This book asks what it means to be a music educator in the 21^st century, and provides a North American perspective on the challenges involved in reshaping music teacher education in the light of rapid social and cultural change.

The book is organised in two parts: Current Challenges and Opportunities, and Innovative Practices in Music Teacher Education, through which the eleven contributors, all of whom are centrally involved in the preparation of new music teachers, set about framing what reads as an energetic and determined effort to reconceptualise pre-service music education as part of more general review of the nature and functions of music education. Above all else the book is a call to action.

Thus, challenges, opportunities and innovative practices are to be seen as a resistance to a dominating model of practice, viewed as ‘a deficit one-size-fits all’ arrangement ill-serving the majority of children and the interests of secondary school students. The eleven chapters together present an argument for a reconceptualising of music teacher education involving the whole-scale reordering of both curriculum and pedagogy.

In the opening chapter David A. Williams describes the process of reforming curriculum and pedagogy as experienced in the School of Music at the University of South Florida in Tampa, a two-year process of developing a rationale informed by research. In the context of working within a school of music the challenge was as much political as philosophical and practical. If broadened conceptions of musicianship were to be forged, if the skills and dispositions of music education majors were to be re-orientated, then immersion in a wide range of musical practices along with engagement with, and mastery of, digital media were required. Fresh conceptions of musicianship would need to be lived out through new pedagogical practices emphasising a variety of learning modalities, not least those within the sphere of self-directed informal learning. Typically of the book as a whole, Williams provides detail of the reformed programme including substantial examples drawn from the course description.

In chapter 3 Frank Abrahams gives energy to this process of revision by entering the contemporary musical experiences of the young living in a world rich with computers, video games and digital music players. Narratives from a student teacher, a junior music education major and an eight-year-old student lead to Abrahams asking, ‘In what ways might these three combat the hegemonic practices of schooling that champion the powerful and silence the powerless, that marginalizes minorities by privileging a music tradition that may not represent who they are but prepares them for a musical life of the past?’ (p. 45) In response, a new sociology of music education is offered that insists on the empowerment of the learner through dialogic practices and the acquisition of critical consciousness.

The upheavals in ways of thinking about musical schooling, education and the music educator are raised further in Chapter 4, where Janice Smith presents the case for entrepreneurial music education that unseats sovereign views defining where music education is conducted, along with the gamit and reach of the music educator. This is within the current reality and future prospect of a fragmented, multi-situational and decentred music education. Thus, the entrepreneurial music teacher will be a good musician who constantly expands their repertoire and skills, is easy to collaborate with, administratively capable, adapted to the diversity of personal and social networks, and an agent of social change.

In chapter 5, the most substantial theoretical contribution to the volume, Cathy Benedict and Patrick Schmidt interrogate the idea of the music educator's formation as a cultural citizen. They present a rhizomatic model of music teacher education in which the music educator becomes Freire's critical cultural worker, able to understand and respond in critical fashion to rhetorical public policy discourse – for example, the official call for creativity and innovation in the light of the prescription of common standards drowning out critical creativity, consciousness, and responsibility. The strong theoretical exposition yields a four-year 21^st century course framework.

Part 2 begins with Frank Heuser's exposition of an innovative juxtapositional pedagogy where familiar practices are set alongside unfamiliar ones, the idea of having ‘different things in the same room’ – e.g. Formal Choir and Gospel Choir; Snare Drum and selected world drumming. In this way notational traditions meet aural traditions and form the basis of a comparative approach that moves beyond the model of the large-scale ensemble tradition.

The chapters by Michele Kaschub and Mark Robin Campbell that follow in tandem show how student-centred practices open up entirely fresh ways of thinking about course design. Student-driven Project-based Learning and Self-study Research introduce the reader in some detail to the work of undergraduates while setting out sample projects as well as the principles that underpin these.

Carlos Abril provides useful background knowledge to the organisation of music in American schools, something that the reader beyond North America would have welcomed earlier, while Gena Greher presents six ‘what ifs’ with a plea for a more central role for the tools of technology alongside critical and creative skills. The plea for competence in teaching with technology is given full significance in the final chapter, bringing together digital media and participatory culture and a re-conceptualisation of musicianship.

The book reads as a vigorous response to something of a crisis in music teacher education; one that requires an urgent re-think, and above all else, action. It recognises a music education that is fragmented, multi-situational, decentred and ill-tuned to how music is in the world and in particular how it is in the lives of young people. The writers offer a wide variety of arguments, ideas, scenarios and promising practices that challenge hitherto unexamined orthodoxies. They exemplify a lively process of enquiry, change and renewal that will serve well to challenge all those involved in music teacher education.