Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Papers are invited to address current changes and future trajectories in music education’s multifarious roles in music and society.

The current times pose challenges, with wars, ecological disasters and threats, financial crises, and intense migration phenomena, while the voices of various economic, gendered, racial, , differently abled, and other groups are being raised. The world of music is marked, on the one hand, by hurdles related to issues such as these, but, on the other hand, by greater access, appreciation, and valuing of a wider range of musical styles and genres than ever before.

It is with such contexts in mind that we invite papers on, but not limited to, topics such as:  

• Music education’s current and future ethos and ethics, including global and local, societal, and cultural changes, and transformations in humanity's future (social justice, human rights, cultural democracy, well-being, inclusivity, migration and refugee issues, ecology, centre versus periphery, politics, artistic citizenship, and other synergistic issues).
• Changes in access and opportunities relating to music education, in relation to factors such as music identity, professional identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability and different abilities, religion, and humanism.
• Challenges to music education when music is used as a channel of identity on one hand, or of protest and resistance on the other.
• The changing nature of and relationships between formal, non-formal, informal, or other pedagogies, and their relationship to transformations also in curriculum content.
• Creativities and their definitions and re-definitions in light of areas such as access, assessment, and qualification issues.
• Technologies and their likelihood of widely blowing open opportunities on one hand, or creating sects and cults within narrow or exclusive areas on the other, and their implications for issues such as creativities, assessment, and qualifications.
• Boundaries between music education and other cognate areas of research and practice, such as music therapy, media studies, ethnomusicology, or community music, including what music education could potentially learn from these fields.
• Teacher preparation, training, and the recruitment of music teachers across a range of contexts and musical styles, along with the employability of musicians from an ever-widening pool of workers across fields including zero-contract, freelance, or other modes of work.
• Advocacy, philosophy, and leadership, including how music education is being valued in different contexts (e.g., in Saudi Arabia the government is currently increasing investment in formal music education whereas, in many Westernised parts of the world, it is decreasing). 

Articles selected for this Special Issue will consider how such factors, and other synergistic concepts, relate to ongoing changes in music education, and the likely opportunities and obstacles confronting music education in the foreseeable future, either internationally, cross-culturally, or within a culture.

Prof. Lucy Green
Dr. Avra Pieridou Skoutella

Guest Editors