ABSTRACT
This chapter links changes in music education in New Zealand with international ideas concerning ‘twenty-first-century learning’. The New Zealand vision for twenty-first-century education with its emphasis on knowledge use and new forms of pedagogy is outlined, as well as how this ‘future-focused’ learning approach is already present in much music teaching in the secondary school and that it has been for some time. This has involved a shift from ‘knowledge as an object’ to knowledge as a process, greater relevance, and student choice in curriculum, group work and informal group learning, and digital literacy. Music’s case is instructive in considering the general move towards twenty-first-century learning. The positive possibilities and the unintended consequences that can result from such paradigmatic shifts are then considered. For example, widening access generally through a more ‘relevant’ curriculum may not necessarily lead to increased epistemic access. The confusion between curriculum and pedagogy can also lead to continued unequal access for all to music’s generative concepts.
