Music is an expression of feelings of the soul conveyed through the medium of sound. But not all sounds are music. It might be said that only an organised sound or series of sounds can be called music. Thus, music is connected to the eternal and constant flow and order of the universe, to the laws and rhythms of nature. It can also be said that musical order is comparable to the natural order of the universe. There are laws of a certain nature in the natural sciences and likewise in music there are structures and procedures, or even rules, that should be followed to produce beautiful music. The International Conference "Innovations for 21st Century Music Education and Research" provided a timely opportunity to take stock of the latest developments in music education and brought together educators, researchers and members of the broader community in a welcoming forum in which they were able to express theoretical and practical views, concepts, research results and principles to help support the further development of music education.
About the Author: Dr. Kun Setyaning Astuti, M, Pd., is Vice Dean of the Languages and Arts Faculty, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta- Indonesia from 2012 to present. She is a lecturer at the Music Education Department and Art Education Program Study. She has a lot of experience in teaching and doing research at the national and international level in music teaching methods, development of music teaching models, and evaluation of music teaching. She has conducted international research collaboration with Utrecht University and Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht in the Netherlands for more than 8 years. Beside that she have been doing research with conservatory of Den Haag-the Netherlands, University voor Humanistiek Utrecht, the Netherlands, and De Poitiers France. She also has observing the musical ability of several musical skills in many countries, besides her expertise on music education.
Prof. Gary McPherson, Ph.D. is currently the Ormond Professor of Music and Director of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. He is a former President of the Australian and International Societies for Music Education, and has published well over 200 articles and book chapters, including editing the Oxford Handbook of Music Education and recent books such as "The Child as Musician" and "Musical Prodigies" (OUP, 2016).
Bambang Sugeng, Ph. D. is a senior lecturer at the English Education Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Yogyakarta State University. He teaches English as a foreign language (TEFL) mostly specializing in grammar, literature, and arts and culture. He has been doing post doctorate programs in prominent host universities in Australia, England, and the United States of America. He is also presently an editor of Jurnal Kependidikan (JK) and Journal of Education (JOE), published by Yogyakarta State University.
He has written textbooks for grade, high school, and university students. He is a competent language editor.
Nila Kurniasari, M.Pd is a lecturer working at the Faculty of Languages and Arts, Yogyakarta State University. As a lecturer in the English Department, she has been teaching English as foreign language to Indonesian students taking English as their major and teaching English for Specific Purposes for students taking other majors for over 4 years. She has been involved in studies, particularly on the role and application of e-learning in TEFL and she has been conducting workshops on similar topics.
Dr. Tutut Herawan is a principal researcher at AMCS Research Centre and presently acting as a research consultant at Yogyakarta State University. Formerly, he was an associate professor at the Department of Information Systems, University of Malaya. He received a PhD degree in Information Technology in 2010 from Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia. He is a visiting researcher at Parallel and Distributed Computing Research Lab of Deakin University, Australia. He is also a flying lecturer in many universities in Indonesia. He is the executive editor of the Malaysian Journal of Computer Science (ISI JCR with IF 0.405). He has also guest edited many special issues in many reputable international journals. He has edited five Springer-series books and published more than 270 articles in various book chapters, international journals and conference proceedings which are indexed in Scopus database (with H-index 19). He is an active reviewer for more than 50 international journals including top flagships journal e.g. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems, Information Sciences, IEEE Access, and many more.
Christopher Drake, M.A. is a graduate of Oxford University, where he read Jurisprudence, he is also a member of the Advisory Group of Oxford University's China Office and a Mentor with Hong Kong University. He regularly runs workshops on Living Values Education which aim to support teachers and other educationists in bringing a values-based perspective to education and classrooms and has spoken on related topics at numerous conferences. He is also a Founding Trustee of the Values Education Trust in the UK and an Advisory Board member of the Global Harmony Foundation in Switzerland.
Ashadi S.Pd., M.Hum., Ed.D. has been in the teaching profession since early 2000. He earned his doctorate degree from The University of Melbourne in 2014 after completing his dissertation in teacher education and quality in Indonesian public school. His research interests include academic writing, teacher professional development, teacher mentoring and qualitative research in education settings. He is currently working on a number of publication types in monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies.
Endah Retnowati, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics Education, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, since 2003. She graduated from the School of Education, the University of New South Wales, Australia, and has been doing research on instructional designs, problem solving and teacher professionalism. Her most recent findings on how collaborative learning works best using the perspective of cognitive theory has been published in reputable journals such as the Journal of Educational Psychology and Applied Cognitive Psychology. Her scopus h-index is currently 3. Besides teaching and research, Endah has a role as an associate editor of an international journal Cakrawala Pendidikan (a journal of education).
Adi Cilik Pierewan completed his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester and his undergraduate studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada. His research interests lie in the area of well-being, social change, and the use of secondary datasets. He has collaborated actively with researchers in several other disciplines of statistics, education, public health and public policy.
