The second edition of Debates in Music Teaching continues the basic framework of the first edition in the first four sections, covering philosophical, policy, curricular, and pedagogical dimensions. Most of these chapters feature new authors or new topics. Meanwhile, this edition introduces a fifth part – a structural addition that did not exist in the first edition, and the main focus of this review – which the editors entitled ‘Emerging Perspectives’ (chapters 19–21), examining the field from angles that are not the core concerns of traditional music education: posthumanism, environmental crises, and narrative inquiry into teachers’ professional lives.
A common mindset in music education is that teachers often put people at the centre and regard musical instruments, space and sound as passive tools. In Chapter 19, Cooke draws on Barad’s (Reference BARAD2007) concept of ‘material-discursivity’ (p. 303), striving to break down the wall between the subject and the object, moving music education away from ‘how people use tools’ and showing that ‘silent actors’ in the teaching scene – the objects – are involved in the generation of meaning. Cooke proposes that learning is essentially an ‘entanglement’ (p. 298) between human and non-human actors: instruments, space, and materials are all included. This resonates with the Chinese concept of qin ren he yi – the oneness of human and instrument. For Cooke, this is not mysterious: the non-human actors of strings, wood, space, and sound grow together with the human body, memory, and emotions through long-term interaction. Reading this, we wonder, for example, whether a sound effect in the classroom is just background? When a child casually plays a motif on the keyboard, is it that they are using the keyboard, or is the touch and tone of the keyboard also pushing them in a certain direction? These questions rarely arise in traditional educational discourse but emerge through the lens of posthumanism.
Cooke’s perspective offers a new path for ‘AI anxiety’: no longer fixated on humans versus machines, but exploring mutual construction. Cooke proposes that if teaching is re-understood as ‘setting entanglements in motion’ (p. 307), teachers become co-participants rather than all-round designers: not people controlling things, but people and things generating together. This perspective reverses the notion of people using taken-for-granted musical instruments, allowing us to see those silent and overlooked material actors in teaching. However, unexamined questions arise, such as: Why are some ‘entanglements’ counted as music learning, while others are not? Extending this inquiry to a non-Western context, why are thousands of Chinese children practising the piano, while some Chinese instruments, such as guqin – also rich in cultural meaning – remain relatively marginalised? This is not merely a technical issue in curriculum design, but a matter of cultural hierarchy. If we truly care about music education in a non-Western context, we cannot merely ask whether there is entanglement, but also what kind of entanglement is seen in the system, and why. The marginalisation of guqin is no accident. It reflects a long-standing cultural hierarchy, in which Western classical music is positioned as ‘universal’ and ‘advanced’, while traditional Chinese musical instruments are often regarded as ‘antiques’ (see Bai, Reference BAI2021). Cooke’s rethinking of the role of teachers – from controllers to co-participants – provides a new direction for music educators. One might further ask whether this shift could challenge the cultural hierarchy that positions Western classical music as ‘advanced’? One possible response: when teachers are no longer the sole authority, students and non-Western instruments may have more space to be heard. However, whether this can be achieved in practice remains an open question.
Currently, despite the increasing popularity of music technology teaching, there is little inquiry into the carbon footprint, rare metal mining and electronic waste issues behind synthesisers and servers. Ross Purves and Evangelos Himonides’s discussion on environmental sustainability in Chapter 20 addresses this gap, transforming environmental awareness from an ‘extracurricular topic’ into a core concern in music technology education. The authors confront this paradox: musical technology is the sound we express, but it is also part of the environmental burden. They reference Brennan’s (Reference BRENNAN, Devine and Boudreault-Fournier2021) observation that up to 90% of the environmental impact of a music device occurs before it is put into use, mainly from the raw material extraction and production processes. They further draw on Zappi & Tapparo’s (Reference ZAPPI and TAPPARO2023) notion of ‘technological disobedience’ (p. 320) to creatively reuse old equipment. The creative deployment of old devices is not only an environmentally friendly practice, but also a cultural resistance against the consumerist music industry. If this practice is incorporated into teaching, students learn not only software operation, but also critical thinking about the complex relationships among technology, environment and music. This could transform ‘sustainability’ from a slogan into practice. Nevertheless, although this kind of ‘technological disobedience’ (p. 320) advocates creative reuse, it still relies on certain basic conditions: time, technical ability, and at least some available equipment that can be modified by hand. Where even a computer may be unavailable, is it viable to ask teachers to check the carbon emissions of the server and negotiate the product life cycle? Without engaging with structural inequality in education resource distribution, sustainability is likely to become a matter of individual educator conscience rather than being strategically implemented in schools. This problem warrants consideration from a Global South perspective, where many music classrooms lack basic technology.
In Chapter 21, Anna Mariguddi presents joys and tensions in the professional journeys of eight school classroom music teachers through narrative inquiry. Mariguddi’s interview data enables readers to see how policies, school management, and personal experiences interweave, conflict, and create compromise within an individual. Mariguddi’s contribution lies in bringing people back to the centre of discussion in music education: not as abstract theoretical assumptions, but as living people with stories, confusions and struggles. This also raises some questions worthy of further exploration. The research sample is mainly school teachers, but for instrumental music teachers who work outside of school, without a fixed salary or school support, what is their career journey like? They may face challenges such as job instability and building their own teaching studio from scratch. How do they balance their musical ideals with their income and pedagogical resources? In addition, the issues of limited funds for music education and reduced attention compared to subjects such as English and mathematics in school curricula are factors that have long plagued school music education. Perhaps, interdisciplinary research (such as music and mathematics, or music and English) could be a possible path forward. While beyond the scope of this chapter, these might be directions for future music education research.
Although this book attempts to transcend national boundaries, many of its core frameworks, such as posthumanism, environmental sustainability, and teacher agency, are still mainly formed within the Western tradition. When we use posthumanism or environmental sustainability in non-Western contexts, are these theoretical frameworks themselves becoming a new round of ‘academic exports’? Just as Chakrabarty (Reference CHAKRABARTY2000) and Connell (Reference CONNELL2007) respectively observed from the perspectives of postcolonial theory and the sociology of knowledge, once Western theories are exported to non-Western contexts as ‘universal tools’, they may inadvertently replicate the centre-periphery knowledge production structure. This book has initiated important dialogues, but in the next dialogue, perhaps more voices from different cultural contexts should be invited to jointly define what the frontier is.
The value of the second edition lies not only in bringing topics such as posthumanism and environmental sustainability into the discussion of music education, but also in demonstrating an attitude: music education cannot merely focus on the matters in the classroom; it must respond to fundamental issues of our times, such as technology, ecology, and culture. The second edition of Debates in Music Teaching does not offer an instruction manual – and this is precisely its strength. It offers a set of lenses that enable people to re-examine their own educational contexts, collaborators, practices, policies and futures. For readers of the British Journal of Music Education, this book is not only a theoretical update but also an ethical call. Perhaps this is the true meaning of ‘debate’: to make music education more inclusive and profound through continuous dialogue.
