This study investigates rater fairness in vocal performance assessment and its implications for assessment literacy in preservice music teacher education. Using a quantitative descriptive design grounded in a rater-mediated assessment framework, the study involved 60 undergraduate students in a music teacher education programme and five university instructors serving as raters. An analytic vocal performance rubric was used to assess recorded student performances across multiple dimensions. Data were analysed using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), the Rater Agreement Index (RAI), and intra-rater reliability analysis. The results indicate moderate to high levels of inter-rater agreement and temporal consistency, with individual differences in rater severity and leniency remaining systematic and interpretable. These findings suggest that fairness in vocal performance assessment is shaped by professional judgement exercised within shared criteria rather than by uniform scoring practices, highlighting the value of transparent, criterion-referenced assessment processes in preservice music teacher education.
This study investigates the impact of the creative music strategy (CMS) on secondary school students' music performance self-efficacy and resistance to music courses. Employing a mixed-method experimental design, data were collected using open-ended questionnaires, focus group interviews, observation forms, the Music Performance Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Music Course Resistance Scale. Findings revealed that middle school students initially held negative experiences with music courses, exhibited resistance behaviors, and struggled with music performance self-efficacy. While a significant difference emerged between the experimental and control groups in music performance self-efficacy, no such difference was observed in music course resistance. Additionally, students reported that CMS helped mitigate shyness, anxiety, and low self-confidence, fostering greater self-belief, performance quality, course engagement, and creative skill development, including composition. The results indicate that CMS is an effective strategic intervention for addressing the affective challenges of music education at the secondary school level.
This study investigates the pedagogical practices used in institutional training for pai-he ((sic)(sic)), instrumental accompaniment in Cantonese opera. As apprenticeship is fading out, formal institutions have become central to the transmission of Cantonese opera, raising concerns about the impact of Westernisation and institutionalisation on traditional genres. Using a single-case study approach, this research focuses on the only institution in Hong Kong offering a pai-he programme. Data were collected through semi-structured and unstructured interviews, as well as structured non-participant lesson observations. Findings reveal an emphasis on authentic learning activities as the primary teaching strategy, which partly resonates with the 'learning by doing' notion in apprenticeship. The study identifies key pedagogical challenges, including curriculum constraints, requirements, and varying student backgrounds. A pedagogical model is proposed, highlighting six core skills: instrumental, ensemble, sight-reading, aural, improvisation, and adaptability. It also encompasses a cyclical teaching framework that includes planning, implementation, assessment, and reflection. The model is adaptable for teaching other traditional music genres and instrumental accompaniment practices. The study offers practical implications for institutions, advocating for approaches to preserve and develop the traditional essence of Cantonese opera in modern educational settings.
Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of achievement and a key factor in wellbeing. Yet, few interventions have targeted this construct in music performance or been designed for adolescent students. A 14-week, teacher-guided programme based on an educational model of performance self-efficacy which included psychological skills training, simulation and self-evaluation, was embedded into adolescent studio and class lessons. A pilot study followed by two main studies, one within a class (intervention n = 47; control n = 25) and the other in a studio (intervention n = 24; control n = 7) music lesson setting supported the utility of this approach. Self-efficacy was significantly enhanced for intervention participants. This was associated with improvements in anxiety, psychological performance skills, and self-, teacher-, and independently-evaluated music performance. Differential treatment effects in the timing, range and magnitude of the effects were also observed for the two instruction conditions. These results provide support for the educational model offering a practical method for developing key skills essential to success and wellbeing.
Musicians have precarious careers, often working across multiple styles and roles to make a living. However, there is little understanding of how and why they work across multiple styles of music (e.g. jazz and popular music concurrently). This study conducted life history interviews with 12 Australian musicians who worked concurrently across multiple styles, investigating how they developed their skills and navigated their careers. Thematic analyses found that multi-stylistic competence was motivated by curiosity across multiple musical styles and fostered through informal, aural-centric learning experiences supported by peers and mentors. Multi-stylistic careers were underpinned by flexible musical identities rather than purely economic motives. Findings suggest new ways to explore versatility and identity in musical careers spanning multiple styles and roles, with implications for music education to foster engagement with multiple musical communities.
This study delves into musicians' perspectives on their sheet music to explore how orchestration can foster music making and learning in a student or amateur ensemble. Adopting a praxial perspective, the first author conducted practitioner research with a youth orchestra rehearsing Paul Dukas's' The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Building on a participatory design method, data were collected through annotated parts and group discussions. A reflexive thematic analysis led to the adoption of Seligman's (2011) PERMA model as a structuring element. The findings reveal musicians' appreciation for passages that are fun, intuitive to read and play, evoke a sense of togetherness, are musically meaningful, balance skill and challenge, and feel and sound good on the instrument. We understand these findings as pedagogical affordances in repertoire selection and score design, including embodied engagement and pragmatic notation strategies. Our study underscores the pedagogical role of orchestration in enhancing musicians' experiences, and advocates for ongoing dialogue between ensemble leaders and musicians.
In this instrumental case study, a bounded system of one elementary general music classroom at a special education school for students with severe emotional/behavioural disorders was investigated to better understand music teachers' identification of and response to hallmark trauma responses (hyperarousal, intrusion, constriction, doublethink, dissociation, and disempowerment). After qualifying the trauma history of the student participants, in-person observations, journaling, and interviews were conducted. As the data were analysed, moments of convergence and divergence surrounding issues of connection, disconnection, and attunement emerged. When responding in an attuned manner, leveraging principles of trauma-informed care, the music teacher was routinely able to meet the needs of the students. Barriers to the teacher's response included lack of attunement, difficulty connecting behaviours with underlying trauma, and secondary traumatic stress symptoms, among others. By utilising a trauma-informed approach, music teachers might be able to meet extensive behavioural needs with compassion and avoid re-traumatization in the classroom.
Students in higher education music institutions (HEMIs) struggle with a variety of health-related issues. However, qualitative explorations of their perspectives around their own health, particularly in Eastern Europe, are missing. This study explored students' accounts of health and wellbeing in an Eastern European HEMI context. Forty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduate, postgraduate, and recent graduates of HEMIs. Transcripts were analysed via template analysis. Identified themes span from individual behaviours to music education, the educational infrastructure, social support, the musicians' role in society, and ideology. One of six themes is reported in this paper: The institutional culture: competition, bias, and constraints, with its three sub-themes: (1) Navigating individualism and institutional networks; (2) Authority and bias in educational relationships; and (3) Elitism and narrow focus in HEMIs. Students' accounts of abuse, discrimination, and neglect depict environments steeped in competition, bias, and exclusion - directly challenging assumptions that higher music education is supportive or meritocratic. These practices shape professional identity while eroding wellbeing. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive qualitative study to examine musicians' broader views of health and wellbeing in Eastern Europe.
Contemporary educational approaches aim to ensure a high level of student engagement and motivation, which is particularly important in fields such as music education. One of the most widespread innovative models is the flipped classroom, which emphasises the development of student autonomy and active participation in the learning process. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the flipped classroom on students' motivation to learn the violin from the perspective of educational psychology. The study involved 124 students from two Chinese universities. The participants, both undergraduate and graduate students, had an average of 6.3 years of violin training experience (SD = 2.1). Each participant received either traditional or innovative instruction. Data collection was conducted through surveys and interviews. From the practical standpoint, the findings establish the flipped classroom as an impactful instructional strategy that effectively enhances students' intrinsic motivation, improves the educational environment, and contributes to the development of professional skills.
In contemporary China, children's piano education has emerged as a key site where middle-class motherhood is morally defined and gendered power relations are routinely enacted in everyday family practices. This study investigates how Chinese middle-class mothers perform 'good motherhood' through musical mothering in children's piano education, and how these practices contribute to the reproduction of patriarchal power within the family-life. Drawing on the theoretical lens of doing gender and performativity, the research employs an interpretive phenomenological approach, incorporating participant observation and in-depth interviews with eleven mothers. Findings show that mothers enact 'good motherhood' through three interrelated strategies: cultivating cultural taste and investing in their children's futures, providing intensive parenting and devotional care, and emotional regulation through positive guidance and harsh discipline. These performances are shaped by both external accountability to social expectations reinforced through stigmatisation and internalised ideals of intensive mothering that generate anxiety and guilt. While mothers' musical mothering reproduces patriarchal structures by ceding education decision power to fathers, rationalising paternal absence, and embracing self-sacrificing dedication, their practices also encompass subtle forms of negotiation and resistance through reinterpreting the moral meaning of 'good motherhood'. The study suggests that the reproduction of patriarchal power is less through overt coercion than through the covert moralisation of maternal care, love, and sacrifice within musical mothering, even as mothers reclaim limited agency under these constraints.
This study applies Situated Expectancy-Value Theory (SEVT) to examine how ECEC teachers' motivation to teach music is shaped through the interaction of expectancy beliefs, task values, socialisers and situated work environments. Qualitative data were collected through a collaborative seminar with focus groups, discussions, written reflections, and follow-up interviews involving in-service and pre-service teachers and music educators (N = 20). Reflexive Thematic Analysis identified three key themes: (1) expectancy for success; (2) achievement-related experience; and (3) teachers' task values. The findings indicate that music teaching is often perceived as optional, emerging from the interplay of individual motivation, situated professional support or discouragement, and broader cultural and contextual factors. This study illuminates a central tension in ECEC music education: between inclusive, low-threshold opportunities for informal music-making that reduce anxiety and perceived task difficulty, and the recognition of music as a discipline requiring the development of musical proficiency.
Facing a nexus of multiple crises, societies seem on the verge of transformation. Music education needs a transformative approach as societies do, being essentially situated in and contributing to this social change. To reflect upon a possible transformative vision, a closer look at the fundamentals seems crucial. Having read widely on music's role across disciplines, we understood that music is a way of being present in the world and coined a term for this state: MusicBeing. We conceptualise the neologism MusicBeing from the perspective of music as ubiquitous intra-action under the premises of a fundamental relationality of all being. Thus, humans intra-act as musical affectors within dynamic, highly entangled eco-systems. We consider that while societies generally emphasise individuals' merits, the notion of musical intra-action mirrors a shift of perspective from ego-system to eco-system. How is this eco-systemic relationality depicted in music education literature? We systematically analyzed a wide-ranging body of studies through a multi-layered, structured approach. We present preliminary findings of this meta-narrative review as an ongoing process of inquiry into MusicBeing.
This study, as cross-sectional research, used a snapshot of the prospective music teachers' views on digital storytelling in music education as an instructional method based on the prospective music teachers' experiences in designing and integrating digital stories in music education. The study group consisted of 35 prospective music teachers studying in the Music Education Program in Turkey. This study, lasting 14 weeks, enlightened 'a point in time' in which the prospective music teachers had experienced designing their own digital stories for music education and evaluated the design and use of digital storytelling in music education as an instructional method. Writing journals and questionnaires were used to collect the data. It is inferred that digital storytelling is a meaningful approach for creating a music learning environment based on constructivist pedagogy, thus potentially enhancing student active participation and providing better educational outcomes for students. Moreover, the usability of digital storytelling as an instructional tool in music education at K-12 schools was concluded in terms of providing such instructional advantages as concretising the music content, generating interesting music content, motivating and engaging students, generating a student-based learning environment exemplifying how to integrate technology in music education based on constructivist pedagogy and Gagne's Instructional Theory.
This study examines how the teaching of Javanese gamelan in the United States goes beyond the transmission of musical skills to cultivate philosophical values such as harmony, collectivism, and creative freedom. Using a qualitative approach, we conducted participant observation and semi-structured interviews (n = 6) across four gamelan communities in California (university, secondary school, and public setting) during mid-May 2025. Thematic analysis was employed to identify pedagogical strategies, processes of internalising gamelan's philosophical values, and the challenges of cross-cultural adaptation. Findings indicate that teaching gamelan in the United States requires pedagogical innovation that is sensitive to local contexts while retaining the essence of Javanese philosophy. Teachers and facilitators deliberately emphasise experiential learning, interactive dialogue, and collective participation. Values such as rasa, gotong royong, and creative freedom are manifested through ensemble playing and adaptive teaching methods. Key challenges include participants' diverse musical backgrounds, the risk of philosophical oversimplification, and the need to build bridges of meaning between Javanese and Western cultural frameworks. The study underscores the importance of reflective and dialogical approaches in teaching Javanese gamelan in global settings. These findings are relevant not only to cross-cultural music education but also contribute to new understandings of how local values may be adapted within international educational contexts.
This qualitative study examines how students in higher music education recognise and articulate self-identified learning needs in style-bound improvisational contexts. Data were gathered through four workshops using semi-structured interviews, reflective diaries, classroom observations, video recordings, and participant feedback. Following Grounded Theory methodology, the analysis derived, using constant comparison, four overarching categories of learning needs through a systematic category-guided approach: (1) Self-Regulatory-Introspective Dimension, (2) Musical-Technical Dimension, (3) Social-Interactive Dimension, and (4) Cultural-Aesthetic Dimension. These domains reveal how learning needs act as diagnostic markers linking self-reflection, emotional regulation, and social interaction, while shaping the development of self-directed artistic development. Across data sources, learning needs became salient at moments where learners experienced breakdowns in confidence, fluency, role negotiation, or stylistic orientation and translated these difficulties into articulated targets for action. The findings suggest that addressing these needs can support psychological safety, collaborative creativity, and artistic responsibility. This model offers a transferable framework for curriculum design, teacher education, and assessment in style-bound improvisation by foregrounding learners' diagnostic competence as a central mechanism of improvisational learning, and by informing curricula that harmonise reflective practice, inclusive pedagogy, and practice-oriented learning environments across diverse cultural and stylistic contexts.
Formative assessment, rooted in constructivist and student-centred theory, is increasingly promoted in Chinese curriculum policies, yet its implementation in Chinese music education remains under-researched. This study addresses that gap through a longitudinal qualitative design, following twelve motivated public school music teachers in a well-resourced region of China. Based on two rounds of interviews conducted over two years, it explores shifts in teachers' perceptions and practices within a culturally embedded educational setting. Using Black and Wiliam's five formative assessment strategies as the analytical lens, the study finds that while teachers increasingly adopt policy-aligned language, their understanding often remains superficial. Strategies are adapted to meet classroom realities, with feedback primarily used to adjust teaching rather than to improve learning. Peer- and self-assessment remain rare, hindered by concerns over classroom management and student readiness. Rather than resistance or failure, the policy-practice gap reflects a cultural reinterpretation of formative assessment. The study highlights tensions between Western-informed assessment models and China's collectivist, exam-oriented system. Teachers' growing interest in practical professional development, such as demonstration lessons, reveals the limitations of abstract, top-down reforms. The study calls for culturally responsive, context-sensitive theory building and intervention-based research to support meaningful pedagogical change in Chinese music education.
