In her contribution to our Special Issue in 2003, Estelle Jorgensen called for ongoing conversations between university lecturers and school teachers, to avoid the danger of music educators, historians and theorists being ‘like ships sailing past each other in the night’. We believe that one of the functions of BJME is to develop such collegial relationships and thus help to establish a strong music education community at all levels, both nationally and internationally. Certainly this present issue reflects a range of contexts from nursery schools to universities, with papers from researchers in Australia, England, France, Italy and Scotland.