Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.
This research project aims to explore the pedagogical approaches, aims and attitudes of educators within undergraduate popular music education; additionally, this project looks to investigate the influences on these attitudes and approaches, and to explore the ways in which these influences and approaches interface with education policy in curriculum design. The research additionally aims to investigate and provide an up to date, in-depth re-evaluation of the pressures and issues facing educators and higher popular music education (hereafter, HPME) delivery in the UK today, building on the previous work of authors such as Cloonan & Hulstedt (2012). Data was gathered by means of a qualitative study, consisting of semi-structured interviews with educators involved in the teaching of popular music at HE level, each with a variety of experiences teaching in different HE institutions across the UK. Questions pertained to the participants’ pedagogical approach, perceived influences on this approach and key influences on curriculum design choices at both a departmental and institutional level. Preliminary findings highlight educators’ acute awareness of the pervasive economic agenda in which they are operating within in HE; ways in which this agenda often both implicitly and explicitly influences curriculum design and further evidence of the fact that that the existence of courses is increasingly rationalised through a vocational, employability-focussed lens at both an institutional and policy level.
