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This collective case study aimed to explore the various expected roles for parents of preschool children in group music lessons in the Klang Valley of West Malaysia, the area located around Kuala Lumpur. We collected data by conducting two semi-structured interviews with 10 parents and three teachers of three preschool group music classes. Four broad themes emerged. Participants viewed parents as playing the roles of supporters, practice supervisors, role models, and consumers. We propose that a flexible understanding of role is essential in crafting meaningful relationships between parents and teachers and suggest the approaches that might assist future music educators to develop such a perception.

This theoretical inquiry approaches the challenge of reflexivity in the music education profession from the perspective of a collective and social understanding of memory. While memory is typically understood as being an individualistic, psychological, and cognitive phenomenon, in this paper we argue that the perspectives of collective and social memory may be of critical assistance to music teachers and music teacher educators who are facing the problem of increasing diversity. Teachers experience mounting pressure to include a wider selection of available material from the diverse musics of the world in their curriculum. We suggest that understanding the politics of memory--how memory shapes the future and reveals our reflexive capacity in terms of our bonds to, or freedom from, the past--provides new tools and perspectives for considering diversity. Furthermore, we propose that in order to make a difference, the politics of memory require an agonistic engagement in pluralistic societies, with multiple, even conflicting, relationships to memory and time, place, and space. The article argues that a critical politics of memory is not just about combining the past and present, but about re-imagining, re-negotiating, re-working, and re-generating the collective futures of the school, its educational context, and broader society. Keywords: Politics of memory, music education, musical repertoire, social memory, INTRODUCTION When music is used in school events or functions, it is often said to be there either because 'it has always been there' or because someone in the school [...]

The relationship between a parent and a teacher can be fraught with difficulties because of role conflicts that may result from the negotiations that occur between them. We synthesized recent perspectives drawn from the research literature on parent-teacher relationships with that of role theory, and aim to demonstrate how the current research literature can be used to describe the roles of parents and teachers and their relationship to one another in music lessons. Our findings indicate that parents often play multiple roles such as home supervisors, supporters, providers, role models, partners in education, and consumers, whereas teachers may play the roles of professional musicians, educators, partners in education, and role models. We argue that roles should be understood as resulting from interaction and negotiation between parties in a relationship, and suggest that concepts from role theory are helpful tools for the reconceptualization of parents' and teachers' roles.

Expert musical memory has been the fundamental focus of research in the field of musical memory, and this line of research has demonstrably informed the ways memory is understood by the current generation of music professionals. In this theoretical inquiry, we draw on Foucault to first argue that the dominant Western classical music expert gaze in music and memory studies can be seen as a form of ocularcentrism. Second, due to this narrow gaze, the field also fails to recognise that the human memory system is characterised by a unique symbiosis of not just learning and remembering, but also forgetting, a potentially powerful theoretical aspect of memory in music education. Third, we argue that the recent 'genetification' of musical memory, together with the narrow expert gaze, may further reinforce old dichotomies between the talented and untalented, abled and non-abled. Through a critical lens towards the politics of knowledge production in memory studies, we argue that there is a need for a more critical, holistic and ethically reflexive understanding of memory in professional education in music and music education.

Perceptual Learning Style theory (PLS) claims that the presentation of information in either a visual, auditory or kinaesthetic format will improve the learning of selected individuals due to the dominance of one or more modality in their information gathering. The modality dominance of six Western classical pianists in higher music education was explored through observing their practising in four different situations totalling 80 minutes, and conducting interviews with them in a stimulated-recall protocol after each observation. The observation and interview data were analysed to (1) identify patterns in individuals' approaches to learning new musical material from scores, to (2) identify differences between the individuals, and to (3) relate these differences to the predictions of PLS. Thirteen behavioural categories were identified that differentiated the pianists, but these could not be convincingly linked to PLS. The findings of the study question the applicability of the theory to musical practising.

Developing effective parent-teacher relationships in music lessons is important for the well-being and learning outcomes of the learners. The aim of this collective case study was to explore the relationship between teachers and parents of pre-school children in group music lessons in the Klang Valley, which is an area in West Malaysia centred on Kuala Lumpur. It includes the neighbouring cities and towns in the state of Selangor. Interviews were conducted with nine parents and three teachers of three group music classes for pre-school children. The results point to the values and attitudes that parents and teachers hold and the interactions between them that both encouraged and discouraged parent-teacher partnerships, which are relationships where trust, reciprocity, mutuality, shared goals and decision making are essential characteristics.

In recent decades there has been a proliferation of neuromyths based on oversimplifications and over-generalisations of research findings. As part of a larger project that examines the societal impacts of the arts and arts education practices, this interdisciplinary collaborative study examines the translation of recent neuromusical research into the public domain, one of the main generators of neuromyths. We review the claimed benefits of musical engagement to other domains, and the ways that researchers discuss these claims. To accomplish this, we first provide a thematic analysis of the kinds of claims that are made in research texts. We analysed 76 review articles published between 2006 and 2016 that both concern brain imaging studies in humans and involve music. The analysis highlights the ways that researchers qualify the potential benefits of music. Second, we explore the ways that neuroscientists report their results to the public and the ways that these results are taken into public discourse. In order to do this we analysed the homepages of the researchers who published at least 2 review articles in our dataset, focussing on the media linked to their homepages. We also explored over 100 websites that mention the benefits of music and also refer to brain imaging research. These overviews allow us to show that the same criteria commonly applied in research are almost never applied in public discourse. We conclude that there is an ethical imperative for researchers to take care in presenting the research results of brain imaging studies to the larger public, and furthermore argue that there is an ethical obligation for researchers to speak out against misuse of research findings.

The dissemination of doctoral research is a crucial ethical, financial and status issue for universities worldwide. The publication based thesis (PBT) may encourage dissemination, but is still in definitional flux at many institutions, particularly in South Africa, especially regarding how many articles are required and the publication status of these articles. We analysed and compared the formats and publication rates of 1128 of the 1141 doctoral theses published at a South African research intensive university over a 7 year period (2008-2014). We present a theoretical frame that considers publication as independent of format. Unpublished monographs account for 41.22% and published PBT for 26.86% of the sample. Monographs where material has been published and PBT with no publications, account for 20.39% and 11.52% of the sample respectively. The article argues that these unique findings are a result of institutional policy directives aimed at addressing the specific social environment of the country.

In this article, we discuss Christoper Small's concept of musicking in order to explicate his understanding of music as a practice and the implications of such an understanding for today's general music education. Our main argument is that, armed with Small's concept of musicking, we can deal with music in its full social-cultural significance. From this standpoint, music is not only just a collection of specifically musical practices but also a community of practice that affirms our existing social habits and helps us to transcend these habits through exploring and celebrating new relationships. Rather than taking music merely as something that people do, Small suggests that it is one of the most important ways of living as a human being, comparable to verbal communication. We also argue that based on this view, music should be seen as a central part of general education, not to be compromised by taking it out of school.

Developing effective parent–teacher relationships in music lessons is important for the well-being and learning outcomes of the learners. The aim of this collective case study was to explore the relationship between teachers and parents of pre-school children in group music lessons in the Klang Valley, which is an area in West Malaysia centred on Kuala Lumpur. It includes the neighbouring cities and towns in the state of Selangor. Interviews were conducted with nine parents and three teachers of three group music classes for pre-school children. The results point to the values and attitudes that parents and teachers hold and the interactions between them that both encouraged and discouraged parent–teacher partnerships, which are relationships where trust, reciprocity, mutuality, shared goals and decision making are essential characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptual learning style theory argues that humans have differing perceptual strengths and that instruction and learning materials should be adapted to fit their visual, auditory and/or kinesthetic preferences. The claims of various theorists that perceptual learning style theory also applies to the learning of musical material when practicing were tested using a questionnaire that draws on the formulations of these theorists. In total, 131 Western Classical instrument students in higher music education were surveyed using a paper-based questionnaire regarding the frequency with which they engaged in particular learning strategies and behaviors while practicing a large scale composition from the Classical or Romantic era. No response patterns comparable to those suggested by perceptual learning style theory could be identified through either principal components or cluster analyses. The applicability of the theory to describe individual differences in learning is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]