Distinctive features of music education in Britain are analysed. There is a tradition of being non-explicit, preferring the intuitive to the specified. In the best and worst senses, we are a nation of amateurs: making music because it seems worthwhile; our youth and adult music-making traditions are witness to this. We are also aesthetically ambitious and worry about the mechanisation of the curriculum and losing a sense of delight and spontaneity. All of these may seem threatened by the National Curriculum. Yet it is important to be more consistent and organised in the music curriculum. There will still be scope for the unplanned, the unpredictable. There always is.

There have been a number of links established between music and language. As two of the major symbols systems developed by and specific to humans, music and language share a number of characteristics. For example, in their most natural form – i.e. song and spoken word – music and language share the same vehicle for expression, the voice, with a consequent emphasis on the aural medium; indeed the child's first experiences of music and language are often linked.

This paper reviews a number of the perceived commonalities between music and language and discusses the implications these may have for education. The major concepts of music, those duration, dynamics, pitch, tone-colour and structure, are discussed in connection with the ways in which these may be utilised in order to foster linguistic competency.

This paper takes the view that kinaesthesia, processes involving neuro muscular sensation, should be the central and unifying component in any psychological model for music learning. It maintains that engagement in music activities, which consciously encourages the processes of kinaesthesia, helps to bring about the closer association of thinking and feeling. The paper develops the notion that this form of musical ‘knowing’, which is based on the interrelationships between muscular, perceptual and cognitive awareness, is the essential ingredient of musically sensitive and imaginative behaviour. Having established these principles, the paper explores those recent developments in music microtechnology which appear to support and develop these processes.

Music has a role to play in Arts Education. This role remains largely underdeveloped. The selection of music and art as foundation subjects in the National Curriculum is divisive and fails to comprehend the fundamental concepts of arts education.

This paper recognises the characteristics that are both common and distinctive between music and the arts, and reminds us of the historical factors which often prevent collaborative curriculum planning. It examines both the models and the language of collaboration, and recommends a management structure placed firmly within a single cohesive policy for the arts.

The position of music history, traditionally regarded as a central element of the music curriculum in higher education as well as in secondary schools, has seemed to be challenged both by recent changes in the curriculum content and by reappraisals of the philosophy and practice of advanced musical study. This article, an expanded version of a paper given in the session on Curriculum Developments in Higher Education at the first British Music Educators' Conference in Huddersfield in July 1989, assesses the impact of these changes and relates them to changing attitudes within the discipline of musicology as well as within other historically based areas of enquiry.

One of three papers at the UKCMET Conference 1989 in the session on In-Service Education and Training. The author draws upon his experience of INSET courses in one academic year, and concludes that the provision is often piecemeal and crisis-led. He discusses an in-service course which he found particularly useful, and attempts to identify the features that made it so.

Central to building any picture of children's musical development is the notion of musical understanding. As teachers we need constantly to seek a better understanding of what children's musical understanding involves and how it is acquired and displayed. Indications of how we may need to look at children's work are taken from a 1984–7 Bristol-based research project, and strategies subsequently adopted for use in initial and in-service teacher training are outlined.

The author outlines the philosophy and practice of the Instrumental Teaching Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. An obligatory requirement for all undergraduate students, this course was from September 1987, co-ordinated from the ILEA Music Centre by Christopher Morgan. The demise of the ILEA had, of course, been foreseen, and the various changes made to the structure of the Instrumental Teaching Course over the last two years, and the adjustment of its place in the overall curriculum, paved the way for its adoption as an in-house operation. From September 1990 the course becomes a direct responsibility of the Department of Performance and Communication skills headed by Peter Renshaw.

This article examines the difference between the systems of education in Northern Ireland and on the mainland. For student teachers preparing for the Secondary phase, the isolation of Northern Ireland needs to be counterbalanced. Assisting students to adopt a curriculum philosophy very different from that which underpins their own recent school experiences requires both careful preparation and the support of appropriate classroom experiences. In preparing Primary school teachers to use music in their classroom two issues need to be addressed: the development of musical understanding in students with minimal practical musical skill, and the preparation of specialists to adopt the role of Music Co-ordinator in their schools. Account needs to be taken in the training of all teachers of the cross-curricular themes of Education for Mutual Understanding, Cultural Heritage and Information Technology. Finally, the author proposes a strategy for musical support and development of classroom teachers serving in primary schools.