This article concerns a special learning space populated by Italians and Italian learners: the choir formed in Brisbane as a joint initiative between a community association and the Italian teaching staff at Griffith University. Our aim, in involving our students in the choir, was to bring them together with L1 speakers in an environment that…

Timing profiles of live and imagined performances were compared with the aim of creating a context-specific measure of musicians' imagery ability. Thirty-two advanced musicians completed imagery use and vividness surveys, and then gave two live and two mental performances of a two-minute musical excerpt, tapping along with the beat of the mental…

The best moments happen when students begin to realize how much power they have and use that power to create. Composing as they master different instrumental stages helps students make composition and performance a natural step in learning. A step-by-step process (rhythm notation, add pitches, copy to a five-line staff, check work, and play) keeps…

This paper explores the relationship between school music and community music in Australia. While many Australian schools and community music activities tend to exist in relative isolation from one another, a range of unique school-community collaborations can be found throughout the country. Drawing on insights from "Sound Links," one…

This article presents two case studies of marginalized youth experimenting with digital music production in flexible education settings. The cases were drawn from a 3-year study of alternative assessment in flexible learning centres for youth who have left formal schooling in Queensland, Australia. The educational issues are framed by reference to…

This article concerns children's engagement and participation in a musical dialogue, with the adult taking the role of the more-experienced participant and frames the activity as a musical play activity (in both senses of the word "play"). It presents an analysis of empirical data from a session with two six-year-old children interacting…

This paper explores the effects and problems of one highly influential default setting of the "normal style template" of music education and proposes some alternatives. These do not require abandoning all traditional templates for school music. But re-setting the default settings does depend on reconsidering the promised function of…

Extra-curricular activities have for many years been a prominent and valuable feature of UK university music departments, but the current political and economic climate poses several significant threats to their survival, including uncertain funding, demands on students’ time (including the need to undertake paid employment), and, potentially, the…

Boys seem to progress through phases in which they like to sing in early elementary school, they think that singing is for girls and, thus, unacceptable in late elementary school, and then, gradually, singing again becomes acceptable later in life. Studies speak to the difficulty that choir directors have in recruiting boys. Research shows that…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influences of presentation modes (audio and visual) on perceptions of expressive choral performance. The stimulus recording included four choral selections, each conducted by a different conductor in two ways: using expressive conducting gestures and using strict conducting gestures. Three groups of…

Primary classroom teachers can play a vital role in the music education of primary school students, providing a basis for lifelong learning in music and the arts. Research shows that not all Victorian primary school students have equitable access to music education and that the role of the classroom teacher becomes valuable in supplying or…

The purpose of the current research was to examine the effects of a sequence of classroom activities that integrated mathematics content with music elements aimed at providing teachers an alternative approach for teaching mathematics. Two classes of third grade students (n = 56) from an elementary school in the west coast of the United States…

Educated in a digital world, millennial children lack social interaction and actual hands-on activities involving tactile and kinesthetic training. To counteract this educational trend, traditional singing games that allow children to explore and make sense of their world physically can be valuable. This article introduces the traditional Javanese…

In the spring of 2009, we started a concert band programme at a high school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the fall of 2011, we returned to the school to measure the impact of participating in a concert band on the students' attitude and outlook. During our initial and return visits, we measured feelings of self-esteem, optimism, positive…

Collaboration is essential in learning ensemble music. It is unclear, however, whether an individual benefits more from collaborative or individual rehearsal in the initial stages of such learning. In nonmusical domains, the effect of collaboration has been mixed, sometimes enhancing and sometimes inhibiting an individual's learning process. In…