The aim of this paper is to define music appraisal and to explore the role that talk plays in the process of helping pupils in secondary school music lessons to develop their appraisal skills. This paper offers a definition of appraisal, and traces its developing role in the National Curriculum in England since the early 1990s. The role of…

This article investigates computer-based music composition using the CD Rom "Dance eJay" with pupils from a secondary school setting (13-15 years). Three issues are explored: the extent to which participants adopted different strategies during the composition process, how the strategies differed with respect to prior experience of formal…

Facing the ambiguous status of in-school music literacy, this follow-up eight-year study aims to touch on the effects of traditional staff notation (SN) learning on student's intuitive symbolizing behavior and musical perception. Subjects were 47 second-graders attending a religious Jewish school in Israel. One "pre-literate" meeting, in…

Although music was established as a compulsory subject in Spain by the 1990 constructivist reform, the 2002 counter-reform restricted it to lists of concepts, in a renewed encyclopaedist model for secondary schools that ignored authentic musical procedures, such as performing or composing. Contemporary adolescents, accustomed to the transmission…

Much composing that takes place in the lower secondary school is undertaken as a group activity. This paper investigates what is involved when pupils work in this way, and offers a model of processes and phases, which can be used to account for group composing. The model describes what is taking place, and charts the ways in which groups of pupils…

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…

This article is taken from doctoral research which sought to discover the nature of teachers' pedagogy in the primary school classroom by looking at their understanding of the teaching of composing, their approach to lesson design and organisation, and the way these are reflected in their practice. Specific examples of six case studies involving…

Today's children live in a world where music in all its different forms has become a significant factor in their everyday life. This article describes a 2-year empirical study of nine 8-year-old Swedish children creating music with synthesiser and computer software. The aim of the study is to describe and clarify the creative processes of…

"Sound2Picture" (www.sound2picture.net) is the latest stage in a series of research and development projects being conducted at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). It documents the work of one sound designer who demonstrated a host of new skills and imaginative practices with hardware and software. The article shares aspects of…