Debates in Music Teaching: (Debates in Subject Teaching)

Debates in Music Teaching encourages both graduate and postgraduate students and practising teachers to engage with contemporary issues and developments in music education. It introduces a critical approach to the central concepts and practices that have influenced major interventions and initiatives in music teaching and supports the development of new ways of looking at ideas around teaching and learning in music.

Bringing together leading international experts, the chapters consider key issues in music education alongside reflective questions to help shape research and writing. This second edition has been fully updated to reflect the latest debates in the field including:

• the justification for music in the school curriculum
• music education and cognitive psychology
• the nature of musical knowledge
• addressing decolonisation
• partnerships in music education
• the nature of musical development
• social justice and music education
• the place of diverse musical genres and traditions in the music curriculum
• pedagogies of composing
• environmentally sustainable practices for teaching music with technology
• the professional journeys and identity of music teachers

Written to help readers to form their own personal philosophy of music education and stimulate critical and creative thinking, Debates in Music Teaching is essential reading for all student and practising music teachers.

Part 1 Philosophical, musicological, and epistemological foundations

1. What can a reflexive teacher learn from philosophies of music education? Towards a responsible personal philosophy

Heidi Westerlund

2. The justification for music in the curriculum

Chris Philpott

3. Why knowledge matters in music education: a social realist explanation

Graham McPhail

4. Creativity, culture, and the practice of music education

John Finney

5. Reframing music education through the lens of musical vulnerability

Elizabeth MacGregor

Part 2 Policy, politics, and ideology

6. Policy into practice: re-centring critical thinking and collaboration

Ann-Marie Argyropulo-Palmer and Martin Fautley

7. From epistemic injustice towards epistemic agency in the music classroom

Gary Spruce

8. Addressing colonialism in music education – cultural humility as a way forward

Beth Tuinstra

9. Music education and cognitive psychology: a critical perspective

Susan Young

Part 3 Curriculum, progression, and musical development

10. A music curriculum renewed: classroom curriculum models of constraint or liberation?

Anthony Anderson

11. Musical meaning as powerful knowledge

Chris Philpott

12. Conceptions of children’s musical development

Susan Young

Part 4 Pedagogy and assessment

13. Assessment and pedagogy

Nikki Booth and Martin Fautley

14. Performing: identity, ideology, and pedagogy in the music classroom

James Leveridge and Chris Philpott

15. Pedagogies of composing

Kirsty Devaney

16. Musical knowledge, critical consciousness, and critical thinking

Gary Spruce

17. Music education in Pupil Referral Units

Phil Mullen

18. Co-constructing learning cultures within music education partnerships

Emma Nenadic

Part 5 Emerging perspectives

19. (Re)hearing and (re)seeing what happens in music education: re-storying music education with posthumanism

Carolyn Cooke

20. Towards environmentally sustainable practices for teaching music with technology

Ross Purves and Evangelos Himonides

21. The professional journeys of music teachers

Anna Mariguddi

Chris Philpott is an emeritus reader in Music Education at the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom.

Gary Spruce is a visiting lecturer in Music Education at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom.