This special issue, Music and Inclusion: Philosophies, Practices and Possibilities, brings together international scholars and practitioners to interrogate what inclusion means within contemporary music education and participation.

This article documents the lives of three female cathedral choristers and the impacts of cathedral choral training on their subsequent lives and careers. The participants reported the acquisition of musical skills such as sight-reading and knowledge of liturgical repertoire as key. Extra-musical skills were also reported, including being organised and flexible, focusing on details, working hard, behaving in a professional manner and taking up leadership roles. In addition to the many positive experiences, the choristers identified a need for targeted pastoral care in their cathedral choral training. Further research needs to investigate the environmental structures and supports in cathedral choirs and the dynamics between conductors and child female choristers.

This article discusses the musical engagement of disabled people given recent scholarship in care ethics. It considers how terms used to describe them frame the relational aspects of care. Possibilities and challenges are examined for caring relationships in music teaching that involve: inclusive practice; vulnerabilities; reframing it towards reciprocal care; and the dangers of “benign neglect”. Hel’s “distributive justice” is also considered. The article concludes that disabled insiders’ authentic experiences might best serve as a platform for appropriate resources, policies and music education practices.

This study explores the characteristics of musical and communicative interactions – primarily vocal – between parents and children aged 6 to 36 months in Barcelona, Spain. Five families participated. Data were gathered using LENA® audio recordings across full days and semi-structured interviews. Episodes were analysed using a validated instrument and thematic coding. Findings reveal mismatches between parental perceptions and observed behaviours, highlight children’s active participation, and identify underreported functions and settings of musical interaction. This research underscores the importance of combining parental accounts with data gathered from real-life scenarios to understand everyday family musicality as a shared, dynamic, and reciprocal phenomenon.

This article explores children’s musical participation and nonparticipation in diverse schools. Through a qualitative ethnographic study within two Irish primary schools, the research provides insight into everyday school music experiences where the realities of ethnicity, culture and religious beliefs intersect with the realities of school structures, peer interaction and pedagogy. The discussion opens up critical reflections about access to music in schools, where, why and how musical (non)participation happens, as well as the role of in-school and extra-curricular musical activities. The findings highlight the need for collective and relational music activities to enhance intercultural musical participation in schools.

Conceptualising music education in England as an ecosystem was central to the 2022 National Plan for Music Education. Provision spans in-school and out-of-school settings, delivered by schools, Music Hubs, charities and specialist providers. Local specificities and a complex patchwork of providers mean that there are multiple different stakeholders in helping young people to develop musically. Drawing on a decade of research, this paper reconceptualises the ecosystem by centring the young person. The proposed model is intentionally open to critique to stimulate discussion and refinement within England and in international contexts with similarly complex, multi-provider music education systems worldwide.

This study investigates the intersection of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and democratic pedagogy in K-12 music education in Macau, centring on the experiences of a single teacher, Adam, throughout a school year. This study explores how GenAI tools assisted Adam in teacher planning, shifting learning objectives and bridging gaps among students in the music classroom. The data further highlighted a paradox in integrating GenAI in music education: while Adam saw AI tools as enhancing certain aspects of creative expression, such as generating musical ideas or assisting in composition, he also recognised AI’s deterministic nature as a constraint on deeper creative agency and critical engagement. This research contributes to the growing discourse on GenAI in education, problematising the assumption that GenAI inherently democratises music education. It emphasises the critical importance of thoughtful GenAI implementation to ensure that it complements rather than supplants the essential human elements of teaching, advocating for a holistic and sustainable approach to personalised and democratic music education.

In 2024, the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament published a report entitled Misogyny in Music. It included the recommendations that ‘music colleges, conservatoires and other educational settings need to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres and improve the visibility of and support for female role models’. While there is a dearth of policy levers available to implement this recommendation, this article critically analyses three existing policy/regulatory frameworks that could be used for its implementation in England. The article also highlights a significant limitation of the report – its exclusion of trans and non-binary musicians.

This reflection explores the context of the emerging field of adaptive music education and the use of music adaptation plans (MAPs) to demystify adaptive pedagogy used for pupils with physical disabilities. It explores the themes that connect the ingenuity and creativity of adaptive instruction across the study of various musical instruments, highlighting three key areas: pupil considerations, adaptive considerations and pedagogical considerations. MAPs offer a structured approach, enabling teachers to adapt techniques and apply creative solutions to connect music education to a historically excluded population of pupils.

This paper seeks to understand the different conceptual representations of R. Murray Schafer’s ideas in scholarly literature and their relevance within framework of transversal competences as a perspective of education in the 21st century. A systematic review of the literature was carried out using the PRISMA guidelines as a reference. Five multidisciplinary databases were searched between 2000 and 2024 in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The 29 scientific papers included in the review present perspectives from four continents, diverse areas of knowledge and different educational focuses and levels. The results show the relevance of three concepts: listening as a disposition, creative music education as a procedure and soundscape as an interdisciplinary resource. These concepts are approached from the artistic-musical and transdisciplinary fields, and represented from different perspectives: inclusive, aesthetic, social and economic. It is concluded that M. Schafer’s ideas are characterised by their topicality due to the transversal approach they promote, where creativity, social and environmental commitment, and the participation of all in musical learning are coherent with the challenges of musical education and training to which we aspire.

With a serious decline in music education and limited music technology within school settings, those wishing to practice music for a career or seek employment within the creative industries face economic barriers and social class ceilings. This article explores how young people can access education in electronic music production and align their music practice to industry roles outside of formal schooling. Research was conducted with young people from non-formal music education backgrounds who took part in a three-year programme that included mixing and mastering studio sessions, record label masterclasses and live sound engineering training days. The affordances of DIY musical skills acquisition, collaboration and creative industries social networks were vital for musical engagement and inclusion. Programmes of this nature hold significance for future pathways in music production for those who cannot access formal music education.

Musical experience can reveal dimensions of the self, relationships and flourishing that can challenge assumptions about the lives of people with disabilities. The Adaptive Music Bridging Program engages students aged 8–14 years with a disability in ensemble-based instrumental lessons, cultivating musical skills and literacies through weekly participation. A case study explores participatory pedagogies that promote self-regulation, the meeting of students’ musical goals, empowerment from participation and community music engagement. The study challenges music teachers to approach their profession with access and equity at the heart of what they do, who they teach and what they aspire for their students.

The aim of this research is to examine student motivation to participate in general music classes. The research involves students aged 10–14 from a general education primary school in Croatia (N = 186). The results indicate that these students were motivated to engage in general music classes; however, a nonlinear decline in motivation was evident as students progressed through the school years. Girls were more motivated to participate in general music classes compared to boys, and students involved in additional musical activities reported higher levels of motivation. Furthermore, listening to music influenced students’ perceptions of general music lessons and was associated with their motivation.

Building on the author’s previous research into music teacher biography, this current paper examines the identity of secondary (age 11–18) classroom music teachers in England exploring, in particular, how far teachers consider themselves as musicians first or teachers first and how far this may impact upon what and how they teach their students. How we see ourselves as classroom music teachers, it is hypothesised, can impact how we view our pupils and their development as musicians, so this research seeks to investigate the truth of this. The findings, for example, suggest that music teachers who very much identify themselves as musicians first may well view their pupils more as musicians also.

In England, inclusion remains a central theme in educational discourse. Within music education, and particularly in instrumental learning, adapted instruments are sometimes necessary to ensure that learners with physical disabilities can participate meaningfully in music-making. Previous research has highlighted the benefits of such instruments in promoting inclusivity in music classrooms, yet further national-level work is needed. This article, adopting a conversational format, presents reflections from the General Manager of The OHMI Trust on the ongoing challenges and emerging opportunities for improving access to music education for physically disabled learners.

Music and vocal play may be highly motivating and essential to the well-being of individuals with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). However, few frameworks have been developed to support non-music specialists to facilitate music-making opportunities for people with PIMD. This research considered how the implementation of playful music-making sessions, the Musical Play Framework, affected the attitudes of non-music specialist teaching staff towards music-making for students with PIMD in two UK educational settings. Findings highlighted the barriers staff encountered, the positive experiences of staff and the benefits of reflective practice when implementing novel musical approaches and developing staff skill sets.

This paper builds on research conducted in 2008 by Wright into the uneasy power dynamics between a music teacher and her pupils in a secondary school music classroom in Wales as a result of her Western Classical ‘habitus’; by this, we mean the habitual behaviours, attitudes and values that are commonplace when operating as a classical musician. Some 18 years on, and in a transformative Welsh education climate, narrative data collected from pre-service teachers practising in similar classrooms in Wales suggest that they have begun to move away from their Western European classical ‘habitus’ and believe in shared pedagogic ownership that takes account of pupil voice and choice. Furthermore, in learning to teach, they develop pedagogic behaviours more akin to popular musicians, such as being more improvisatory and more willing to tolerate uncertainty. A key factor is the trusting and collaborative relationships they developed with their mentors (teacher-tutors) within an education system in Wales that has committed itself to the concept of subsidiarity. These findings mark a positive step forward for the music education community within a new and aspirational educational landscape in Wales.

This article aims to articulate the conceptualisation of inclusion and exclusion through Utu, a theoretical approach emanating from Kenyan Indigenous Communities (KIC), and the implications it has for music education. It argues for a new approach to understanding the relationship between inclusion and exclusion based on the principle of belonging in African thought. This principle underpins the rights of all to participate in life as a part of their aesthetic of life (Katingima Day, 2024) and an aesthetic education that employs aesthetic discernment to human experience. The implications for music education are then explored.