Update: Applications of Research in Music Education is a publication of MENC: The National Association for Music Education that features articles of interest to music teachers at all levels. Articles in Update focus on the interpretation of research and its application in the classroom. Both reviews of the literature and findings of individual studies are presented in the journal, without research terminology or jargon. Anyone interested in the application of research in music education is invited to become an MENC member and access this journal online at www.MENC.org.

Update: Applications of Research in Music Education is a publication of MENC: The National Association for Music Education that features articles of interest to music teachers at all levels. Articles in Update focus on the interpretation of research and its application in the classroom. Both reviews of the literature and findings of individual studies are presented in the journal, without research terminology or jargon. Anyone interested in the application of research in music education is invited to become an MENC member and access this journal online at www.MENC.org.

The MENC Handbook of Research on Music Learning, Volume 2: Applications brings together the best and most current research on best practice for music learning, focusing squarely on the profession's empirical and conceptual knowledge of how students gain competence in music at various ages and in different contexts. The collection of chapters, written by the foremost figures active in the field, addresses a range of best practices for approaching current and important areas in the field, including cognition and perception, music listening, vocal/choral learning, and the needs of special learners. The book's companion volume, Strategies, provides the solid theoretical framework and extensive research upon which these practices stand. Throughout both volumes in this essential set, focus is placed on the musical knowledge and musical skills needed to perform, create, understand, reflect on, enjoy, value, and respond to music. A key point of emphasis rests on the relationship between music learning and finding meaning in music, and as music technology plays an increasingly important role in learning today, chapters move beyond exclusively formal classroom instruction into other forms of systematic learning and informal instruction. Either individually or paired with its companion Volume 1: Strategies, this indispensable overview of this growing area of inquiry will appeal to students and scholars in Music Education, as well as front-line music educators in the classroom.

For decades, scholars in the field of music education have recognized the need for growth and change in our approach to teaching music, yet despite these calls for change, the music education curriculum today remains remarkably similar to that of a century ago. Points of Disruption in the Music Education Curriculum, Volume 2: Individual Changes is one of two volumes that bring together applied suggestions, analyses, and best practices for disrupting cycles of replication in the curriculum of K-12 and collegiate music education programs in the United States and beyond, considering disruption as a force for positive change. Identifying specific strategies for interrupting or reimagining traditional practices, the contributors provide music teachers and music educators with a variety of potential practical approaches to creating changes that foster a better musical education at all levels of the curriculum. This second volume focuses on changes that can be implemented by individual educators, covering topics including transcultural approaches, student-teacher power relations, methods courses, integrated music education, and administrator support of teacher agency, student–teacher power relations, and reimagining music education. Bringing together 6 thought-provoking chapters, this book offers a diverse set of concrete strategies that will be useful to a wide range of music education stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, and curriculum designers.