Creating an Educational Framework for Popular Music in Public Schools: Anticipating the Second-Wave

Abstract

advance a critical examination of research on the informal learning practices that are associated with the way so-called popular musicians learn. A call for a “second-wave ” of research studies on the teaching of popular music in schools is made. Contra instructional practices that adopt informal learning wholesale, the author argues that a sound educational framework must be in place should teachers and teacher educators wish to “operationalize ” the practices of popular musicians. Arguing that there is a distinction between “informal learning ” and “informalism, ” and critiquing the disappearance of the teacher in Lucy Green’s new book Music, Informal Learning and the School (2008), the concept of democracy – in the form of a laboratory school – is offered as a way of locating education in the practice of teaching and learning popular music.