Reconfiguring music education for future-making: how?

ABSTRACT

Global and societal changes present profound challenges and complexities for the future of music education practice and research. In these times of rapid change, four members of the MER editorial board reflect on the need to challenge normalising discourses of music education and encourage new understandings and/or territories within the field. In this viewpoint paper, we proffer four provocations on the themes of music(s) and social justice, climate change and sustainability, peace and democracy and enduring impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and ask how music education can play a central role in future-making. The paper concludes with an invitation to consider special issue proposals that advance similar or new themes.

KEYWORDS:

• Music education
• future-making
• COVID-19
• social justice
• cultural diplomacy
• sustainability

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2022.2094152)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thade Buchborn

Thade Buchborn is professor of music education and head of the music teacher training programme at the Freiburg University of Music in Freiburg, Germany. He holds a teaching degree and a MA in music and German for secondary school and a PhD in music education. He is board member of Freiburg School of Education FACE and is currently secretary of the board of the European Association for Music in Schools (EAS). In 2021 he was chair of the 28th EAS/8th ISME-European Regional Conference team. Thade Buchborn leads funded research projects on music making, improvisation and composition in the classroom, cultural diversity, music teacher training and Amateur wind orchestras. In his research, he is working with praxeological and sociological approaches, reconstructive methods and formats of design-based research. He is member of the editorial Board of Music Education Research.

Pamela Burnard

Pamela Burnard is professor of arts, creativities and educations, in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/Burnard/). She is an international expert in contemporary musics and creativities research and practice. She is a transdisciplinary teacher-educator-artist-academic-researcher-consultant who has published widely 20 books and over 100 articles which advance the theory and practice of multiple creativities across education sectors including early years, primary, secondary, further and higher education, through to creative and cultural industries. She is co-editor of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity. Pamela’s most recently published books include Doing Rebellious Research in and Beyond the Academy (2022, Brill-i-Sense), Why Science and Arts Creativities Matter: (Re-)configuring STEAM for Future-Making Education (Brill-i-Sense, 2020) and Sculpting New Creativities (Routledge, 2021). Her current research-council-funded projects include ‘Choices, Chances and Transitions around Creative Further and Higher Education and CUMIN (Contemporary Urban Musics Inclusion Network)’. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and Chartered College of Teaching, UK.

David G. Hebert

David G. Hebert is professor of music education at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, in Bergen. There he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group and manages the state-funded Nordic Network for Music Education, which offers joint Master courses for partner institutions across the eight Nordic and Baltic countries. He is also an Honorary Professor with the Education University of Hong Kong. He has published several books in the fields of music education and ethnomusicology, and his research group currently has projects in Europe, Africa, and Asia, with funding from the Nordic governments (Nordplus), EU (Erasmus), Swedish Research Council, and Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad).

Gwen Moore

Gwen Moore is director of teaching and learning and senior lecturer in music education at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Gwen provides strategic leadership in the development of teaching, learning, assessment and feedback at institutional level. She teaches on the MA in Music Education and supervises postgraduate research students. Gwen serves on several international editorial boards including: International Journal of Music Education, Music Education Research, Journal of Popular Music Education, Frontiers in Education (Teacher Education) and Irish Educational Studies. She is a member of the executive board of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) where she is current chair of ISME’s Publications Committee. Gwen served two terms as Chair of the Society for Music Education in Ireland (2013–2017).