While this Chapter is chiefly concerned with the current state of Music Education in one particular country, with a long tradition of professional Music Education, the material for discussion cannot of course be isolated from wider trends and patterns in Music Education internationally.
As has been argued above, contemporary society represents a new wave of rapid technological development and innovation in human affairs. This has created greater opportunities for revealing and experiencing creativity in new forms that can then underpin enhanced states of human welfare. At the same time, these far-reaching changes have in many instances become threats to human wellbeing, resulting from the dislocating social and emotional impact of new ways of living. Despite the positive effects of improvement and development, negative consequences have arisen such as dehumanisation due to the atomisation, for many, of modern life, and the troubling spectacle of increased rates of mental health problems among the young (Mulraney et al, 2019). Another negative influence is a widening gap in wealth and power and between rich and poor in this particularly vociferous period of global capitalism. Rich people enjoy their lives and their affluent cultural pursuits, whereas working class people still strive internationally even to sustain their lives (Seligson, 2019).
Other features of current society have brought new requirements and challenges associated with the dominant philosophies and ideologies of our time––some of these are beneficial and some manifestly deleterious. In line with increased individualisation, maintaining respect for human dignity and equality has become an important issue. First, in contemporary society, which has indeed brought development and improvement to the lives of many in terms of materials and wealth, individuals and communities aim for the fulfilment of not only basic desires (the lower hierarchies in the famous Maslow’s Pyramid) and requirements for survival, but also in relation to those factors that enable better states of being (the higher hierarchies in Maslow’s pyramids). With the increased interest in happiness and wellbeing (especially in advanced economies), individual psychology has drawn more interest, alongside an increased popularity of counselling and self-help books (Kirby, 2019). At the
same time, it has become a defining feature of some influential democracies to aim resolutely for greater equality between different groups of people, including the poor and disabled, and to strengthen respect for, especially, children as a key signifier of a civilized society. These value changes have been reflected no more obviously than in the domain and the methods of popular education and its pedagogies (Allen, 2016).
Again as noted earlier in this study, consistent with these more benign and enlightened features of contemporary society, arts education has attracted much more attention, and the role of arts education in schools and communities is being reassessed to reflect the complex changes in current society and to nurture new ways of flourishing within it in terms of philosophy, policy and curriculum. As part of these vital and large-scale shifts in arts education, several notable developments have occurred in the field of Music Education specifically.
First of all, it is interesting to note that some major themes have their roots in those that first appeared in the immediate post-war period but which are now evolving to a much higher degree of sophistication. Music Education is being affected by economic improvement and technological developments that have democratised and enabled easier accesses to music and music-making. These changes have broadened and diversified the range and types of audiences, and widened the spectrum of repertoires, with, particularly, more interest in popular music and its locus in young people’s cultures (Carson et al., 2016).
Secondly, Music Education is being affected dramatically by globalisation. The music curriculum in many nations now routinely includes learning about music in other cultures, while also emphasising ethnic or indigenous music to increase awareness of pupils’ national and regional identities (e. g., Kertz-Welzel, 2016). These are having a profound impact on the multiplying forms of musical repertoires in education, deepening interest in both traditional-native musics and unfamiliar or previously little known ones (Green, 2002).
Finally, in line with increased interest in health and wellbeing, and the growing field of music therapy as an industry and a practice, Music Education is increasingly being expected to play a role for extra-musical purposes. With the premise that music can ‘influence’ people (for good or ill, of course), the affect of music has been discussed widely with its repercussions related to changes in various disciplines discussed in the previous chapter––such as the emotional, social, psychological and scientific domains. It is being emphasized that we must
not only teach musical skills but also consider those same effects with the precision and awareness we bring to traditional music-making and appreciation themselves (Hoffer, 2017). Music is being implemented in other subjects as a tool for facilitating the development of other proficiencies, e. g., memorisation, counting, and wider socialisation, solidarity and bonding efforts across e. g., school assemblies or other events (Swanwick, 2017)
Covering all these features, in contemporary Music Education, in line with the striated condition of today’s society, the essentially participatory nature of education and its practical pedagogical activities is being underlined. As people are increasingly interacting with music in participatory ways that involve e. g., digital technologies, the ‘convergence of older and newer media and such engagement as remixing, creating mash-ups, and interacting with others’, these new elements are providing pupils ‘with exciting means of connecting to ways of being musical in contemporary society’ (Tobias, 2013, p. 29). Applying ‘participatory culture’ and emerging musical practices in school music programs calls for expanding and diversifying from a model where music is interpreted by music educators and rehearsed and performed by students to a more open process where young people interpret, analyse, transform, and perform works in ways that might not have been intended by the original creator (Tobias, 2013, p. 31-32). Furthermore, while describing optimal teaching and learning factors for musical performances, Correa (2017) insists that rather than only focusing on technique (e. g., Karlsson and Juslin, 2008), paying attention to expressions and emotions can foster performance skills (e. g., Woody and McPherson, 2010). Hence emphasizing an appropriate environment for musical experiences will contribute to personal and professional development more broadly in schools.
All of these issues are illuminated and debated keenly in the philosophy and methods of teaching in modern Music Education. In philosophical terms––as discussed in the opening chapter of this thesis examining creativity and creative practice in Music Education––child- centredness, play, and learner-inclusive teaching are being emphasised, in a concerted effort to nurture active learners (Pance et al., 2017). Contemporary Music Education aims for nurturing pupils as independent individuals, and to foster their creativity with due acknowledgement of their interests and habits. Respecting pupils’ autonomy, it is the ‘open- ended’ nature of Music Education that is being underscored. A number of important music educators describe the nature of effective Music Education in this new environment of learning and doing, and there have been attempts to enable and expand pupils’ musical learning capacity precisely with ‘experiences that fill children with a sense of agency, that
endow them with creativity, motivation, courage and belief in their own capacity as musical thinkers, makers and creators’ (Burnard, 2013, p. 2). Furthermore, we are being urged in this climate to provide an authentically inclusive education, enabling Music Education for all (Mullen, 2019). All pupils, regardless of any physical, economic, or social challenges they may have, ought to be placed in age-appropriate general education classes that are in their own neighbourhood schools and to receive proper instruction, interventions, and support to enable them to experience success in the core curriculum (Bui, Quirk, Almazan, & Valenti, 2010; Alquraini & Gut, 2012). In some schools that can afford it, the use of music as therapy for pupils with disabilities or challenges (physical, cognitive, emotional) is adopted to help learners cope with their difficulties and participate better in a fully inclusive classroom environment.
Reflecting these progressive philosophical themes in methodological terms, teachers are being encouraged to incorporate play-based activities into an open-ended musical practice (Marsh, 2013; Odena 2014), with ‘an inquisitive and exploratory approach to children’s learning through musical play and experimentation’ (Burnard, 2013, p. 6). Music Education is also being studied in relation to other behavioural disciplines such as psychology (e. g., Wolf et al., 2017), and interdisciplinary activities and multi-cultural repertoires are being implemented, applying the value-added benefits of often leading-edge technologies (e. g., Addessi, 2017; Addessi et al., 2017; Raes, 2017; Spieker, 2017).
These changes are also increasingly reflected in the professional and academic dimensions of Music Education as well. Conferences arranged by organisations such as International Society of Music Education, and journals such as Journal of Research in Music Education have started to include new strands such as music therapy, music and technology, global and world music, and music and wellbeing. Considering collectively these often defining, if always conflicted, features of current society, it is possible reasonably to predict and extrapolate futures in Music Education from these points of origin. In line with the needs of current society, it seems that Music Education will continue to confirm its value, particularly with the growing awareness of, and empirical evidence for, its extra-musical benefits. With more versatile digital sources and easier access to those, Music Education is unlikely to lose its status in the ‘health and wellbeing’ era.
On the other hand, a number of researchers have suggested that the place of Music Education may also be threatened by other emerging forces (e. g., Aróstegui, 2016) . First, in a number
of countries such as Scotland, Music Education in mainstream schools is being severely constrained owing to the emphasis on core subjects such as literacy and numeracy and the imposition of post-Credit Crunch austerity on schools, reducing the resource for music teaching (Boehm, 2019). Secondly, some critics argue that with the disproportionate focus on extra-musical purposes and other interdisciplinary justifications, the authenticity of Music Education is significantly endangered––especially the prestige and position of the classical repertoire, the discipline and concentration of instrumental and vocal practice, the necessary training in music theory, and the protection and nurture of those exhibiting gifted and talented ability in musical performance (Fautley, 2017).
Despite these tensions, Music Education can preserve and enhance its place in the curriculum––if perhaps by different means––and playing its distinctive role in relation to the current priorities of democratic education. With the ever more pronounced duty of current education towards creativity and wellbeing, and with its potential to permeate all the disciplines responsible for that particular pillar, the importance of Music Education, with the right leadership, may well even rise in the foreseeable future. These questions are being examined in relation to several key concepts in Music Education, which will be discussed in the following section.