Introduction

We live in a “congenial moment for stories” (Pinnegar&Daynes, 2007, p. 30), a time in which narrative has taken up a place in the “landscape” of inquiry in the social sciences. This renewed interest in storying and stories as both process and product (as field text and research text) of inquiry may be attributed to various methodological and conceptual “turns,” including the linguistic and cultural, that have taken place in the humanities and social sciences over the past decades. The purpose of this book is to explore the “narrative turn” in music education, to examine the uses of narrative inquiry for music education, and to cultivate ground for narrative inquiry to seed and flourish alongside other methodological approaches in music education.