This paper outlines the socio-educational contexts within which NSW regional conservatoriums operate, thereby demonstrating the breadth of their operations, as well as their existing relationships with, and activity in, rural, regional and remote (RRR) schools. The paper elucidates the socio-educational disadvantage of the schools within which…

Traditionally, pedagogical research has been child centered, where materialities often have been considered as objects and tools. However, in recent posthuman research, attempts have been made to consider human materiality combinations to have impact on pedagogical activities in preschool, but to a large extent music as an issue has been…

This article explores the possibility of conceiving preschool music activities as a way of forming spaces of participation with society's youngest. The discussion draws on Hannah Arendt's ([1958] 1998) definition of public spheres, and the argumentation is closely linked to an empirical example from musicking events with 1-3 year olds in a…

The number of professional ensembles and organizations with dedicated outreach concerts has been steadily increasing over the past decade. More recently, educational concerts pairing chamber music with young children have been documented. The work presented in this article is a study in the efficacy and feasibility of this format. Various music…

This article investigates research on early childhood development and on both listening to music and participation in music activities by young children. Research is reviewed that explores possible relationships between various music-related experiences and cognitive development, from the "Mozart Effect" studies to participation in piano lessons…

This multiple case study examined the musical experiences of five hard-of-hearing/deaf children (hearing loss ranging from 35-95 dB) and four typical-hearing children, ages 3-4. Their responses to various musical activities were observed and analysed using flow indicators. It was found that both groups of children: (1) were capable of engaging in…

We assessed whether 2 preschoolers with autism learned to discriminate between the sounds of musical instruments more rapidly than the spoken names of the instruments. After the children learned the sound-object relations more rapidly than the name-object relations, we then evaluated a prompt-delay procedure for transferring stimulus control from…

This article reports on a study of collaborative music-making on instruments among 3- and 4-year-old children. An area equipped with musical instruments was provided as a free-choice play option in an early childhood setting and a fixed camera recorded the children's play continuously during a number of visits. From the total 17 h of data five…

In this case study of the impact of professional development (PD) activities in music on staff at a childcare centre, the researcher was also the provider of PD. The needs of the staff and their preferred mode of PD delivery were negotiated with the researcher, resulting in a number of sessions where new resources and teaching ideas were modelled…