Theory, Research, and the Improvement of Music Education

Like their colleagues in the other fields of educational theory and research, most researchers and theorists in music education assume that as the knowledge and insights that they provide the field become incorporated as best practices in schools, the improvement or at least the enhancement of music education will result. They believe that their work offers, to use the term from the epigraph from Levine’s (1986) essay, a privileged foundation for better curricula and ways of teaching.1 This chapter will seek to problematize that assumption. I will take as my starting point and as my given that neither the basic or applied research of education nor the theory building of the field has had or is having any discernible systemic effects on music teaching in either schools or studios. And how theory and research might have such an impact remains, as Olson and Bruner (1998) remind us, “almost as mysterious as when such efforts first began.” I will be arguing here that this situation is inevitable because the vision of a foundational theory and research that lead to a better practice within schooling is in principle unrealizable. My argument is grounded in the praxial movement within educational theory, which has been well outlined for music educators by, for example, McCarthy (1999). However, I will not be seeking here to extend or develop the base for the praxial perspective insofar as it bears on music education. Instead I will direct the perspective toward both the metatheory of educational theory and research and the school, the institution that hosts much of the work of music education. I will be arguing, with Elliott (1994), that without a clear understanding of the school and schooling and its context, the seeming implications for practice of any “old” or “new” philosophy of music education, body of findings from empirical research, ambitious curriculum projects, or national curricula will run headlong into the brick wall of the institution.2 I will be arguing that it is only as we have an appropriate understanding of the school and its people, the enveloping context of any program, that we will be in a position to engage in realistic improvement and reform in music education, science education, or whatever-and that that improving work will not be theoretical or research-based in any traditional way.