The purpose of this study was to explore research and publishing preparation, experiences, and expectations of music education faculty members employed at higher education institutions. We developed the Publishing Preparation and Expectations Survey (PPES) to examine music education faculty members’ current areas of research, peer-reviewed journals they read and published in, and their experiences

Adjudicated performances have been a component of music education for more than a century, and the policies and structures associated with these events intersect with curriculum, instruction, and teacher evaluation. The purpose of this study was to describe state-organized large group performance evaluation (LGPE) practices for high school bands, choirs, and orchestras across the United States. We

Teacher feedback is an integral component of helping students understand their current level of achievement and what they can do to improve their performance. This study built on literature in educational psychology by adopting a framework developed by Hattie and Timperley to explore how different types of feedback are used in studio instrumental lessons. For this study, we investigated the use of

The purpose of this study was to describe the grades given to students in U.S. public high school music courses and to examine the relationships between student characteristics, music course grades, and grades in additional subjects. Using descriptive statistics, logistic regression, and latent profile analysis, I analyzed over 5,000 student transcripts from the U.S. Department of Education’s High

This collective case study explored the musical lives of second-generation immigrant children in Miami, Florida, USA, to gain greater insight into music’s role in the negotiation, construction, and expression of their “identities in music” and “music in identities.” Four children between the ages of 8 and 12 who had at least one parent born outside of the United States participated in the study. Data

In this study, we examined demographic patterns of participation and persistence in high school elective music ensembles. We extend prior research that has only compared music and non-music students by explicitly modeling persistence across multiple years of ensemble enrollment. The research draws on data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 and employs a zero-inflated Poisson regression

Many adults do not see themselves as musical, and about 17% believe they are tone deaf. People who identify as tone deaf often believe this condition is congenital and permanent and prevents them from ever singing accurately. In many early childhood music (ECM) classes, adults participate as musical models, interacting with their children by moving, chanting, vocalizing, and singing. Using phenomenological

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of three schedules of practice on high-level violinists’ learning. The contextual interference (CI) effect occurs when two or more tasks are practiced in an interleaved manner, which has been shown to impair initial learning but improve retention. How a musician alternates between tasks during practice can have a great impact on learning. This

The purpose of this grounded theory was to discover the process of undergraduate students’ music teacher identity development in the first 2 years of their preservice music education program. Participants in this study were 21 undergraduate students from an introduction to music education course. We collected multiple types of data, including interviews and written artifacts, from a course-based undergraduate

This descriptive collective case study explored the experiences of three Black women music educators through the framework of community cultural wealth. Analysis of data collected through Seidman’s three-stage phenomenological interview model revealed three themes. The first, “path to teaching,” represented the formative experiences that shaped participants’ development, including a deep level of embodied

The purpose of this multiple case study was to investigate engagement in the collegiate concert band setting. Research questions were: (1) How do collegiate band students describe their engagement in large ensemble rehearsals? (2) How do collegiate band directors describe engagement in large ensemble rehearsals? and (3) What does rehearsal engagement look like in action? Cross-case analysis suggested

Previous research has variably indicated the role of working memory in error detection by which working memory played a role in rhythmic error detection but not melodic error detection. Here, we devised a longer melodic error detection task for college musicians in an auditory, rather than visual, condition using classical excerpts, which we compared to briefer visual and auditory control conditions

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of conductor score use (conducting with a musical score vs. conducting without a score) on observers’ perceptions of conductors. We also examine...

Music students in tertiary education struggle with a range of health-related problems. We investigated students’ self-referrals for counseling at a UK conservatoire to explore trends in students’ a...

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of culturally responsible music teaching (CRMT) from the perspective of U.S. music teachers working in various formal settings. “Cultural respons...

The purpose of this study was to examine instrumental music lessons taught for schoolchildren over the radio by Joseph Maddy in the 1930s and early 1950s. Research questions addressed (a) condition...

The purpose of this study was to investigate issues of equity in access, uptake, and outcomes of high school music education in the context of an individual state, Maryland. I explored equity throu...

This study explored the perceptions of music professors as to their experiences navigating both the academy and motherhood. We utilized a multiple critical case study approach to understand the exp...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a beginning jazz improvisation learning environment for middle school instrumentalists, including whether one of two instructional ...

The purpose of this phenomenology was to examine the lived experience of being a first-year music teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two data waves, the first in winter 2020 and the secon...

In this study, we evaluated the validity and reliability of a Chinese adaptation of the Self-Regulated Practice Behavior (SRPB) scale developed by Miksza. Tasks included supplementing, altering, an...

To better understand existing ensemble requirements for music education majors at U.S. institutions, we conducted a content analysis of ensemble requirements for 1,021 degree programs at 465 colleg...

In this study, we explored associations between perception of musical features (pitch, tonality, timing, timbre, and loudness), vocal abilities (singing accuracy, melodic achievement, and rhythmic ...

Teaching music can be very stressful. The music education literature includes investigations of sources of stress and suggestions for stress relief, although it lacks a consistent underlying concep...

In this mixed-methods study, we explored perspectives of ensemble directors (N = 306) regarding standards-based instruction and circumstances impacting standards-based instruction in the areas of c...

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine variables that contribute to burnout among Texas choral teachers. Specific research questions included: (1) What demographic variables predict b...

The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential relationships between self-regulated learning with regard to instrument practice, amount of instrument practice time, and Big Five pers...

According to music educators, persistence beyond a student’s initial enrollment in middle and high school music is a problem; however, there has been little research to substantiate this claim. Alt...

In music education professional associations (MEPAs), volunteer member-leaders collaborate to guide music education and provide services such as professional development. Recently, we observed some...

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of music educators at varying career stages and teaching positions who experience chronic illnesses. Participants (n = 8) represented a var...

The collection of articles included in this issue of the Journal of Research in Music Education address a range of topics sure to be of interest to many in the field. In the first article, Kenneth Elpus leveraged data gathered from the 2016 Arts National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to investigate the proportions of middle school students in the US who participate in music classes as well

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of transitional elements on listeners’ aesthetic responses. Participants (N = 81) viewed an excerpt of a choral performance while manipulatin...

We investigated whether preference transfer occurred from 18 taught world music pieces to 18 untaught pieces from the same regions among preservice music teachers. Eighty-three preservice music tea...

I write this Forum for the July 2022 issue of the Journal of Research in Music Education at the onset of a new period of geo-political instability and war while, at the same time, we continue to experience the lingering effects of a the global COVID-19 pandemic and strive to maintain our collective health and well-being.1 I remain inspired by the work our colleagues in music education continue to do

The purpose of this study was to examine music teachers’ experiences with flow while performing and teaching music. A model with four flow antecedents (Challenge, Skills, Goal Clarity, and Feedback...

To assess allocation of attention by music teachers with different levels of experience and expertise, we recruited five participant flautists: an artist teacher, two graduate students, and two undergraduates, all of whom observed nine brief video recordings of flute, clarinet, and saxophone players; a juggler; a baseball batter; and a ballerina. We tracked participants’ gaze using wearable eye-tracking

In this study, we explored the ways in which listening tools within technology-mediated environments can facilitate children’s self-regulation of instrumental music learning between lessons. This interpretive multiple case study utilized a software application assigned for 22 weeks to a piano teacher and four students (ages 8–10). Data sources include student and teacher semistructured interviews and

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of score study and conducting gesture on collegiate musicians’ ability to detect errors in a choral score. Is there a combined effect of gesture and score study that impacts undergraduate conductors’ identification of errors in a score? Participants (N = 53) viewed a sequence of four choral score excerpts presented via Zoom video conferencing. We

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to investigate band teacher agency in a high-stakes performance environment. Research questions were: (1) What experiences and professional relationships were most salient in the past (iterative), present (practical-evaluative), and future (projective) dimensions of band teacher agency in a high-stakes performance environment? and (2) How did high-stakes

Mentoring is a critical element in the well-being, socialization, and professional identity development of graduate students. Yet in music education, little is known about the graduate student mentoring experience from the mentors’ perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine music teacher educators’ perspectives on and experiences with graduate student mentoring.

The purpose of this study was to examine the demographic characteristics and music achievement of eighth-grade students in the United States using evidence from the 2016 National Assessment of Educational Progress in the Arts (NAEP). Analyzing NAEP data from a nationally representative sample of 4,340 eighth graders attending public and private middle schools in the United States in 2016, The author

Using the Theory of Social Representations as a theoretical and methodological framework, the purpose of this study was to describe children’s representations of music, musical identities, and musical engagement across middle childhood. Participants were primary students aged 8 to 11 (N = 132) from four schools in a large city in the Southeastern United States. Previous studies have documented that

This study had two primary purposes: (1) to investigate the effect of register, direction, and magnitude on musicians’ evaluation of chamber ensemble intonation, and (2) determine whether a novel nonparametric technique, ordinal pattern analysis (OPA), was a viable alternative to repeated-measures analysis of variance (rANOVA). I digitally mastered a recording of a string quartet performing a phrase

Coppola, W. J. (2021). Students’ social perceptions of humility and arrogance among band directors. Journal of Research in Music Education. 69(3), 284–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429420981675

Researchers have identified high levels of stress among music education students, but we know very little about how students manage this stress and how emotional competence skills might be utilized within stress coping mechanisms for this population. Through this qualitative study, we sought to understand the stress coping strategies of eight music education majors through the lens of emotional competence

This issue of the Journal of Research in Music Education features the rich topical and methodological breadth that has become typical of contemporary scholarship in music education writ large. Our knowledge of the field can only be enriched when researchers examine pressing issues from multiple points of view. Collectively, the authors who contributed to this issue have employed rigorous qualitative

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among high school band festival ratings and director gender as well as school locale, school size, student socioeconomic status (SES), student race, repertoire difficulty, and ensemble name. Data included overall ratings of bands (N = 257) that performed at District Concert Assessments held across the state of Virginia during 2019 as well as demographic

This issue of the JRME features seven articles relevant to a wide audience, including school music teachers, teacher educators, advocates, and policy makers.

The Journal of Music Teacher Education seeks nominations for four new members of the editorial review committee. Duties begin July 1, 2022 and continue through June 30, 2028. Deadline for application materials: February 1, 2022.

Sight-singing is prevalent in aural skill classes, where learners differ in experience and cognitive abilities. In this research, we investigated whether musical experience, level of study, and working memory capacity (WMC) can predict sight-singing performance and if there is a correlation between WMC and performance among some subgroups of participants. We hypothesized that more experienced students

The purpose of this multiple-case study was to explore the experiences of two students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a full-inclusion music education context and how those experiences aligned with stakeholder perspectives regarding the role of music education for this population. Three themes emerged from the data: The Not-So-Atypical Benefits, A Focus on Strengths, and A Culture of Inclusivity

Studies in musical improvisation show that musicians and even children are able to communicate intended emotions to listeners at will. To understand emotional expressivity in music as an art form, communicative success needs to be related to improvisers’ thought processes and listeners’ aesthetic judgments. In the present study, we used retrospective verbal protocols to address college music students’

We at the JRME are fortunate to be able to feature the recipients of the National Association for Music Education’s Senior Researcher Award. This biennial award is given to recognize significant, long-term contributions to scholarship in music education. This issue includes the address given by the most recent recipient, Dr. Estelle Jorgensen, at the 2021 biennial Music Research and Teacher Education

“How is a person to live a balanced, productive, and joyous life as a scholar of music education?” I address four values that are at the heart of scholarship in music education: scholarly publication, scholarly teaching, scholarly service, and scholarly change. Although these values represent what Donald Kennedy (1997) thinks of more broadly as academic duties, I consider them specifically as pertaining

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among beat perception, error detection, and musical experience. We presented monophonic rhythms using a piano timbre along with two measures of beat perception (Harvard Beat Finding and Interval Test [BFIT] and Goldsmiths Beat Alignment Test) and a measure of melodic error detection. College musicians’ (N = 43) ability to detect rhythm errors

In this historical study, I present the emergence and evolution of Jamey Aebersold’s Play-A-Long volumes and their key role in bringing jazz improvisation to formal music education. Drawing on oral histories and using a framework from sound studies, I present chord-scales and pattern playing as Deweyan conceptual technologies that assist beginners in developing a mature technique. I recount how Aebersold