ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the challenge of drawing on, utilising, and building on informal music knowledge within the more formal setting of the secondary school. It describes why this recontextualising of informal knowledge is necessary, a point which many in the music education field might argue against. The role that students' prior knowledge should play in the curriculum and the place for experiential and informal learning has been a long-standing educational concern, but the American philosopher of education John Dewey is regarded as the champion of the modern progressive view that experience and the needs and interests of students should be placed at the centre of our educational endeavours. The informal learning procedures of popular and other non-classical musics appear to fit Bernstein's definition of a horizontal discourse.
