Music as a whole is richer for the coming of jazz. Although its natural performing habitat is the night-club rather than the concert-hall, the fact that many recordings have endured in the public consciousness over several decades, and that jazz-lovers return to these recordings again and again to find new and life-enhancing things expressed in their sounds, would seem to indicate that jazz is more than just ‘entertainment’, although, like the music of Haydn, agreat deal of it is very entertaining. Jazz has openedup new realms of expression, and is capable of conveying deep feeling in the subtlest shades. It has also made a major contribution to the language of music, in giving us new approaches to melody, harmony and rhythm, and extending the range of tonal colours for both instruments and the voice. Its extensions of instrumental virtuosity have formed one of its most impressive achievements. Some instruments, the saxophone for example, had to wait for the emergence of jazz before their full potential could be realised. But the repertoires of established instruments such as the trumpet and the piano have also been greatly stimulated by their encounter with jazz. The theoretical side of jazz is rich in new concepts, or new ways of looking at traditional things such as harmony and scale-patterns. These techniques, together with the individualistic ethos of the jazz performing tradition, have had a profound influence on the popular music enjoyed by huge numbers of young people. The musical language of pop music, of rock, reggae, soul, and other styles, is steeped in the grammar and structures originally developed by jazz musicians.

Music is unique in its power to involve the whole person, intellectually as well as emotionally and kinaesthetically. Our ultimate aim in music education, therefore, should be to develop musical imagination and understanding. We can achieve this by making composition and improvisation the central focus of the music curriculum, with listening activities carefully related to children's work. Musical experiences in the classroom should be adventurous, challenging, joyful yet serious, taking place in an atmosphere of warm, sympathetic, tolerant, and respectful relationships. In this environment, children are more likely to value music, and to develop sensitivity not only to music, but to other people. Schools too often underestimate children's potential. In music we can help all children to experience a sense of achievement, leading to greater self-respect.

Progress is a two-edged sword; for some it releases new and enriching opportunities, while for others it cuts away hope. We are all too familiar with the effects of mass unemployment, deadening the spirit and damaging the self-respect of so many people – particularly the young. Curiously, society's institutions of government and education appear reluctant tograsp a particular nettle – the by now pressing need to reappraise the concepts of ‘work’ and ‘leisure’. Even so, some enterprising young people, in various parts of the country, have shown considerable initiative in developing community music workshops where they meet to play rock music. For them this is an important work activity, even if it is not one that brings conventional monetary rewards. This article introduces three of these workshops, and examines the motivation of those who organize them.

The article suggests that ‘Composing / Performing / Listening’ may be an inadequate way to categorise musical activities, particularly because any musical activity is a sort of listening. There is a discussion of the educationally crucial difference between ‘audience-listening’ on the one hand, and ‘composition-listening’ and ‘performance-listening’ on the other. It is suggested that musical experience is itself thinking embodied in sound, and that explicit ‘analysis-of-listening’ plays a supportive role.

In this light, the article proposes an alternative way to categorise musical activities, and indicates some possible conclusions for the curriculum and for assessment.

In this article the author attempts to briefly review styles of research and consider some implications for music education. It is argued that, although research constitutes a limitless range of activities, there are none the less certain essential conditions to be met. General areas for research are identified that seem central to music education. Note. This article first appeared in the International Journal of Music Education, No. 1 (May 1983), and is reprinted with permission of the editor and the International Society of Music Education.

Richard Addison initiated this research to evaluate the effects of his approach to the teaching and learning of music in the early school years. The project is designed to look for changes not only in music lessons but also in the general, non-musical learning and behaviour of children aged 4–8.

A team from Newcastle University is associated with Gateshead Education Authority in this research.

A description of the method is included, together with initial findings of the first year's work. These indicate significant improvements in children's musical skills, together with increased signs of confidence and co-operation in music lessons. Little evidence of change in other lessons was found.

The writer offers an analysis of examples of music (which can be heard on the accompanying cassette tape) composed by pupils as part of their ordinary class music lesson. He suggests that, like any other music, children's compositions can be approached as a quasi-symbolic image of consciousness. The process of skill learning and the act of musical creation are closely connected, even in some sense identical. This way of understanding children's music has implications for the initiation of composition work in class, and for the assessment of that work.

Music education in Scotland has a long-standing tradition of community singing, originally taught using the sol-fa method. Virtually every Scottish secondary school possesses cupboards full of dusty piles of Burns song books and Hebridean folk tunes with the sol-fa and the rhythm printed underneath. Some may still be in use! Sol-fa is not nearly so prevalent in schools as it was twenty years ago, but for the majority of Scottish schools singing still forms the backbone of music classes. After all, there are definite advantages of ‘singing’ as opposed to ‘music’ classes; large numbers of children can be taught together, there is probably less preparation or effort involved for the teacher, and other staff, parents, and the pupils themselves may readily accept that music in school is singing.

In traditional music education, music history, its appreciation and theoretical understanding, and the playing of music have usually been taught as separate entities. Students are rarely given the chance to combine these elements in one integratedactivity. Thus theoretical points may seem irrelevant, arbitrary and isolated from practical performance, whilst historical developments of style are often not fully appreciated when discussed apart from ‘real’ playing and technicalunderstanding.

This article describes a class for adults of mixed musical ability at Goldsmiths' College, London. Within the School of Adult and Community Studies a number of classes and workshops take place, under the overall heading of ‘Jazzand Pop Musicianship’. This particular class was concerned with two of the most important areas of Caribbean music: reggae and calypso.

It was envisaged that the data gathered in this investigation from empirical statements, case studies and observation of a broad spectrum of group teachers, would contribute towards establishing a clearer perspective, focus attention on and evaluate the techniques and procedures of group tuition. In short, the study was intended to investigate, in an illuminative and interpretative manner, the effectiveness of group work.

A major concern was to identify a methodology – practice-based, eclectic and illuminative of music and the learning milieu – with designing a questionnaire; and with selecting for interview acknowledged group teachers. Thus the interviews provided both a primary source of opinion and a basis for further evaluation of the principles and procedures of group teaching in action.

To collect empirical data, a case study technique was employed and structured by use of pro formas. Four teachers, chosen on the basis of specific criteria, were each observed systematically in both group and individual settings. The datum elicited was then interpreted and summarized.

Looking back now at my first year of teaching I am amazed at the wide diversity of activities on which I was launched. As well as teaching the 11–18 age group, I was also organising visits, arranging musical performances both in and out of school, serving on a local committee of the Schools Music Association, organising and accompanying Associated Board practical exams, helping with the day-to-day running of the department when the head left for another job, and still trying to increase my own abilities as a musician. My overwhelming impression is that I was always tremendously busy and nearly always under pressure as the days sped by bringing exams and concerts nearer and nearer.

The aim of this article is to explore some important issues which music educators have raised concerning our work on the use of popular music in teaching and concerning the sociology of music thesis that underpins this work. Following a brief résumé of our perspective, we shall address four criticisms that have been made fairly generally by a number of reviewers of Whose Music? (Shepherd et al. 1977), and of the Cambridge University Press books (Vulliamy & Lee, 1976, 1982a) and the Routledge Popular Music Series (Vulliamy & Lee, 1982b). These criticisms are, first, that we hold an over-socially determined view of music; secondly that we have overstressed the qualitative differences between various musical traditions, especially in their differing relationships to analytic musical notation; third, that the culturally relative view of music which we espouse is both suspect theoretically and potentially anti-educational in practice; and, finally, that many of our suggestions for a reform of music teaching are impractical. Our hope is that we can dispel some ambiguities in our earlier work concerning these important but complex issues and thus leave music educators in a better position to appraise the relevance of our thesis.