'Not enough music': a critique of music education in schools in England

This paper presents a critical overview of music education in schools in England, both generally and historically up to the end of 2019. It was decided early on that justice could not be done to all the nations of the UK - Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - with their respective rich and important music cultures; neither could there be an international comparative analysis: while these two perspectives are important, it would have required a book rather than a monograph to fully explore these dimensions. This monograph was researched and written by me from late 2016 to late 2019. It started as a short article, maybe 3000 to 5000 words, for a journal, but as I read more, visited places and researched more deeply and widely, I realized that a short journal article would not do justice to the subject. I was also persuaded that the finished work should be written in accessible English and should reach a much wider readership than a narrowly academic journal article would allow. So it is now a research monograph, 29,000 words long and with over 100 references. I consider the current state of teaching and learning in music education by drawing on national and local research projects including online web research, observations, and visits to institutions, as well as on my own insights and experience. The visits included a variety of schools and colleges, interviews, and attendance at key conferences, along with phone conversations and personal discussions with people in music and music education, and extensive reading of major texts and reports. The monograph includes historical perspectives as well as considering the social, political and economic aspects of music education, including issues related to the substantial inequality in access to instrument learning and the variable quality of the reach and provision of music education in schools. It attempts to offer a balanced view, exploring the negative aspects but also featuring positive coverage of the many successful initiatives at local and national level, often promoted by schools, government policy, concert halls, universities and music colleges, music professional bodies, charities and other third sector organizations. It also seeks to explore and celebrate the many important manifestations of music in the public domain in England, as a background to questioning, along with music reports and professional organizations attached to the cultural and creative industries, why music education in schools has increasingly suffered underfunding, decreased provision and lowered status in the school curriculum, when England has such a world-renowned, diverse and rich music culture. Relevant developments and research on music and arts education at De Montfort University are also discussed and Dr Austin Griffiths, my colleague and member of the Education Studies staff, was invited to write a special analysis of elite music education based on his ongoing research

SERVICE BEFORE SELF: THE HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF WORKING IN PUBLIC CHILD WELFARE

Child welfare workers respond to human tragedy and the job stresses associated with their positions that may result in their own trauma, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, emotional exhaustion, and burnout. Workers continue to leave their positions at alarming rates, influencing service quality and the ability to meet the needs of vulnerable populations. Decades of research have attempted to solve this national crisis by identifying salient factors found to influence the child welfare worker\u27s experience and intention to leave their position. However, the problem prevails. Addressing a major gap in the literature, this mixed methods study took a unique approach by exploring how the stress of working in public child welfare affects workers’ personal health. Using secondary data analysis from a statewide sample of public child welfare workers, qualitative thematic content analysis and binary logistic regression were used to explore what child welfare workers identified as unhealthy habits they have developed as a result of stress from their positions. Findings from this study provide clear evidence that the demands associated with working in this capacity negatively impact the health of the child welfare worker. Qualitatively, five self-reported themes emerged when workers were asked to describe the health consequences of their work. Workers described their affinity for unhealthy consumption (e.g., food, alcohol, tobacco) and the development of a number of unhealthy behaviors (e.g., disturbed sleep, lack of exercise, angry outbursts) as a result of the stress of their positions. Workers also provided descriptions of the physical and mental health implications of working, compounded by the poor work-life balances reported. Quantitatively, significant differences were found across all subscales of the Child Welfare Employee Feedback Scale (CWEFS) when examined by the current health status of the workforce. Workers reporting poorer health had worked at the agency longer and reported a greater intention to leave the agency in the next 12 months. Finally, a binary logistic regression identified Workload and Job Impact as factors predicting lower worker health outcomes. Although “marginally” significant, working outside of one’s home county and working in an urban area were factors contributing to the stress-induced health impact associated with respondents’ positions. The profession must recognize the health implications associated with working in public child welfare and organizational efforts to allow these employees to self-care seems to be an absolute necessity. Future research should integrate the use of biometric screening and multidisciplinary collaboration to investigate organizational, supervisory, and individual level efforts to improve the situation

Child Sexual Abuse and the Impact of Rurality on Foster Care Outcomes: An Exploratory Analysis

Given the cost of long-term foster care placement in both human and economic terms, few studies have specifically explored if any factors help to predict why this vulnerable population spends significantly more time in foster care. The overarching goal of this exploratory study was to use binary logistic regression to investigate whether any child demographic or environmental characteristics predicted the discharge of a child placed in Kentucky\u27s foster care system for child sexual abuse. Results indicated that children in the most rural areas of the state were over 10 times more likely to be discharged from foster care during the federal fiscal year than those residing in the most urban areas. Given this stark reality, a focus must be allocated in understanding this phenomenon. Future research must examine whether the results speak to the necessity of systematic improvement in urban areas or if they are illustrating a unique strength found in rural areas

Software Sustainability: The Modern Tower of Babel

<p>The aim of this paper is to explore the emerging definitions of software sustainability from the field of software engineering in order to contribute to the question, what is software sustainability?</p

Lessons Learned from COVID-19: Provider Suggestions for Improving Service Delivery in Sexual Violence Resource Centers and Children\u27s Advocacy Centers in Kentucky

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges for human service providers, especially as face-to-face services were limited by both formal and informal efforts to protect public health. Telehealth has emerged as a main strategy to ensure continuity of care. This study explored adaptations to services in child advocacy centers (CACs) and sexual violence resource centers (SVRCs) across the Commonwealth of Kentucky, particularly using telehealth. This study highlights respondents’ suggestions about improving these service delivery systems and the particular emphasis on challenges and strengths of telehealth for reaching those in rural areas

An examination of inequalities in a Comprehensive School in an area of high disadvantage : what do student and practitioner perceptions tell us about the relationship between current and historical inequalities in English schools?

This study examined the assertion that, in spite of the twenty-first century rhetoric of equality in English education, class and values based prejudice in schools remains strong. It particularly explored how practitioners perceived different groups of students, students’ self-reported attitudes to school, and whether or not the between-group differences perceived by practitioners reflected the self-reported views of students. Furthermore it examined whether practitioners’ perceptions of students were linked to gender, SEN, ethnicity, academic ability, or economic, familial, and cultural capitals, and whether students with socio-economic status and cultural capital closest to that of practitioners were viewed more positively than other students. Finally, it questioned whether school practice widened the achievement and attitudinal gaps between different groups of students. The study followed 156 students for their first four terms in secondary school. Student questionnaires were used to create group profiles for initial and post-first-year attitudes, academic self-concept; cultural capital, and socio-economic capital. Practitioner perceptions of students used teacher-awarded motivation grades, detention and behaviour logs, ability-group placements, and questionnaires with pastoral managers. Analytical procedures included factor analyses, comparisons of means, and a regression analysis. The findings showed that practitioner-perceived group differences were much larger than the differences perceived by students. Practitioners perceived larger differences between English ability groups compared to Maths groups. Also, practitioners perceived girls and high cultural capital students as more motivated and in-tune with school values than others. Poorer male students, SEN students, and students with a single parent were perceived less positively than others. An elite group of students had more economic and cultural capital than others, and were viewed very positively by practitioners. There was a suggestion that non-white students were not viewed as positively as they should have been. The study suggested a need to further explore the situation of mixed-heritage children. The study suggested that teachers as individuals, and schools as institutions, need to question whether they discriminate against poorer students and those with cultural capital different from their own. They also need to question whether they are gender stereotyping and ask if they are offering boys from disadvantaged backgrounds an appropriate curriculum delivered in an effective pedagogical style. The findings of this study had important policy implications for pedagogy, curriculum content, school organization, and equal opportunities. They suggested that some practices exacerbated pre-existing achievement and attitudinal gaps

The influence of wind forcing on the Chesapeake Bay buoyant coastal current

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 36 (2006): 1305-1316, doi:10.1175/JPO2909.1.Observations of the buoyant coastal current that flows southward from Chesapeake Bay are used to describe how the thickness, width, and propagation speed vary in response to changes in the along-shelf wind stress. Three basic regimes were observed depending on the strength of the wind. For weak wind stresses (from −0.02 to 0.02 Pa), the buoyant coastal current was relatively thin, the front slope was not steep, and the width was variable (1–20 km). For moderate downwelling (southward) wind stresses (0.02–0.07 Pa), wind-driven cross-shelf advection steepened the front, causing the plume to narrow and thicken. For stronger downwelling wind stresses (greater than 0.07 Pa), vertical mixing dominated, bulk Richardson numbers were approximately 0.25, isopycnals were nearly vertical, and the plume front widened but the plume width did not change. Plume thickness and width were normalized by the theoretical plume scales in the absence of wind forcing. Normalized plume thickness increased linearly from 1 to 2 as downwelling wind stresses increased from 0 to 0.2 Pa. Normalized plume widths were approximately 1 for downwelling wind stresses from 0.02 to 0.2 Pa. The observed along-shelf propagation speed of the plume was roughly equal to the sum of the theoretical propagation speed and the wind-driven along-shelf flow.This work was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0095059, OCE-0220773, OCE-92-21614, and OCE-96-33013

Software Sustainability: The Modern Tower of Babel

The development of sustainable software has been identified as one of the key challenges in the field of computational science and engineering. However, there is currently no agreed definition of the concept. Current definitions range from a composite, non-functional requirement to simply an emergent property. This lack of clarity leads to confusion, and potentially to ineffective and inefficient efforts to develop sustainable software systems. The aim of this paper is to explore the emerging definitions of software sustainability from the field of software engineering in order to contribute to the question, what is software sustainability? The preliminary analysis suggests that the concept of software sustainability is complex and multifaceted with any consensus towards a shared definition within the field of software engineering yet to be achieved

Computable de Finetti measures

We prove a computable version of de Finetti's theorem on exchangeable sequences of real random variables. As a consequence, exchangeable stochastic processes expressed in probabilistic functional programming languages can be automatically rewritten as procedures that do not modify non-local state. Along the way, we prove that a distribution on the unit interval is computable if and only if its moments are uniformly computable.Comment: 32 pages. Final journal version; expanded somewhat, with minor corrections. To appear in Annals of Pure and Applied Logic. Extended abstract appeared in Proceedings of CiE '09, LNCS 5635, pp. 218-23