Many music educators feel unprepared or are unsure of how to use popular music in their classrooms. This article details the author's experience designing, implementing, and revising a student-centered guitar curriculum in an urban middle school. Reflecting on this experience, the author defends the place of popular music and informal pedagogy in…

Instrumental performance that approximates real-world models is one way in which a general music curriculum can encourage high levels of engagement and potential for lifelong musical activity. Although guitars, keyboards, and various folk instruments are useful for this purpose, orchestral instruments can also provide significant solo and ensemble…

Within a theoretical framework drawn from sociologists of education Bourdieu and Bernstein, this paper will examine some of the findings of an ethnographic case study conducted with a secondary school music teacher and one class of her pupils in Wales. This teacher attracted 25% of Year 10 (14-year-old) pupils to study music as an optional subject…