How Ecoliterate Are We? Examining a Competence-Based Model of Musical Ecoliteracy in Light of Current Scholarly Discourse

This article highlights the nature of the emerging field of ecoliteracy in music education and contributes to expanding the conversation in this area. A recent model of musical ecoliteracy is presented, that integrates ecomusicological and ecosocial research traditions. This model of musical ecoliteracy is applied to analyse empirical data that maps the prevalence of ecological awareness and ecoliteracy across 18 internationally esteemed and high-quality scholarly music education journals over a period of 6 years (2019–2024). Results show that only 0.4% of 2,266 articles were related to ecological awareness or ecoliteracy. The eight articles that were identified as relating to the subject were further analyzed thematically, bottom-up and top-down, using the model of musical ecoliteracy as a guiding analytical lens. The results present the theoretical frameworks employed and the pedagogical implications suggested in these studies. This paper argues that this model of musical ecoliteracy is a useful framework, offering both theoretical insights and practical guidance for designing ecologically literate music education.