Moving back through Dewey, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Rousseau, the lineage of Western music education finds its origins in Plato and Pythagoras. Yet theories not rooted in the ancient Greek tradition are all but absent. A Way of Music Education provides a much-needed intervention, integrating ancient Chinese thought into the canon of music education in a structured, systematized, and philosophical way. The book's three central sources - the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Confucianism, and Daoism - inform author C. Victor Fung's argument: that the human being exists as an entity at the center of an organismic world in which all things and events, including music and music education, are connected. Fung ultimately proposes a new educational philosophy based on three key ideas in Chinese thought: change, balance, and liberation. A unique work, A Way of Music Education offers a universal approach engrained in a specific and ancient cultural tradition.

Based on topics that frame the debate about the future of professional music education, this book explores the issues that music teachers must confront in a rapidly shifting educational landscape. The book aims to challenge thought and change minds. It presents a star cast of internationally prominent thinkers in and beyond music education. These thinkers deliberately challenge many time-worn traditions in music education with regard to musicianship, culture and society, leadership, institutions, interdisciplinarity, research and theory, and curriculum. This is the first book to confront these issues in this way. This unique book has emerged from fifteen years of international dialog by The MayDay Group, an organization of more than 250 music educators from over 20 countries who meet yearly to confront issues in music teaching and learning.

Popular musicians acquire some or all of their skills and knowledge informally, outside school or university, and with little help from trained instrumental teachers. How do they go about this process? Despite the fact that popular music has recently entered formal music education, we have as yet a limited understanding of the learning practices adopted by its musicians. Nor do we know why so many popular musicians in the past turned away from music education, or how young popular musicians today are responding to it. Drawing on a series of interviews with musicians aged between fifteen and fifty, Lucy Green explores the nature of pop musicians' informal learning practices, attitudes and values, the extent to which these altered over the last forty years, and the experiences of the musicians in formal music education. Through a comparison of the characteristics of informal pop music learning with those of more formal music education, the book offers insights into how we might re-invigorate the musical involvement of the population. Could the creation of a teaching culture that recognizes and rewards aural imitation, improvisation and experimentation, as well as commitment and passion, encourage more people to make music? Since the hardback publication of this book in 2001, the author has explored many of its themes through practical work in school classrooms. Her follow-up book, Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (2008) appears in the same Ashgate series.

Culturally Responsive Teaching in Music Education presents teaching methods that are responsive to how different culturally specific knowledge bases impact learning. It is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students’ cultural references in all aspects of learning. Designed to be a supplementary resource for teachers of undergraduate and graduate music education courses, the book provides examples in the context of music education, with theories presented in Section I and a review of teaching applications in Section II. Culturally Responsive Teaching in Music Education is an effort to answer the question: How can I teach music to my students in a way that is culturally responsive? This book serves several purposes, by: • Offering theoretical/philosophical frameworks of social justice • Providing practical examples of transferring theory into practice in music education • Illustrating culturally responsive pedagogy within the classroom • Demonstrating the connection of culturally responsive teaching to the school and larger community

In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education, editors Wayne D. Bowman and Ana Lucia Frega have drawn together a variety of philosophical perspectives from the profession's most exciting scholars from all over the world. Rather than relegating philosophical inquiry to moot questions and abstract situations, the contributors to this volume address everyday concerns faced by music educators everywhere. Emphasizing clarity, fairness, rigour, and utility above all, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education will challenge music educators all over the world to make their own decisions and ultimately contribute to the conversation themselves.

Children are inherently musical. They respond to music and learn through music. Music expresses children's identity and heritage, teaches them to belong to a culture, and develops their cognitive well-being and inner self worth. As professional instructors, childcare workers, or students looking forward to a career working with children, we should continuously search for ways to tap into children's natural reservoir of enthusiasm for singing, moving and experimenting with instruments. But how, you might ask? What music is appropriate for the children I'm working with? How can music help inspire a well-rounded child? How do I reach and teach children musically? Most importantly perhaps, how can I incorporate music into a curriculum that marginalizes the arts?This book explores a holistic, artistic, and integrated approach to understanding the developmental connections between music and children. This book guides professionals to work through music, harnessing the processes that underlie music learning, and outlining developmentally appropriate methods to understand the role of music in children's lives through play, games, creativity, and movement. Additionally, the book explores ways of applying music-making to benefit the whole child, i.e., socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, and linguistically.