David J. Elliott - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment in Music Education offers global, comprehensive, and critical perspectives on a wide range of conceptual and practical issues in music education assessment, evaluation, and feedback as these apply to various forms of music education within schools and communities. The central aims of this Handbook focus on broadening and deepening readers' understandings of and critical thinking about the problems, opportunities, spaces and places, concepts, and practical strategies that music educators and community music facilitators employ, develop, and deploy to improve various aspects of music teaching and learning around the world.

Elliot's groundbreaking 1995 book, Music Matters: A New Philosophy in Music Education, introduced the praxial theory of music education. Critical Matters collects the responses to Elliot's basic thesis from a number of today's leading scholars in the field. A companion to Music Matters, Critical Matters is designed to spark debate and deeper analysis of this influential theory music education.

Praxial Music Education is a collection of essays by nineteen internationally recognized scholars in music education. Each essay offers critical reflections on a key topic in contemporary music education. The starting point of each essay, and the unifying thread of this collection, is the "praxial" philosophy of music education explained in Elliott's Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education (OUP, 1995). This philosophy argues for a socially and artistically grounded concept of music and music education, challenging the field's traditional "absolutist" foundations. Praxial Music Education is both a critical companion to Music Matters, and an independent text on contemporary issues in music education. Among the themes discussed are multicultural music education, the nature of musical understanding, early childhood music education, the nature and teaching of music listening, music curriculum development, and musical creativity. Praxial music education is a living theory. This unique collection will not only enrich discussions that already use Music Matters as their core, but will globalize current discussions and applications of the praxial philosophy and emphasize the positive and practical values of collaborative efforts in music education.

In 1712, English naturalist Mark Catesby (1683–1749) crossed the Atlantic to Virginia. After a seven-year stay, he returned to England with paintings of plants and animals he had studied. They sufficiently impressed other naturalists that in 1722 several Fellows of the Royal Society sponsored his return to North America. There Catesby cataloged the flora and fauna of the Carolinas and the Bahamas by gathering seeds and specimens, compiling notes, and making watercolor sketches. Going home to England after five years, he began the twenty-year task of writing, etching, and publishing his monumental The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands.Mark Catesby was a man of exceptional courage and determination combined with insatiable curiosity and multiple talents. Nevertheless no portrait of him is known. The international contributors to this volume review Catesby’s biography alongside the historical and scientific significance of his work. Ultimately, this lavishly illustrated volume advances knowledge of Catesby’s explorations, collections, artwork, and publications in order to reassess his importance within the pantheon of early naturalists.Contributors: Kraig Adler, Aaron M. Bauer, Janet Browne, David J. Elliott, W. Hardy Eshbaugh, Kay Etheridge, Stephen A. Harris, Valerie Herbert, Suzanne Linder Hurley, C. E. Jarvis, Shepard Krech III, Mark Laird, Henrietta McBurney, Judith Magee, Sarah Meacham, Cynthia P. Neal, Charles Nelson, Leslie K. Overstreet, Florence F. J. M. Pieters, Ghillean T. Prance, Diana Preston, Michael Preston, Karen Reeds, James L. Reveal, Robert Robertson, Marcus B. Simpson, Jr.

Community Music Today highlights community music workers who constantly improvise and reinvent to lead through music and other expressive media. It answers the perennial question “What is community music?” through a broad, international palette of contextual shades, hues, tones, and colors. With over fifty musician/educators participating, the book explores community music in global contexts, interconnections, and marginalized communities, as well as artistry and social justice in performing ensembles.This book is both a response to and a testimony of what music is and can do, music’s place in people’s lives, and the many ways it unites and marks communities. As documented in case studies, community music workers may be musicians, teachers, researchers, and activists, responding to the particular situations in which they find themselves. Their voices are the threads of the multifaceted tapestry of musical practices at play in formal, informal, nonformal, incidental, and accidental happenings of community music.