Researching the “Real” World of Music Education

Abstract

Although the value-laden, subjective nature of research is acknowledged in many disciplines (often to the point where it is yesterday’s news), music education research continues to adhere to notions of truth and meaning as if there is a “real” world waiting to be found and reported (i.e., naive realism). In this personal narrative I share aspects of critical incidents on my own journey as a researcher, and suggest that research in music education might be better served if research was taught less as methods or approaches to be learned, and more as a practice driven by impulses of control. Building on Michel Foucault’s power-knowledge and regime of truth, and Thomas Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms, I argue that pluralism in music education research will occur when we as a profession accept that there isn’t a “real world” waiting to be discovered, but instead a richly political world where various interests are promoted through the power-knowledge interplay embedded in each and every published study, i.e., when we recognize and accept our roles in sustaining privilege and commit to doing something about it.