Mentoring is a critical element in the well-being, socialization, and professional identity development of graduate students. Yet in music education, little is known about the graduate student mentoring experience from the mentors’ perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine music teacher educators’ perspectives on and experiences with graduate student mentoring. We used a concurrent nested approach to mixed-methods phenomenological research (QUAN + PHEN) with a survey of a national sample of music teacher educators ( N = 142) and a phenomenology built from a three-interview series with individuals ( n = 6) at various career stages. After analyzing each phase separately, we engaged in data integration and interpretation of study findings to reveal a description of current mentoring practices and beliefs. Key elements include relationship building, a multilayered community of practice, and intentional acts of anticipatory socialization that empower students as they transition to the role of colleague.

Children’s informal music-making has been studied in a variety of contexts outside of school, but few researchers have examined this type of learning in elementary music classes. The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore the lived experience of 13 children with informal music learning in an elementary school in the U.S. Individual interviews, focus group interviews, and field notes were collected and analyzed using van Manen’s process for hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry. The data revealed the following themes: freedom to choose, making it their own, exploring their musical identities, and critical reflection. Key elements of the essence include interactions with friends, embodied music making, personal validation, and the encouragement of future musical opportunities. The discussion provides suggestions for music educators to facilitate informal music learning experiences and implications for future research with elementary students.

In popular music education, there has been an increase in the amount of literature, pedagogical resources, and organizations that are available, and two pedagogical approaches for teaching popular music are informal music learning (IML) and modern band (MB). However, there is little existing scholarly critical analysis comparing these approaches. The purpose of this qualitative directed content analysis was to explore the similarities and differences between IML and MB in kindergarten through 12th-grade settings and examine how major characteristics of each approach are represented in scholarly and curricular resources. While similarities exist in the literature on these approaches, there are also distinct differences between them, such as orientation toward process or performance, use of composition and improvisation, and teacher role and approach. Moreover, the representation of the principles of both IML and MB were not always consistent in the resources we examined, with some aspects highly represented and others rarely mentioned. Learning more about both approaches could be beneficial to scholars and teachers interested in popular music pedagogy and how they are implemented in classrooms.