WCET Special Issue

Issue 36.3 of the British Journal of Music Education is a special edition, focussing on the Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (WCET) programme in England. As the editors explain in the introduction, WCET is, a musical teaching and learning programme which has been in operation in England since 2002/2003  This is not simply a local matter for a British journal, however, as there are key informants which come from careful study of this pedagogic approach. Having been running for some years now, it is timely to take a research-based look at WCET and to both investigate what is going on and, importantly, reflect on what we can learn from WCET in terms of teaching and learning music in the classroom more widely. This will, we hope, be of interest to our international audience. Devoting a whole issue to a single topic shows that we feel that this is of importance, and to this end, we have assembled a number of papers on various aspects of WCET.

Following an introductory paper by the journal editors, Martin Fautley and Alison Daubney, which outlines the nature and purpose of WCET, there then follow five research-based papers which investigate a range of different aspects of WCET:

• Susan Hallam: What contributes to successful whole-class Ensemble Tuition?
• Martin Fautley, Victoria Kinsella and Adam Whittaker: Models of teaching and learning identified in Whole Class Ensemble Tuition
• Barbara Ann Johnstone: Professional collaboration in the Wider Opportunities instrumental programme
• Anthony Anderson and Sarah Barton-Wales: Musical culture and the primary school: an investigation into parental attitudes to Whole Class Ensemble Teaching in the English primary school and potential impacts on children’s musical progress
• Anna Huber: The role of the parent during a whole-class beginner instrumental programme: an investigation into the attitudes of pupils and their parents towards parental support in relation to different models of practising

As WCET forms part of the National Plan for Music Education in England, which is currently under review, we hope these papers will prove useful to all those who have an interest in the operation and philosophy underpinning it.

By special arrangement with Cambridge University Press, all these papers are being made freely available for a limited time to encourage wider dissemination and discussion. We hope this approach will prove helpful to all, especially those involved at the close-to-field end of delivery of WCET programmes, along with policymakers and researchers more widely.

The nature, purpose, and operationalisation of WCET are of general interest, we believe, and it is to be hoped that the papers in this special edition will make a contribution to debates currently taking place concerning this important programme.

Read the special issue of the British Journal of Music Education without charge until 15 March 2020.