Forum

This issue of the JRME features seven articles relevant to a wide audience, including school music teachers, teacher educators, advocates, and policy makers.

Four pieces in this issue are large-scale quantitative studies that address access to music education, associations between high school music participation and extra-musical outcomes, the collegiate paths high school music students take, and influences upon elementary music teachers’ career decisions. Three of these studies relied on large government datasets: the study conducted by Ryan Shaw and Amy Auletto included data retrieved from the Michigan Department of Education, while articles contributed by Brian Shaw and Ken Elpus both incorporated data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. In contrast, Robison and Russell’s work is built upon a large sample of members of the National Association for Music Education. It is encouraging to see music education scholars taking advantage of such resources, as secondary data analyses of large-scale government datasets can have many benefits, one of most compelling being the potential for analyses that yield population-level inferences.

The remaining three articles in this issue include experiments that investigate various aspects of music pedagogy. Hearing health is critical among musicians, and MacLeod et al.’s study of the impact of various types of earplugs on pitch perception will be informative for music educators in designing safe and effective ensemble experiences. Nàpoles et al.’s experiment explores the impact of movement on perceptions of musical expressivity, a topic of interest for many music directors and performers. Finally, Williams’ study of the impact of focus of attention on error detection skills will serve to inform practices used in a variety of rehearsal settings, conducting courses, and methods classes.