Innovating Music Education: New Directions in Pedagogy, Learning, and Cultural Practice
Music education has long provided spaces where creativity, cultural understanding, and shared musical experience shape how people learn together. Through singing, playing instruments, composing, listening, and moving with music, learners encounter ways of knowing that connect artistic practice with social and cultural life. Around the world, educators continue to recognize the important role music plays in nurturing creativity, cultural participation, and meaningful engagement with learning (OECD, 2013; UNESCO, 2024). For many learners, music education offers one of the first opportunities to experience learning as something collaborative, expressive, and culturally grounded.
Today, music educators are exploring new ways of teaching, learning, and engaging with music. In different parts of the world, teachers and researchers are reconsidering how musical knowledge is shared, how diverse musical traditions enter learning environments, and how music education can respond to changing social and cultural contexts. Playful approaches to teaching and learning open space for creative exploration in music classrooms (Byrne et al., 2024). Conversations about culturally responsive pedagogy encourage deeper engagement with diverse musical traditions and lived cultural experiences (Chen-Hafteck, 2024). Scholars also remind us that teaching music often means engaging with culture, identity, and ways of understanding the world (Campbell & Mellizo, 2024).
List of Topic Areas
Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following topic areas:
1. Innovative Pedagogies in Music Education
Explorations of emerging teaching approaches that support creativity, collaboration, and meaningful musical engagement in diverse learning contexts.
2. Curriculum, Learning, and Assessment in Music Education
Studies examining new approaches to curriculum design, learning processes, and assessment practices in music education.
3. Culturally Responsive and Intercultural Music Education
Research exploring how music education engages with diverse musical traditions, cultural knowledge, and intercultural learning.
4. Community, Participation, and Social Dimensions of Music Learning
Work examining participatory music-making, community-based music initiatives, and the role of music education in fostering social connection and wellbeing.
5. Sustainability and Cultural Continuity in Music Education
Research addressing how music education sustains cultural traditions, supports cultural dialogue, and contributes to sustainable cultural learning environments.
6. Music Education within Educational Systems and Future Learning Pathways
Studies that consider broader educational contexts, including policy, teacher education, institutional practices, and the evolving role of music education in future learning systems.
Submissions from diverse learning settings and educational levels are welcome. Research may focus on music learning in classrooms, studios, community music programs, higher education, or other educational environments. Studies involving learners across different stages of education, including early childhood, kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary, and lifelong learning contexts, are all encouraged. We welcome empirical studies, theoretical contributions, literature-based analyses, and practice-based research from diverse cultural and educational contexts.
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eisfl
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/eisfl
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/04/2026
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30/10/2026
Closing date for abstract submission: 31/05/2026
Email for submissions: ylho@eduhk.hk, yangyang@eduhk.hk, pcamp@uw.edu
For more details refer here
