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Practices of Music Education and Learning Across the Lifespan: An Exploration of Values and Purposes

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The Palgrave Handbook of Global Arts Education

Abstract

Research in the field of anthropology supports the notion that music is a universal feature of human society and a foundational capacity for all (Dissanayake, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2012; Mithen, 2005, 2009). Music is an important part of our collective celebrations and statements of beliefs, values, and issues, and is an integral component of human growth and development. Through the phenomenon of Communicative Musicality (Malloch, 2000; Malloch & Trevarthen, 2010), music lays down the foundations of human connectedness, identity work, and language as infants and caregivers engage in musical exchanges that promote bonding, communication, and participation in the rituals, traditions, and languages of the infant’s culture (Barrett 2011a, 2012, 2016a, 2016b). When we recognize the fundamental role of music in human individual and collective growth and development, we recognize that music education in some form has been an aspect of human existence for millennia. Despite this continuous history of music education in human experience, what constitutes music education (formal, informal, non-formal) has been shaped by a range of diverse forces. Furthermore, what and how music education is enacted and experienced rest in a range of intersecting factors including age, ethnicity, gender, religion, social class, caste, and geographic location. In this chapter, we explore a range of these diverse forces and factors and provide examples from research projects to illustrate the ways in which these impact on the experience and sustainability of music education.

The updated original online version for this chapter can be found at DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55585-4_5

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55585-4_34

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Music, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia

    Margaret S. Barrett

  2. Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Heidi Westerlund

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  1. Margaret S. Barrett
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  2. Heidi Westerlund
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, Queensland, Australia

    Georgina Barton

  2. Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts School of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist Education, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

    Margaret Baguley

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Barrett, M.S., Westerlund, H. (2017). Practices of Music Education and Learning Across the Lifespan: An Exploration of Values and Purposes. In: Barton, G., Baguley, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Arts Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55585-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55585-4_5

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