Education

Pursuing one particular aspect of my recent research that fascinated me, I’ve turned up a number of useful references that I now need to sift through. I’ll still be working on this task in St Andrews this week.

History AND Music AND Education AND Scottish

The literature search has certainly had its challenges. Searching on History AND Music AND Education AND Scottish, just won’t cut it in this situation!

In one chapter of the book I’ve just finished writing, I’ve written about Scottish music publishers and some of the materials they produced for Scottish music education. Now, I need to move on beyond my book: I want to know how much their resources were used or disseminated beyond Scotland, and I want to catch the pedagogues talking about them! The tricky part of this search is in ensuring I get a historical perspective – I’m not looking at how the history of music is taught today, but a particular aspect of the history of teaching music.

One journal in particular wasn’t an obvious resource when my main focus was on Scottish music publishers. However, now I’m thinking even more deeply about their educational materials, I’ve just found a journal that looks distinctly promising:-

• Journal of Research in Historical Music Education (Sage)
• You only have to read the Journal description to see why this particular title is going to be such a useful one.

And I’m also going to be combing some resources on English music education, in the hope that some Scottish resources or pedagogues get at least a passing mention. If they’ve been mentioned, then I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If not, then I have a blank canvas, and that in itself is exciting.