Music education has faced considerable challenges in trying to bridge the gap between music in young people's lives and that taking place in the classroom. The "Musical Futures" (MF) initiative aimed to devise new and imaginative ways of engaging young people, aged 11-19, in music activities through a process of informal learning based…

Informal pedagogies are a subject of debate in music education, and there is some evidence of teachers abandoning formal pedagogies in favour of informal ones. This article presents a case of one teacher's formal pedagogy and theorises it by comparing it with a case of informal pedagogy. The comparison reveals affordances of formal pedagogies…

There has been an ongoing tendency, taking place in the Scandinavian countries from the late 1970s onwards, to expand the repertoires and resources of music as an educational matter, an academic field, as well as an area for support and funding from cultural authorities, organisations and institutions. Here, popular music, jazz, folk music and…

Literature reviews suggest that traditional approaches in folk music education are not necessarily compatible with the conventions of formal music education. Whilst many recent studies have tended to define these non-classical music learning contexts as "informal", the practice of folk transmission music appears to be much more complex…

In Wales, one of the seven core aims of the Welsh Government is the importance of allowing the voices of young people to be heard. This investigation placed pupil voice at its centre, exploring the impact of "Musical Futures" during the 2011-2012 pilot in three schools in Wales. Semi-structured interviews with focus groups of six to…

Despite the growth in number and popularity of collegiate a cappella ensembles in the USA over the past 20 years, few researchers have studied these self-governed, student-run, popular music ensembles. This ethnographic case study examined the music making and culture of the "Accafellows", an all-male a cappella group at a mid-western…

In this keynote, the author discusses dichotomies having to do with: (1) technology/digital proponents versus non-technology/analogue proponents; (2) a formal/formalist position versus an informal/informalist position; and (3) educator/teacher views versus artist/musician views. The author often wonders what the essence of these dichotomies are,…

In addressing the question-set "What questions do music education researchers need to address?", an illustrative list of juxtaposed descriptive and normative questions is sketched as follows: What are and should be the dimensions of music education? What are and should be the institutional agencies of music education? What are and should be the…

This paper examines some personal and interpersonal issues concerning group work and informal learning in the music classroom. It analyses data from a recent research project, which adopted and adapted the informal music learning practices of popular musicians, for use in the classroom. The discussion focuses on three aspects of the project.…

In this paper, the authors focus on informal learning as it is situated in and derived from everyday life experience (Lave, 1988; Lave and Wenger, 1991). Their concern is with informal musical learning and its link to health, well-being and the care of self, an area that has already received some attention from research in music therapy,…

The study of informal musical learning outside institutional settings, such as schools, has proved to contribute important knowledge to aspects of music education. Hip-hop, as an example of informal musical learning, has so far been quite an unexplored field for research. The present study investigates music creation within two hip-hop groups (…

Most research in music education has so far dealt with music training in institutional settings, such as schools, and is accordingly based, either implicitly or explicitly, on the assumption that musical learning results from a sequenced, methodical exposure to music teaching within a formal setting. However, in order to realise and understand the…