Difficult questions in music education

Abstract

In the last editorial of the British Journal of Music Education (Fautley & Murphy, 2015) we gave some thought to the various ways in which music education manifests itself in teaching and learning situations in a variety of contexts. One of the many roles that the BJME fulfils is to document the changing nature of music education, as represented in the articles which are submitted to it, and subsequently published. But this does not mean that we should not also be asking difficult questions as to what the purposes of music education are, or might be. This is particularly the case when we consider the international nature of the readership of the BJME. What counts as music education in one national context may be very different from that which is practised elsewhere.