Jazz arrived in mainland China as early as the 1920s. It has since been a popular music genre among the middle and upper classes. Similar to that in the West, jazz education in China has been increasingly formalized, with a growing number of universities and academies offering jazz degree programs or courses. Despite a few studies on jazz and its…

This article is a multiple case study of policy in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Both cities have developed programs that utilize government funding to increase access to public school K-5 arts education. While each city used a different path for advocacy and policy change, there were common threads that could be used as a framework…

While Instrumental Music Education (IME) is offered to students in most developed countries, its rationale and implementation differ significantly due to the sociocultural values and expectations of each society, which tend to remain implicit within educational policies. In this article, we argue that each society should be fully aware of the…

The past two decades have seen a growing de-professionalization of teaching. Combating this educational climate requires music teacher education programs to prioritize both critical pedagogical practices and policy knowhow in order to reestablish a focus on relational engagements and the navigation of the complex tensions lived daily in schools.…

The purpose of this study was to conduct an evaluation of the pilot program of the Turnaround Arts reform using a comparative interrupted time series design. Because the only existing evaluation of the Turnaround Arts pilot program lacks clarity and transparency, reanalyzing this program is important to understand the effects of the initiative. I…

In England, there is a National Curriculum in place which is intended to outline what will be taught and learned in each of the required subjects in state schools, music being one of these subjects. However, for some years, a right-wing conservative government has been working on systemic change, which removes many schools from state control and…

Though one of the first disciplines to incorporate national standards in its curricula, the field of music education has not traditionally shown much consistency in its assessments, with disparities in priorities on both local and national levels. Schools often allow teachers the freedom to cover whichever content standards they choose, whether…

This study examines the underpinnings of Japan's "programming education" in elementary school music, officially implemented nationwide in 2020. Through that reform, which has introduced "programming thinking" (a local version of computational thinking) in all areas of compulsory education, the country follows the international…

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic moved American schools to a distance learning modality for the duration of the school year. In an effort to document, examine, and learn from the various "stages" of this pandemic, the purpose of this paper was to describe the spring 2020 move to distance learning and how the policies put in…

Transmitting traditional music for sustainability has been a common theme in global music education. Recently, the school systems of Hong Kong and Guangdong have been encouraged by governmental authorities to teach Cantonese opera aiming at enhancing the sustainability of the genre and promote a Chinese cultural identity within students. This…

The purpose of this study was to examine music teachers' perceptions and implementations of restorative justice practices in their classrooms. I collected data through a survey of music teachers (N = 1,658) in a Mid-Atlantic state that requires restorative justice practices to be used as a school-wide discipline method in all public schools. The…

The purpose of this quality improvement project was to examine a newly-implemented music admissions assessment process at a small liberal arts university and students' perceptions of that process, which was intended to provide a holistic view of prospective students' pre-admission achievement and to offer feedback regarding their readiness and…

This position paper aims to raise awareness among educational policymakers, teacher educators, and school leaders around the world about the urgent need to better prepare Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers in music education. Most countries fail to sufficiently train teachers to meet the music-related expectations of contemporary ECE…

In this paper, we discuss a perennial question in the field of music teacher education: is school music education better served with generalist or specialist teachers? To answer this question, we discuss the educational policy reforms implemented in two African countries, Uganda and South Africa, and in Spain as well. We also discuss how teacher…

In this article, we apply the concept of systemness to music and arts teacher professional development (PD), arguing that to address perennial issues of access and scale, PD policy should be understood as a systems issue. Using systems theory as a lens and the robust and integrated PD system in Singapore as an exemplar, we address the following…