ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion on the idea of composition in schools as a student-centered procedure for learning music, where students use an “everyday,” rather than “historical,” creativity. After briefly describing to international readers how music education is provided in Spanish schools, comments are made on what the different reforms of the national curriculum have formally stated about composition and this is compared with empirical research. To understand what has effectively occurred in schools, a subsequent review of reports by teachers about projects they carried out in their classrooms is offered, as are research papers from academic journals, doctoral dissertations, and reports about composition in extracurricular contexts. Next, issues related to teacher training are analyzed, and the chapter concludes with a discussion on the role of composition in retaining music education within the national curriculum. In a rapidly evolving technological context, society is demanding educators not only to teach music for music's sake, but also to collaborate in fostering young people's creative, open-end problem-solving and team collaboration skills that they will need to succeed in a knowledge economy.
