The structure, implementation and operation of music education at the primary level differs depending on the legislation of the education system within which the school operates. An inquiry-based project was completed over a 10-week period, with the overall aim of gaining an understanding of current teacher practice within music education in both Ireland and the United States. This article examines the Irish generalist and the American specialist models of music education from the teacher’s perspective. The overarching question guiding this research was ‘How is music education realised in Irish and American schools at the primary/elementary level?’. The project sought to investigate the specific challenges of both the generalist and specialist models to ascertain if one educational context might inform the other. Teacher surveys, teacher interviews, curriculum artefacts, expert interviews and contemporary literature around the topic were utilised as data sources to assimilate music educators’ perceived experiences of implementing their respective music curricula. Drawing from the data gathered, coded and quantitively and qualitatively analysed, two contrasting vignette-style stories are presented. A brief discussion follows that compares both models, highlighting some of their relative advantages and drawbacks.

中文翻译：

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跨越波涛的音乐：从教师的角度对爱尔兰通才和美国专业音乐教育模式的国际比较考试

小学音乐教育的结构、实施和运作因学校运营所在教育系统的立法而异。一个基于探究的项目在 10 周内完成，总体目标是了解爱尔兰和美国音乐教育中当前的教师实践。本文从教师的角度审视了爱尔兰通才和美国专家的音乐教育模式。指导这项研究的首要问题是“如何在爱尔兰和美国的小学/小学阶段实现音乐教育？”。该项目试图调查通才模型和专家模型所面临的具体挑战，以确定一种教育背景是否会影响另一种教育背景。教师调查，教师访谈、课程人工制品、专家访谈和围绕该主题的当代文献被用作数据源，以吸收音乐教育者实施各自音乐课程的感知经验。根据收集、编码和定量和定性分析的数据，呈现了两个对比鲜明的小插曲式故事。下面是一个简短的讨论，比较了这两种模型，强调了它们的一些相对优点和缺点。