Bennett Reimer is acknowledged internationally as one of our most influential living music educators.  Reimer entreats teachers of music around the world to give
'balanced attention to musical products, processes, references and contexts' to 'best represent to all students the power of music to provide fulfilments at the deepest levels of human need' (Reimer,1997:20).
In the cusp between millennia the education process makes exhausting demands on teachers.  Despite the intention of the new statements and profiles to make teaching less prescriptive teachers are in every sense more accountable. Yet, if public comment and salary are any indication, they and their vocations apparently are less valued by society than ever before.  Across most of Australia the curriculum is now divided into eight key learning areas.  Consequently some of the older 'subjects' find themselves relegated to strands within a key learning area.
Music is one of these.  
Where I work in the Northern Territory music is now one of six strands within the arts key learning area, one of eight.  Does this mean for students it now warrants only one forty-eighth of the timetable?  Generalist primary school teachers say that with so many subjects crowding the new curriculum and so much accountability it becomes increasingly difficult for them to give these 'minor subjects' the attention they really deserve.
This website is intended to be a realistic response to teachers' pleas that there are only so many hours in every day.  While teachers need to be able to continue teaching across the whole curriculum demands for the so-called significant learning areas make it virtually impossible to give fair attention to 'minor' disciplines such as 'music'.  It is not just as a music educator that I have real concerns about this devaluation that has happened for music in a new educational climate.  Gardner views music as one of seven human intelligences and gives it credit for supporting more areas of learning than any of the others.  When music as a subject is relegated to the back end of the timetable, to be taken only 'when there is time', a major mischief is created for all education.
Of course this new climate does nothing towards improving the generalist teacher's ability to implement music programs in their classrooms. It simply makes teachers more nervous.  In my daily visits to classrooms across the Northern Territory I meet teachers who tell me they simply do not have time to plan, program, implement and then assess and evaluate their music programs.  And, as primary school students move in to the middle school at around years five and six, teachers say that the programs which used to work no longer work.  Everything they try is deemed inappropriate by the students themselves and, such is student power, rejected.  Children cannot be compelled to learn, only enthused and nurtured to do so.  Teachers who have expertise and experience in most other areas of the curriculum are frequently thwarted by the skills, concepts and language of music.
In order that they can get on top of these constraints teachers often ask, even insist, that the work we do together be kept simple (the KISS principle: 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'). The planning programming, assessment and evaluation procedures that I share with teachers in professional development, need to be 'commonsense' if they are to continue after I leave a teacher, his or her class, and school.
I hope what I present here does just that.  Wherever possible I have kept the language as non technical as possible, avoided jargon and introduced activities in support of principles. These do not necessarily require any musical competence or expertise.

Organisation of the Website

The website is planned around the notion of a consecution of strategies which, while they may be perceived as a progression, are better viewed as a number of 'attacks' or approaches from different directions on a particular musical theme.  Imagine the many faces of a diamond - to understand and appreciate the impact of the diamond we gaze into it through each and every one of its many facets.  My hope is that teachers may work through any one of the examples provided and, in comprehending how the loose process works, devise their own sequences.  
This website is not intended to be a substitute for yet another prescriptive music text book or program.  The examples used are ones which have worked for me and for colleagues.  Teachers are encouraged to review the music they have learned and enjoyed throughout their own lifetimes, whether recently or in the distant past, and to resurrect these where appropriate.  Of course this also includes looking for new activities which will support education, as Elliott premises (Elliott,1995:13) in music, about music, for music and by means of music.
Because these are at the heart of new curriculum I have chosen to structure this website around two strongly integrated foci.  The first is that of 'exit outcomes' as envisaged by Spady (1988) and other educators. They stress the importance not only of the 'content' or 'IQ' outcomes of the curriculum, exemplified in the key learning areas, but also and perhaps even more critically, 'EQ' outcomes, in the preparation of students as effective citizens in the 'real' world. These identify competent learners as collaborative, empathetic, organised, self-directed, imaginative, innovative, and communicative.
The second main focus involves IQ outcomes made explicit here in the four strands, Arts Skills and Processes, Creating Arts Ideas, Arts Responses, and Arts in Contexts.  In other states and countries these may have other names and even, as in Victoria, have been merged into two organisers.  Nevertheless they are, if I may be excused the pun, 'sound' fundamentals for an approach to music education which need not rely on elemental approaches if teachers do not wish, nor depend on a teacher's skills in reading and writing staff notation - if they are unable to do so.  I'm not suggesting that teaching shouldn't follow those threads but that effective music teaching and learning can happen without facility in these.  In fact the needs of students to learn to read and write music might be addressed elsewhere, such as in school recorder ensembles.
In other words this website is directed primarily to the teacher who is not a music specialist, particularly the teacher who tells me - while I don't entirely believe him or her - that 'I don't have a musical bone in my body but I love music'.  Personally I'm not sure how the two attributes could operate together!  Of course I hope the specialist music educator might also benefit from perusing this and considering the approaches outlined here as giving added substance to existing music education approaches.
In this, the introductory section of the website, I survey information fundamental to teaching music in a school classroom, briefly noting contemporary cultural diversity and suggesting resources ranging from the human through to technological resources.  I make suggestions about appropriate venues and, hopefully some practical commonsense observations about ways ordinary general practitioner teachers can plan and run music programs which do not require them to be practising or knowledgeable musicians.
The second section of the website describes and expands on musical implications of the four strand organisers.  Because I am based in the Northern Territory I am bound to be somewhat parochial regarding educational principles and practices.  However in the early 21st century global village principles and practices become increasingly merged, perhaps with different titles.  I also offer hypothetical case studies of teachers demonstrating basic music programs at different levels in the primary school based on the five strand organisers.
In the third section I develop this notion of employing strand organisers in the planning of a multi-faceted music program, suggesting ways that 'bundles' of related strategies might be used to inform the progress of such a program.
The fourth section of the website examines issues related to assessing student progress and evaluating programs, looking at where students - and teachers - are 'coming from' and where it might be intended programs take them.
The website closes with 'End-matter' including appendices relevant to the text, a bibliography and suggested resource list (CD's, programs and the like).

Teaching and learning models

Probably, nationally and internationally, teaching and learning models have been with us since the notion of 'education' began, often simple elaborations of 'Do, Talk, Record'.  The most general features of the method of knowing

I have suggested one such music teaching and learning model to support the strategies outlined in this website. How or whether teachers use it should, at the end of the day, be a matter of their own personal choice, not adhered to rigorously, but simply assisting in scaffolding their own planning, programming and implementation.
For example teachers might not wish to use the opening strategy of a non analytical 'first-time' stimulus and 'feel' for a new performance experience.  A teacher might judge the sequence of teaching and learning strategies as inappropriate for their particular class or needs, or decide to re-use a particular strategy.
Intercultural music teaching & learning
A common feature of contemporary approaches to music education is in acknowledging the diversity of cultures within our society.  Of course this is reflected in the populations of our schools and thus within each classroom.  Given that culture may be expressed simply as 'the way we do things around here' within our classroom we will have many children who have learned to do things in a way differently to others in the class.  Our teaching needs to acknowledge this if it is to be truly equitable, recognising the significance across cultures of music as an art in reflecting world views.
The music of all of the cultural communities represented in our society warrant recognition in their own right and for their own worth, not contrasted with or measured against others.  Internationally renowned music educators Kwabena Nketia (1988:97-99)  and Reimer (1997:17) agree that both similarities and differences have significant roles in the intercultural communication of music. Their views inform this website's intercultural approach to music education.
Among music curriculum models identified by Pratte (1979:62-85) I also favour his sixth and final approach, which Pratte describes as a 'Dynamic Multiculturalism' model.  Here music teaching and learning endeavour as far as is possible to duplicate the music's culture's 'way things are done around here'.
By devising a learning environment which reflects the world views of people whose music is under study, intercultural learning is realised as contextualised culturally and temporally. This fits with the philosophy of experiential learning, the immersion of learners in hands-on lived-in experiences, as common to educational methodologies across cultures.

What value is there in teaching and learning music?

When students learn about music they should also learn, among many other things;

• that life ought to be more than just a matter of needing the essentials of sleep,  warmth, shelter air and food.  Music must be part of those activities which enrich life;
• the enjoyment of taking part in making - songs and pieces of music, rhythms, instruments - either together in a group or as a class or by themselves;
• increasing respect for the skills of others,  particularly skills which reflect long years of effort and dedication (eg in composition and performance)  not only because of opportunities to listen to performances and to learn about how these come about,  but also to try for themselves to compose or perform music;
• the satisfaction gained from expressing themselves effectively through creating, making or presenting music;
• that music is an important vehicle for transporting the unique characteristics of culture. Thus students learn increased respect for the people of cultural groups other than their own through appreciating what their music is about;
• cooperation because music is yet another learning area where collaboration and team work are essential
• satisfaction!
  

Music and the global curriculum