This study analyses 10 Swedish music teachers’ descriptions of how a new music syllabus and a new credit scale have influenced their practice. In the new curriculum, grading is introduced in year 6 and not, as previously, in year 8. We have therefore focused on the effects of this change on school years 5–7. The new syllabus is much more precise and explicit than the earlier one, and it is reported to have strongly affected both teachers’ and pupils’ work in the classroom. Teachers are facing a number of dilemmas when trying to combine the demands of the syllabus with their conceptions of quality in music education.

Social media has led to new opportunities for learning music. In less formalized settings, a whole new arena for learning music has developed. The aim of this article is to investigate student teachers’ experiences of learning to play an instrument with the Internet as a teacher. The investigation was done as an action research study where twelve beginning teacher-training students were given the task to use the Internet to learn how to play an instrument. The students were organized in peer groups to help each other. Documentation of the progress happened through logbooks. The project lasted for half a year in 2011 and had a triple intention: to provide the students with experience about learning how to play by help of the Internet, for the students to learn to play a second instrument, and to investigate if and how learning practices for learning an instrument aided by the Internet could be useful in music teacher training.

Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools’ and pupils’ performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become dominated by obligations regarding assessment and grading. A common thread is the demand for equal and just assessment and grading through clear criteria and transparent processes. Torrance states that clarity in assessment procedures, processes, and criteria has underpinned widespread use of coaching, practice, and provision of formative feedback to boost achievement, but that such transparency encourages instrumentalism. He concludes that the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with “assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience” and “criteria compliance” replacing “learning”. Thus, formative assessment, in spite of its proven educational potential, threatens to be deformative. In this article we will explore to what extent and how this development is visible in two cases, presenting music education in one Norwegian and one Swedish compulsory school setting. Three thematic threads run through this exploration: quality, power, and instrumentalism.

Against the background of problems with unarticulated concepts of quality and assessment criteria when assessing music, this article concerns how the limit for approval is constructed and legitimised by jurors when assessing entrance auditions to Swedish specialist music teacher education. The data comprise video documented auditions, focus group conversations, and stimulated-recall based interviews, involving jury members at four music education departments. Social semiotic theory is used to study how jurors assess applicants’ knowledge representations in main instrument tests, what is considered decisive for an approval, and how this set limit is legitimised. Four approaches have been constructed: the demanding education and profession, the supposed capacity of the applicant, the flexible admission situation, and the care of the applicant. What is considered to be the minimum requirement for approval in these constructions differs markedly, which shows a striking difference between the views of jurors within and between institutions on how the applicants’ musical performances on a main instrument should be assessed. These findings are discussed in relation to two possible scenarios of revised admission tests.

Although entrance test criteria seem decisive for accessing higher music education programmes, and problems and challenges with the assessment process are reported, the area is largely unexplored. This article concerns how entrance auditions, specifically primary instrument auditions for Swedish specialist music teacher programmes, are examined and discussed. The data comprise video-documented auditions, focus group conversations, and stimulated-recall-based interviews involving assessor groups at four music education departments. Social-semiotic theory is used to study how assessors judge applicants’ knowledge representations in audition performances. A music-centred assessment culture is constructed, emphasising assessments of technical, communicative, and genre-anchored interpretation skills essential for meeting the demands of the education and profession. Also, a person-centred assessment culture is revealed, emphasising the assessment of personal traits suitable for education and profession. The discussion addresses the reliability, credibility, and validity of assessing abilities in terms of being and behaving in a particular way.