Knowledge and Music Education: A Social Realist Account

Knowledge and Music Education: A Social Realist Account explores current challenges for music education in relation to wider philosophical and political debates, and seeks to find a way forward for the field by rethinking the nature and value of epistemic knowledge in the wake of postmodern critiques. Focusing on secondary school music, and considering changes in approaches to teaching over time, this book seeks to understand the forces at play that enhance or undermine music’s contribution to a socially just curriculum for all. The author argues that the unique nature of disciplinary-derived knowledge provides students with essential cognitive development, and must be integrated with the turn to more inclusive, student-centred, and culturally responsive teaching. Connecting theoretical issues with concrete curriculum design, the book considers how we can give music students the benefits of specialised subject knowledge without returning to a traditional past.

Graham J. McPhail taught secondary school music in Auckland, New Zealand, for 22 years and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Music Education at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, the University of Auckland, where he runs the programme of pre-service secondary music teachers. His research work is centred on the role of knowledge in curriculum and he was lead editor for New Zealand’s first volume on secondary school music education, Educational Change and the Secondary School Music Curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, published by Routledge in 2018.