lecturers was selected. The study employed a qualitative case study research design in which one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions and documentary analysis were used to collect data. The main conclusion from the study was that the distance approach to teacher training was not effectively utilised for teacher preparation in music due to inadequate music knowledge and skills of mentor teachers as well as weaknesses of the school curriculum. Recommendations drawn from these conclusions are that the teaching practice period should not be the same for all subjects and more demanding subjects such as music deserve to be practiced more. Student teachers specialising in music must be placed for teaching practice where there are music specialist teachers. This study also recommends that the placement of music student teachers for teaching practice be undertaken jointly by the teaching practice coordinators and the music specialist lecturer.

The issue of music teacher training for primary generalist teachers is shared by many countries in the world. We know from a range of studies which factors contribute to teachers’ abilities and confidence, but there are fewer studies that document the possible training approaches and interventions that might improve the outcomes. This article describes an international educational experience addressed to 23 trainee primary teachers coming from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovenia. The Intensive Programme1 called ‘International Summer School in Educating Music Teachers’ (ISSEMT) was offered at Padova University, Italy with the purpose of fostering confidence and competences among trainee generalist teachers for teaching music in the primary school. In planning the didactic approach of the ISSEMT, methods designed to enhance participants’ understandings of teaching creatively and teaching for creativity were adopted. The entire educational activity was evaluated by students using questionnaires and discussion. In addition, a follow-up interview was conducted with students after two years and five months, at the end of the ISSEMT. Students refer to the improvement of confidence in teaching music and the application of a creative approach. They appreciated the approach, the practical teaching ideas and the way the course closely related to their educational needs. These results are discussed in the framework of confidence development of the generalist teacher in the primary school for teaching music. The key factors that contributed to the effectiveness of the ISSEMT are also discussed.

Generalist educators in South Africa shy away from music in the subjects Life Skills (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art, Physical Education and Personal and Social Well-being) and Creative Arts (Dance, Drama, Music, Visual Art) and universities are not delivering generalist students for the subject demands. In-service educators, as well as subject advisors, often have had no music training. The twofold purpose of this study was to determine the extent of challenges experienced in the music component of Life Skills and Creative Arts in South Africa and how this can best be dealt with. In the current study, mixed methods research was conducted to ascertain the problems experienced with music tuition in Life Skills and Creative Arts classrooms. It was found that generalist educators have to teach music, whether they have the requisite skills or not. The subject has low status and is frequently used as a filler subject for teachers. Lack of music knowledge, scarce resources, limited support and ever-changing educators are some reasons for the absence of quality music tuition. Mentoring by competent subject advisors and senior educators and the re-alignment of school and university curricula will assist music in enjoying its rightful place in the school curriculum.

This study uses observations and interviews to investigate how the leadership at three Swedish preschools in Sweden has impacted the didactic choices made. Two of these preschools use music as a tool for stimulating language and social development, while the third preschool serves as a comparison. The inspiration that the leadership has brought to each institution is of crucial importance to incorporating music and other activities into the everyday work. This influence has been both restrictive and supportive. Music is said to function as a teaching tool, while other functions remain in the background. This contradiction and its implications are discussed, and it is argued that further training should include developing the teachers’ musical-didactic awareness. Principals are most certainly role models at preschools and need to be aware of it.

This study analyses 10 Swedish music teachers’ descriptions of how a new music syllabus and a new credit scale have influenced their practice. In the new curriculum, grading is introduced in year 6 and not, as previously, in year 8. We have therefore focused on the effects of this change on school years 5–7. The new syllabus is much more precise and explicit than the earlier one, and it is reported to have strongly affected both teachers’ and pupils’ work in the classroom. Teachers are facing a number of dilemmas when trying to combine the demands of the syllabus with their conceptions of quality in music education.

The purpose of this study was to validate a measure of creative identity with a population of pre-service teachers in the USA, to further validate the measure with a Finnish population, and to compare both populations regarding their perceptions of themselves as creative musicians. The researcher developed a tool, the Creative Identity Measure (CIM), based on the work of Isbell (2007) to examine this area. The specific research questions were as follows: 1. What factors can explain creative identity in music? 2. What is the internal consistency within the factors that explain creative identity in music? 3. Do differences exist between the two populations with regard to each sub-scale? Results of factor analysis reveal that the CIM can be meaningfully divided into four sub-scales with a US population (n = 159) and a combined US and Finland population (n = 277). Significant differences were discovered for sub-scales one (Creative Music Making Self-Efficacy), two (Value of Creative Musicianship Areas), and four (Value of Popular-Music Making/Listening in the Classroom), suggesting that the Finnish pre-service music teachers possess a stronger creative identity than their contemporaries from the USA. Significant differences were not found for sub-scale three (Willingness to Allow for Creativity in the Classroom), suggesting that both populations of pre-service music teachers are equally willing to allow time for creativity.

The history of music in Ghanaian school programmes can hardly be separated from the general history of education in Ghana. Since the time of colonial administration in Ghana, music (especially as manifested through singing) has formed part of the educational curriculum for different reasons, one being a tool for promoting the culture of the colonialists. Several advances (particularly after independence in Ghana) have been made to incorporate aspects of the Ghanaian culture into the educational curriculum. Over 50 years down the line, what is the extent to which Ghanaian (African) music is studied in Ghanaian schools? In this paper, the extent to which African music is taught in African (Ghanaian) universities is analysed by looking at the undergraduate music course content of two Ghanaian public universities. Although African music is taught, it only forms an infinitesimal proportion of the total music courses that are offered to music students in these two universities. Considering that the process of music education is also a process of enculturation, the concluding recommendation is that although a multicultural music programme is necessary, the teaching of African (Ghanaian) music in Ghanaian universities should be the dominant feature.

Musicians are acknowledged to lead complex working lives, often characterised as portfolio careers. The higher music education research literature has tended to focus on preparing students for rich working lives and multiple identity realisations across potential roles. Extant literature does not address the area of work-life balance, which this paper begins to explore, as the authors seek to better understand potential challenges around combining music graduates' multivariate ambitions, commitments and identities as musicians in the world. Rich data are presented, following interviews with professional musicians in London, UK, discussing health, portfolio careers and family. The authors conclude that more research is required to gain a deeper understanding of work-life balance for musicians, and that pedagogical approaches in higher music education could more effectively help students to prepare for their futures in a more holistic way.

In the Republic of Kenya, song is widely used to enhance the whole curriculum in lower primary classes. Song is used especially to aid recall and therefore teachers adapt tunes that children already know, inserting relevant words from the subject at hand. Despite this widespread practice, this form of singing in schools is not recognised by the same teachers as music training in the classroom, and so little, if any, effort is put into the actual music production. Teachers do not attend to the sound of the music, as the intention is to capture facts about various things, including the soil, the weather, numbers etc. and present them in a way that the young learners will quickly remember. This paper interrogates the process that 6–8-year-old children underwent as they moved from using song to learn facts (singing to learn), to developing multiple musical abilities and capacities (learning to sing), through participation in the Music for Literacy Development (MLD)1 project in selected schools in the Nyanza region of Kenya.

Effective teaching in a music conservatoire needs a continual quest to find new and better ways of delivering excellence. The challenge is to keep the work innovative. In this article I argue that, for a classical musician the communication of personality is a vital component of excellence in performance and I give reasons why an authentic, confident personality should be nurtured as part of conservatoire training. I also examine in detail one approach to this issue that I explored in my action-based research and teaching at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama: that is the practice of music students learning certain acting techniques and collaborating with actors (drama students) on specific projects that were designed to widen the musicians' range of expression. The article focuses on a two-year study which involved musicians working alongside actors on two devised performance projects: Storytelling and Circus. It describes the process in which the musicians were prepared for the eventual performances. I set out to explore exactly what musicians could learn from working with actors and what impact this might have on their normal sphere of performance. The projects demonstrated that, even a year later, some of the musicians manifested noticeable benefits in their mainstream playing, including greater levels of confidence, creativity and presence. The article also discusses some of the difficulties and shortcomings of this approach.

The binary opposition between ‘own music’ and ‘other's music’ is the ‘result of deep conditioning’ (Drummond, 2010, p. 118) and is almost impossible to overcome.

By exploring the underlying constructs that influence students’ and teachers’ perceptions of minority cultures and their musics, this paper explores the notion of ‘the other’ in Australian music education. In particular, how the many factors which play a role in cultural identity serve to both promote and prevent musical understanding and appreciation. An examination of Australian multicultural policy and music curriculum documents in the state of Queensland provides a foundation for the discussion of data obtained from interviews with teachers from state and private primary schools in the capital Brisbane. The results reveal that while music educators are generally inquisitive about incorporating musics of ‘other’ cultures into their lessons, they are less comfortable with crossing cultural boundaries, and do not wish to threaten the position of Australia's own musical culture – ultimately highlighting a disconnect between policy, rhetoric and practice in the area of culturally diverse music education in classrooms today.

This article reports analysis of interviews with 85 boys from England, Greece, Ireland and Spain about the voice change, school singing and choral music instruction. Consistent, former and self-described non-singers were included. Data suggest consistency with much of the existing narrative literature about the experience of voice change. Unique topics included a sense of identity loss during voice change. Issues related to gender and sexuality-based bullying were explored. Boys offered numerous recommendations for teachers, including that teachers focus on vocal technique specific to male changing voices. Boys’ comments suggested a pattern of identity development consistent with the Possible Selves construct. This suggests that teachers can support adolescent male singers by addressing specific issues at specific points in a boy's process of voice change and identity development.

This paper reports the development and implementation of a unique Mindfulness for Singers (MfS) course designed to improve singers' vocal technique. Eight university students completed the intervention. Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) scores showed general improvement across all five facets of mindfulness. Qualitative results showed benefits of daily mindfulness exercises on breathing, micro-muscular awareness, vocal tone, text communication and problem solving. Exercises also positively affected teacher/pupil relationships, concentration and focus in lessons and practice. Teachers identified six of the eight participants in a blind controlled study indicating that vocal students at any level would benefit greatly from a mindfulness course as a holistic intervention.