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This study concerns the relationship between learning and play. On the basis of sociocultural theory, some ideas are put forward about how this relationship can be conceptualised in the context of goal-directed practice. Empirical data from primary school with children 6-8 years old are used to illustrate and discuss this conceptualisation. It is suggested that learning and play need to be seen as intrinsically interwoven, and that children's play is contingent on their learning, more particularly the cultural tools they have appropriated or are in the midst of appropriating.

This study investigates through observations and interviews what importance further education has for preschool teachers' practice in two music-profiled preschool and their way of conceptualising it. A distinction between music as a method for teaching, on the one hand, and as a content of knowledge, on the other, is used in the analysis. The result shows that the teachers act confidently in dealing with music; both in spontaneous and planned activities, and that they show competence in teaching music to the children. In contradiction, when the teachers are interviewed about their work, they say that they have never been able to sing or play. They talk about music as a method for learning language, but they realise it in practice as the content of learning. This contradiction and its implications are discussed and it is argued that further education needs to take care of the fact that teachers need to develop a professional language.

The present study concerns the multimodal nature of music education. How children (aged 4Á8 years) respond when faced with the challenge of talking about what they hear in pieces of music is studied. The semiotic tools children and their teachers use in these situations and how they transduce between modalities (verbal, sound, colours and gestures) are analysed. Paradoxically, this analytical focus on multimodality results in an emphasis on the importance of verbal language in the learning situations studied. Some implications for music education are discussed.

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