WRITE A BOOK REVIEW

Music education researchers are invited to review newly published books for the international peer-reviewed journal Music Education Research.


Review Section: Policy Statement

The Review Section comprises articles which discuss books relevant to the field of music education research. The Review Section is published with the aim of stimulating discussion around significant text(s) rather than offering brief digests/commentaries on newly published works.

The profile of the Review Section will take the format of either/or :

• a Book Review (s) where the reviewer articulates their own response to the text in some depth;

• a Book Review Article (s) where the reviewer articulates their own response to the text (s) in more depth than in the Book Review. This type of review may be used to compare books within a similar area;

• a Symposium Book Review where more than one reviewer will be invited to review the same text. Sufficient space will be given for the reviewers to engage discursively with ideas and arguments. This type of review will occupy a more substantial contribution to the journal and will draw from a number of research positions, recognizing both the increasingly overlapping research disciplines found in music education research and also the multiplicity of perspectives, both pedagogical, psychological, philosophical, and cultural from which these texts can be viewed.

The Review Section hopes to attract contributors from different backgrounds working within music education research or related fields. Ensuring an international perspective in the Review Section – both in terms of the books reviewed and the reviewers – is one of the ways in which Music Education Research hopes to stimulate, document and disseminate debate.


Book Review Process

Books for review should be sent to the appropriate Reviews Editor.
Randall Everett Allsup for North American scholars: allsup@tc.edu
Lis McCullough for European and International scholars: lis.mccullough@ukonline.co.uk

• If you wish to be considered as a reviewer please send a brief CV outlining your research position and interest in music education research to the Reviews Editor
• Reviewers will be invited to either contribute a Book Review, Book Review Article or when appropriate a Symposium Book Review
• Reviewers will receive a complementary copy of the book to be reviewed.


Review Guidelines

The following Guidelines concern the submission form of a review for a Book Review.

The Social Psychology of Music
David J Hargreaves and Adrian C North, ed
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 305pp
ISBN 0 19 8523831 (paperback) £$
ISBN 0 19 852384 X (hardback) £$

1. As above, the review should begin with the full title, author, place, publisher, date, number of pages and ISBN numbers.

2. After the first paragraph, subsequent paragraphs should be indented.

3. Text should be double-spaced throughout.

4. Indent any quotations over three lines. Incorporate shorter quotations into the text within single quotes. All quotations should be followed by the relevant page numbers(s) in parentheses: eg Crozier draws our attention to the work of Hamilton et al (1993) which examines the influence of affect upon social behaviour in terms of specific moods or emotions, ‘that positive moods tend to elicit more heuristic processing whereas negative moods induce more deliberate analytical processing’ (p. 77).

5. Reviews should be between 750-1200 words.

6. At the end of the review, give your full name, current status and contact numbers, eg
Angela Writer
Lecturer in Music and Education
University of Leeds
UK
Tel: 44 (0) 1234 567 8910 Fax: 44 (0) 1234 567 8910
Email: a.writer@leeds.ac.uk

Your contact telephone numbers will not be listed in the published review.
7. Submit an electronic copy (as email attachment) of the completed review to the book review editor.
The deadline for submission is July 8th 2004.


Suggestions for Writing a Quality Review

The following suggestions for writing a good book review come from John Updike’s critical essays Picked-up Pieces (1975).

• Try to understand what the author wishes to do, do not blame him [sic] for not achieving what he did not attempt.

• Give enough direct quotation – at least one extended passage – of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his [sic] own taste.

• Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.

• Go easy on plot summary.

• If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?