The Music in Schools & Teacher Education Commission (MISTEC) of the International Society for Music Education (ISME) was held in Prague, the Czech Republic from 8-12 July, 2018. Following an unprecedented number of high-quality proposals, we saw 13 papers, three workshops, two local presentations by Czech music educators, and 40 poster presentations. In 2018, poster presentations took on a new format (lightening presentation + extended abstract option + 1-hour presentation), which was very popular with presenters and attendees alike. It was also notable that close to a third of the attendees at this year’s conference were practitioners (music teachers) from around the world, with significant numbers of teachers from the USA, Thailand and Australia. Crucially, we welcomed five Czech participants including representatives from the School system, Czech Philharmonic, and Orff Society.
Hosted by NYU Prague, and sponsored by the University of the Arts, Helsinki and NYU Steinhardt, the conference was very successful. The delegation that came with the Global Visions Project enabled some thoughtful interchange of ideas particularly on the Tuesday when they had many presentations and roundtables. There were 124 registered participants over the week, with attendees from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ireland, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, Nepal, Norway, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the USA and the UK. (Julie Ballantyne - Chair, ISME Music in Schools and Teacher Education Commission 2016-2018)