Airi Liimets – författare

The 2009 annual conference of the European Association for Music in Schools (EAS) and the European regional conference of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) took place at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn. This volume primarily includes articles that have grown out of the papers presented at the conference – 37 articles by 41 authors from 15 countries. The articles fall into five thematic sections: Music in school culture, Musical connections between the school and outside-school world, A survey of music education systems of Europe, Music and personality’s development, Study materials and music as symbol of culture.

The first seven articles of the book provide an overview of how Estonian educational scientists, collaborating with colleagues from Finland and Sweden on one of the articles, have empirically studied the quality of learning environment, teachers’ professionalism and their perceptions of their own teaching as well as their professional role and students’ coping at school. When dealing with the educational reality, a wholeness-centred educational thinking is represented. Therefore, one of the articles is devoted to the question of how to define youth and interpret the development of the concept of youth. One article deals with creativity in relation to the social field. The last article compares the semantics of the concepts Paideía and lifestyle as expressions of the wholeness-centred educational thinking.

Tradition and Innovation in Education presents a number of articles that deal with topics as varied as outdoor education in Estonian kindergartens, student teacher lesson analysis skills, activities that bridge the theory-practice gap and the identity of academics in a changing university environment. In the light of PISA they also discuss how student awareness and the choice of different learning strategies explains the variation in reading proficiency. A user experience evaluation system is offered for pupils with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, while living, learning and discovery learning is presented as an approach to violin studies for beginners. The volume takes a new look at creativity as being discussed too much and losing its meaning.