Thoughts on How Research in Music Education Approaches Music more

This philosophical essay outlines a conceptualization of music education research and identifies some current theoretical and methodological issues in the field. It is based on a keynote speech offered for the 2009 meeting of the Nordic Network for Research in Music Education, in Orebro, Sweden, which had a conference theme of How music education research approaches music. The view outlined here is undergirded by a post-positivist position regarding music education research, meaning principally that the author is inclined to: (1) recognize both the value and inherent limitations of quantitative approaches, (2) contend that qualitative research should entail rigorous procedures and robust designs that enable as rich and accurate a description as possible according to the guiding questions of each study, and (3) assert that philosophical and historical scholarship similarly must also meet timeless standards of clarity, accuracy, originality, and convincingness. The author has produced various kinds of research and supervised doctoral dissertations that represent each of the four major methodological classifications of music education research: quantitative, qualitative, philosophical, and historical approaches. This discussion begins with some analysis of key terminology and definitions, and then proceeds to outline a conceptualization of various constructions of research, followed by discussion of fashionable approaches and perennial concerns, ending with a summary and some conclusions.