Debbie Carroll here - early childhood music teacher/performer. I feel that somehow I should be entering into this thread...that it would be wrong for me to seem to be ignoring it. I'm not. It's just that I have some reservations about research via search engine. I've devoted my life's work to teaching early childhood music, and I do it passionately and I KNOW that it is vitally important to the child and to the grownup who shares the music with the child, and I KNOW that research supports me in what I do and why I do it. I deeply respect the researchers who do their jobs well. But take note: there is both good and bad research, in this field as in any other. Where there is money to be had, there is the danger of bad research in order to support sales, when it is funded by those who can make some profit from it. Also, I've heard and read research that comes from such a strong personal bias in a certain direction that it is difficult to take the results at all seriously - the research seems to be tilted in order to 'prove' a point, and maybe the point is a good one, so people swallow the research hook line and sinker. Or, the methods may be flawed or at least stiff, sometimes simply because they are researching pre-talkers/pre-singers (though careful research can be done with this age-group as well). There is plenty of excellent research happening, and I point anyone serious in researching music education - for early childhood right through to adulthood - to contact the International Society of Music Educators (I.S.M.E.) who can point you to the most appropriate and specific and up-to-date publications.

Wolfgang. You said the same thing. Only with far fewer words. Right on, baby.

~b.w.