This article considers some ways in which the school classroom enters into, changes and complicates musical meanings, focusing particularly on the role of popular music and how it relates to classical music. I suggest that in bringing popular music into the curriculum, educators have largely ignored the informal learning practices of popular musicians. Popular music has therefore been present as curriculum content, but its presence has only recently begun to affect our teaching strategies. I examine how the adaptation of some informal popular music learning practices for classroom use can positively affect pupils' musical meanings and experiences. This applies not only to the sphere of popular music, but also to classical music and, by implication, other musics as well. Finally, the notions of musical autonomy, personal autonomy and musical authenticity in relation to musical meaning and informal learning practices within the classroom are discussed.

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Music educationalists are probably agreed upon one thing if nothing else: that theory and practice in the field urgently need to embrace diversity. This might encompass the diversity of musical styles which the globalisation of the music industry with one hand is making widely available, and with the other hand is threatening to swamp; the localisation of traditional musics being bolstered by that same industry as well as by governments and pressure groups in response to such threats; the appropriation and reworking of global musical styles in local settings, with and without the 'help' of commercial interest; the diverse responses to and uses of musics in different places, by different ethnic groups, religions, social classes, genders, 'sub-cultures', 'scenes' and other social groups; the rapidly changing array of music technology which is impacting on approaches to music-making; or the diversity of musical reception practices and approaches to music teaching and learning. How can music education philosophers and theorists, let alone practitioners, come to grips with such factors?At the present time, the Adornian project of discerning within music, traces of the structure and ideology of the society from which that music springs, has been largely discarded. Sociological interest in music is focussing instead on questions of how musical meanings are constructed through discourse, use, education, the media and other social practices and institutions, at the levels both of face-to-face interaction and of wider social structures (Martin, 1995;Finnegan, 1989;Negus, 1999; DeNora, 2000 andClayton 2003). What people say about music, the uses to which they put it in their ordinary lives, and their music-making practices are all receiving interest from researchers and scholars, alongside questions about the structures and processes of the music industry and broadcasting corporations and perhaps to a lesser extent, of education. Musicology has come under attack from such quarters during the last fifteen years or so, most notably for Journal of Educational Philosophy and Theory

Lucy Green Attempts have been made in many countries to close the gap between two musical worlds: that of pupils" musical culture outside school, and that of the classroom. However, whilst the former musical world, represented by various popular musics, now makes up a major part of curriculum content, the informal learning practices of the musicians who create these musics have not normally been recognised or adopted as teaching and learning strategies within classrooms. The gap between the two musical worlds has in that crucial sense, remained unbridged. 1 This article discusses a current UK research project which aims to investigate the feasibility and possible benefits of bringing at least some aspects of informal music learning practices into the high school music classroom.