Navigating the emerging futures in music education

Our globalized world is having to rediscover and reinvent itself in the face of emergent futures resulting from multiple dynamics, including the breakdown of traditional structures, new capabilities of advanced technologies, new educational agendas and new human needs. This article navigates through several key predictions and recent developments relevant to music education and technology, and urges for a new music education future that is strongly linked with the global knowledge economy in the digital and conceptual age. The new future should give more attention to learners who were under-served in the past, be more coherent with real-world issues and problems, harness the powers of ICT to actualize worthy educational and societal transformation, and locate music effectively as an essential, integral and vibrant aspect of human lives and civilization.