Research involving the learning processes of musicians seldom examines specific pieces of music, and limited attention has been devoted to the earliest stages of learning a stylistically challenging or new piece of 20th-/21st-century art music. This article describes the processes by which two pianists (the authors) learned Ross Edwards's…

The Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) has completed an analysis of the performance of students who participated in the Teamwork USA Program, administered in FY2014 at three District schools. Teamwork USA hopes to improve student achievement at select Title I elementary schools via its Instrumental Music Program grant. This memorandum to…

Creating an online music course afforded developers at Ocean County College an opportunity to build learner-centered, media-rich lessons and assessments. Guided by constructivist learning theory and using free resources, Music Fundamentals was designed to introduce students to music notation while demonstrating real-world application of concepts.…

Choral music educators can purposefully create a learning environment that helps minimize the anxieties of young singers. According to Parker Palmer, "to teach is to create a space" that possesses three qualities: hospitality, openness, and boundaries. Choral music educators can influence these characteristics by applying five strategies…

While improvisation in K-12 schools in the USA has gained some traction since the inception of the US National Standards in 1994, there is still a dearth of improvisation activities in schools because of the lack of music teacher preparation in improvisation. The purpose of this study was to determine if providing group free improvisation…

While there is an established body of literature on teacher stress and on the factors that may make music teaching uniquely stressful, there has been little or no research on how the recent era of accountability influences music teacher stress. In this article, I review the literature on music teacher stress and on how accountability reforms may…

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the nature of a young child's engagement in an individual music lesson setting based on principles of informal learning. The informal educational space allowed the child to observe, explore, and interact with a musical environment as a process of enculturation and development (Gordon, 2013;…

Although there is now an accepted need for initiatives that support older people's well-being, little attention has been paid to the role of those facilitating such activities. This research explored the benefits and challenges for those working in facilitating musical activities with older people. The research was undertaken at three UK case…

This article focuses on the El Sistema programme, which started up in Sweden in 2010 with the objective to deal with segregation problems typical for Swedish urban areas. The purpose of the article is to examine how promoting integration through music and music education is constructed within El Sistema as a way to help children growing up in…

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it outlines an author-developed school orchestra model. Second, it describes students' perceptions of their orchestra experiences after model implementation in terms of program satisfaction, personal and social experiences, and learning motivation. The orchestra program was implemented in 77 elementary…

Technology is constantly changing, and it can be challenging to move beyond the "bells and whistles" of a new app or piece of software to confirm worthiness for classroom use. This article explores the balance point between technology use and more traditional modalities in the music classroom.

The Luther College Concert Band has enjoyed nearly 150 years of success. International tours, regional tours, concerts, service to the college and recording projects aided the success of this small college band that retained its Lutheran, liberal arts identity. Published documents exist about the Luther College band before 1948 but no…

Schools in rural South Australia are remote from opportunities for students and teachers to engage in music learning and professional development. This aim of this research project was to investigate the degree to which partnerships between rural schools and non-government organisations (NGOs) can be effective and meet this need. Anderson and…

The music industry is built on a system of expert evaluation focused on sound, but the foundations are challenged by recent research, which suggests that sight trumps sound. This presents a challenge to music educators, who train the next generation of expert performers and listeners. The aim of this study is to investigate students' perceptions…

This article investigates the perspectives of seven adolescent Latinx students in relation to being bilingual and bicultural, and to their former K-8 elementary school, which offered a variety of culturally sustaining practices, including campus-wide use of both Spanish and English and a dual language program. Within this qualitative case study,…