Music Education For the Twenty-First Century

This inaugural volume in the Studies in Irish Music Education series is the first publication to bring together a unique collection of papers by leading national and international authors with wide expertise and extensive experience in the field. Under the themes of Legacies, conversations and aspirations, it provides an overview on the considerable expansion and development of music education in Ireland from the mid-1990s through to the early decades of the twenty-first century. Collectively, the book embraces a diverse range of perspectives, reflecting on the debates, and the responses and resistances to the many seismic changes that occurred over that time, whether in school music curricula, in higher education, or across community and independent music school sectors. The series, and inaugural volume, uniquely celebrates what is by now a substantial corpus of academic work on a field of practice that has been thriving for several decades -- in spite of the many challenges that music educators in Ireland continue to face. Its various chapters engage with arts and education policies, with international developments and comparative educational systems and, crucially, with the concerns of teachers, students, musicians, schools, higher education institutions, music development agencies and broader communities of practice.