Purpose: The aim of the article is to develop a framework for assessment for contemporary commercial music (CCM) in a music department that is still organised in a traditional way. Assessment of CCM in tertiary institutions and external graded music exams were described and analysed, followed by the presentation of an assessment framework.…

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, British punk and reggae artists united to fight racism throughout society. Young people embraced the ideology of these musical forms, and many wrote about and published their experiences with racism and the police, and their desire to change society. Children's and young adults' highly politicized writing…

The popular music performance undergraduate degree is a growing area within UK higher education. These courses carry a vocational emphasis and are popular with students looking to establish professional performing careers. As such, they are often marketed as an intermediary step towards this aspiration but, despite their popularity, there has been…

This article explores the impact of a global youth work project that aimed to engage young people in social issues through the medium of hip-hop. We discuss the literature on education for social justice and then give an overview of the hip-hop project we analysed. We go on to explore the qualitative findings, asking what practices were most…

The generation of brand new data seems to be an unwritten rule of much social research and the career field is no exception. However, in these austere economic times, we need to urgently reconsider our research norms and to think of creative ways of doing more for less. We would argue that given the "ordinariness" of the career concept…

There has been little published pedagogical research on popular music group rehearsing. This study explores the perceptions of tutors and student pop/rock bands about the rehearsals in which they were involved as a part of their university music course. The participants were 10 tutors and 16 bands from eight British tertiary institutions. Analysis…

Ensemble work is a key part of any performance-based popular music course and involves students replicating existing music or playing "covers". The creative process in popular music is a collaborative one and the ensemble workshop can be utilised to facilitate active learning and develop musical creativity within a group setting. This is…

Through an analysis of gay protest music (1975) and an educational kit for students (1978), both sponsored by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in the UK, this paper brings into focus a history of gay rights activists' efforts to marshal popular culture in the development of informal sex education for young people in the second half of the…

The disengagement of working-class boys from education continues to be a major issue in the United Kingdom; however, there has been little educational research in working-class boys' identity work surrounding learning practices where boys actively engage. This article attempts to address how identities are influenced by new literacies,…

This article responds to intermediality through a case study of an intermedial applied performance for young people. "Heterophobia," a hybrid fusion of live performance, digital technology, social media and urban street art, aimed to challenge homophobia in schools and online. Intermediality was used as a tool to enhance young people's…

In this investigative study, the authors sought to reveal the learning strategies adopted by participants as they learned to play a 12-bar improvised blues with both hands together on a musical keyboard in an e-learning environment. There were 3 participants, 2 female and 1 male. Participants' average age was 21 years. They worked individually in…

This paper explores the issue of motivation in music learning in higher education by contextualising data collected as part of the "Investigating-Musical-Performance" research project (Welch, et al., 2006-2008). The discussion begins with findings which suggest that popular, jazz and folk musicians experience more pleasure in musical…

This paper identifies and examines a textual practice of female address in music video, and considers its appeal among a social audience of female adolescents. Textual strategies that inflect, appropriate, or bypass the prevailing male adolescence discourse on the American music video channel, MTV, are presented from the standpoint of their…