One of the outcomes of the National Music Administrators' Conference held in Brisbane, Australia, in 1980 was a ‘Rationale for Music Education’ in Australian schools. This paper uses this Rationale as a stimulus for the discussion of the role of music in the curriculum. The issues raised here are neither new nor distinctively Australian. However, an attempt has been made to evaluate critically what Eisner would categorise as the ‘contexturalist’ and ‘essentialist’ justification for music in education. In an age of accountability and timetable restraints, teachers and administrators must explain their curricula to different audiences. Therefore, the ability to justify music in the curriculum must become part of the teacher's professional equipment.

A review is made of the contents of the Australian Journal of Music Education from 1969, and of conferences in the early history of the Australian Society of Music Education. The categories of music education theses 1936–78 are described. A review of the research presentations is made from reports of the conferences of the Association of Music Education Lecturers. The paper identifies seminal summaries of music education research issues over a twenty-five-year period. It traces the lines of reported research, distinguishing standards for identification of research. It is concluded that although awareness of research issues has been consistently present amongst music educators in Australia, a lack of research orientation, together with inadequate planning and organisational structure has left the field to haphazard individualism. Proposals for current research priorities and procedures for their pursuit are made.

This is a report on the Music Curriculum course units in a primary teacher-training programme held at the Macarthur Institute of Higher Education, Sydney, Australia. It attempts to give an overview of the attitudes of starting students to music and their experiences of music teaching in the Primary School. These are generally negative, and the students are very hesitant about the idea of being expected to teach music when they graduate. Course content is examined along with changes in attitudes, skills and knowledge of the students.

Recent research and theory in the area of classroom management indicates that there is a relationship between the task organisation of the classroom and teacher management behaviours. That is, classroom settings such as seatwork and recitation are related to different kinds of pupil behaviour and different kinds of teacher response. A review of related literature and a study of music student teachers in secondary classrooms indicates that music teachers spend considerably more time in recitation-type settings than do teachers of other subjects and are thus required to be more constantly alert and more authoritarian in their behaviour. The implications of these data for teachers, teacher educators and administrations are discussed.

During the Whitlam years, tertiary education burgeoned in Australia. Colleges of Advanced Education, most of them transformed Teachers' Colleges and unconvinced that their coaches would not turn out to be pumpkins after all, sprang up and/or expanded in city and country districts in all states. A national study carried out in 1977 showed that tertiary music and music education was everywhere healthy and in some places flourishing. In 1980 the Razor Gang went on a surgical rampage, perpetrating amalgamations in the name of economy on the GAEs, and forcing many of them into alliances as unwieldy as they were unholy. In 1987 a national review involving universities as well as GAEs was launched.

Elizabeth Silsbury's article traces those changes, describes their effect on music and takes a punt on what might happen when the dust settles for the third time in less than 20 years.

In the last few years, New South Wales has witnessed a change in the method of assessing pupil achievement in the final stage of secondary education. What was once done through a public examination is now carried out through a combination of the former method together with school-based assessment. This article considers the procedures which have been developed for the two music programmes which are offered in Years 11 and 12, and concludes with an examination of the advantages and disadvantages of the current approach.