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Thompson, L. K. & Campbell, M. K. (Eds.) (2008). Diverse Methodologies in the Study of Music Teaching and Learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Pp. xxi + 218 pp.         ISBN 978-1-59311-629-3

Reviewed by Adria Hoffman
University of Maryland, College Park

March 28, 2009

Thompson and Campbell provide the first volume in the Advances in Music Education Research series. Reflecting themes generated by the Music Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), this first volume includes voices of luminaries in the field, as well as emerging scholars. The scholarship represents changing foci and methodologies in music education, ranging from narrative inquiry and classroom discourse analysis to survey design. Some of the contributing scholars use these methodologies to examine issues of teaching and learning from previously unexplored angles, while others critique philosophical and pedagogical practices entrenched in music education. As an advancement of research methodology and questions, this text serves music educators wishing to expand the boundaries of their work and critique the direction of the profession.

Liora Bresler, a respected scholar in arts education, contributes the opening chapter of the text. Based on her invited lecture to the Music Education Special Interest Group of the AERA, Bresler’s chapter sets the tone for the subsequent sections by examining the relationship between music and research. Speaking about the ways in which researchers perform their lives, Bresler maintains that engagement and connection (or lack thereof) to one’s work is essential to musical or scholarly knowing and understanding. She surmises, “that the dialogical relationships between researcher and what is studied, similar to the relationship between performer and music, are intensified by the expectation of communication with an audience, creating an engaged tri-directional relationship” (p. 2). Such a connection, Bresler maintains, influences the work upon which we embark and the way in which we communicate findings to our peers.

According to Bresler, professional conferences such as that held by the AERA encourage communication both within and between scholarly communities. This type of communication expands the bounds of inquiry by blurring previously delineated disciplines. Emerging disciplines, hybrid research methodologies, and interdisciplinary study mark a change in the educational research community. Such change is due, Bresler states, to the fact that communication at conferences serves as an end to one inquiry and the beginning of many more. The contributing researchers who present the subsequent chapters exemplify Bresler’s notions regarding hybridization and blurred boundaries in the field of music education research. Additionally, this text serves as a beginning of future conversations, connecting researchers to one another and to increasingly engaged professional inquiry.

Following Bresler’s introductory chapter, the text is divided into two sections. Part I includes scholarship that directly examines music teaching and learning. The contributing scholars to this section are Peter Whiteman, Margaret Berg, Margaret Schmidt, Melissa Natale Abramo, Deborah Bradley, and Teryl Dobbs. Part II is comprised of inquiry dealing with social and institutional contexts. Scholarship by James Austin, Warren Henry, Susan Conkling, and Linda Thorton are included in this area.

The Social Context of Music Learning

The first two chapters in Part I: Teaching and Learning are examples of contextually situated inquiry. Peter Whiteman’s longitudinal study of preschoolers’ social contexts and spontaneous musicking opens this section of the text. Whiteman asserts that music learning and knowledge are contextually bound. Therefore, he situates his inquiry in sociocultural theory to “ascertain the social interactions that occur during preschoolers’ spontaneous singing and to determine the effects of these interactions on the acquisition of musical knowledge and skills” (p. 29). While Whiteman draws on Vygotskian sociocultural theory, Berg frames her study of beginning orchestra students’ practice habits in social-psychological theories of self, presenting the reader with a contextualized example of young adolescent musical learning.

Whiteman collected data over three years, drawing on observation and video recording technology to analyze the spontaneous singing of eight children. Collecting 140 total hours of video tape, Whiteman manually transcribed all singing using Western notation and diacritics. This yielded 443 spontaneous songs and play episodes which he coded by song type, temporal organization, melodic contour, and form.

Whiteman’s impressive amount of data collected provides a fascinating, in-depth understanding of how some very young children learn from one another while stepping into particular social and musical roles. He found that these young children embraced roles in which they acted as a knowledgeable other. Whiteman names these three roles as the overt corrector, the modeler, and the (implied) inviter. An overt corrector was a more experienced child would often state that another child’s singing was incorrect and then model the correct version of a children’s song, such as Jingle Bells. Modelers who were also more knowledgeable would also model a selection of song for peers. Without any efforts to correct his or her peers, the modeler served as support while other children learned a song. The inviter appeared to use music as a challenge to his or her peers. Through song, the child teased or provoked another child with a short musical phrase and waited for a musical retort through text and melody. All three of these roles contribute to our knowledge of early childhood learning and the social role of music in their lives. Whiteman asserts, “the children demonstrated that within their cultures, it is not always an adult who acts as the knowledgeable other nor is it always the oldest child in the group who assumes or is assigned this role” (p. 39). Consequently, Whiteman suggests that emergent curriculum models in which children are empowered and multiage classroom groupings would align well with naturally occurring learning such as that in his study. This important study speaks to local curriculum policy decisions and sparks further questions regarding the way young children learn from others.

Like Whiteman’s preschool participants, Berg’s young adolescents appeared to use musical learning for both musical and non-musical purposes. Berg’s case study of two beginning students indicates that some students are motivated by the sound of the ensemble, increasingly difficult musical skills and the ensemble experience that encompasses both musical and social aspects. Berg also reports that younger students may use music to change their emotional state and gain attention by their choice to play less common instruments. According to Berg, “this research seems to suggest motivation is multidimensional” (p. 56). In this statement, Berg suggests that younger music students’ practice habits do not center around performance skills alone, but rather a host of contextual factors that serve as motivation to continue learning and growing as musicians.

One of the particularly interesting observations made by Berg is in reference to piano lessons. She comments that although both participants in this study had prior piano lesson experience, neither student transferred their piano practice habits to their string instrumental studies. Berg continues to discuss the interconnected social and musical purposes served by instrumental practice, but does not extrapolate on the differences between secluded piano study and ensemble orchestra study. This is an important entry point toward understanding how the social context of the music classroom might influence students’ emerging musicianship. Additionally, this study is an important link between our understanding of musical learning and the curricular decisions students make as they navigate school.

Music Teaching

Chapters four and five explore music teachers’ decision-making and autonomy. In chapter four, Schmidt examines the connections between music education methods courses and teachers’ pedagogical decisions during their first year of teaching. A collective case study design, this research study includes ethnographic observations and interviews as the primary data sources. Schmidt reports that teachers’ emotional frustration with many aspects of the job, particularly time and classroom management. She raises questions regarding differing mentoring situations and poses numerous lines of inquiry around teaching dispositions, as opposed to the more concrete knowledge and skills (NCATE, 2006). Schmidt notes the import for music teacher educators and novice teachers to continue collaboration past the graduation date.

Melissa Natale Abramo’s chapter is an in-depth view of some of the challenges highlighted by Schmidt. Drawing on narrative inquiry and interviews with her own students, Abramo presents her explorations of the music teacher as an agent of change in chapter five. This narrative emerged from Abramo’s personal quest as a self-proclaimed “progressive educator” wrestling with traditions and expectations in the philosophically conservative field of instrumental music education.

Although some may critique her work for lack of methodological foundation in narrative inquiry, Abramo provides a compelling account of working within the constraints of the instrumental music education field while questioning the purposes and effects of its traditions. Describing community expectations of the secondary band class as a vehicle for supporting school athletics, Abramo clearly exposes the dichotomy between music rehearsal norms and non-performance-based music pedagogy. Through analysis of her own philosophical journey and of student interviews and observations, Abramo urges her peers to “call into question those norms, but to engage in dialogue about what other options might exist, and broaden the possibilities of what is seen as acceptable and possible (p. 107).

The Teacher’s Influence on Music Learning

The final two chapters in Part One deal with the role of the teacher and his or her influence on music learning. Deborah Bradley’s critical ethnography of a community choral program nicely complements Teryl Dobbs’ analysis of discourse in a band classroom. In both studies, the authors question what music educators may view as normal. By doing so, they critique the ways in which music teachers influence the long-term memories and learning students carry with them.

Bradley’s critical ethnography of a community youth choir involved children from elementary through college ages in a diverse Canadian city. She specifically states that this study informs our understanding of student identity with regard to diversity, a term she coins multicultural human subjectivity. Bradley developed this study as a means to explore if and how a teacher’s decision to use an antiracist pedagogy in the chorus influenced students’ musical learning. She states that antiracism creates noticeable distinctions:

between liberal ideologies and critical theories of multiculturalism. Liberal multiculturalism works on the notion of human commonalities and simultaneously downplays human differences, leading to the erasure of difference or color-blindness, a perspective that minimizes the material realities of racism in North America. (p. 115)

Rather than overlooking prejudice and bias in an attempt to bridge cultures, Bradley presents a mode of inquiry that may help music educators take a critical look at our pedagogical choices.

Bradley’s findings are important. Although so-called multicultural music literature has been available for a number of years, Bradley suggests that it is the context in which that literature is used that impacts broader notions of race, ethnicity, and culture. Her findings indicate that when music teachers provide authentic learning experiences with real people, music students might create a new “recognition of self through the recognition of others” (p. 130).

Just as Bradley critiques the music teacher’s conveyance of multiculturalism in the choral setting, Dobbs presents a fascinating look at the implicit curriculum (Goodlad, 2004) at play in the middle school band classroom. Drawing on ethnographic research, Dobbs presents an exploration of the role of speech in the classroom. This discourse analysis provides the reader with a new and intriguing way of understanding how talk influences music students’ social networks and how it shapes musical teaching and learning.

Dobbs collected 90 videotapes and 45 audiotapes of 113 middle school band students in beginning, intermediate, and advanced classes where she served as the primary instructor. She then transcribed and coded every tape, along with her field notes and written reflections following school concerts. What resulted were findings that highlighted student compliance and traditional rehearsal techniques that limited student-directed learning in the band classroom. Dobbs’ findings suggest more than this, however. Her findings indicate that discourse in the band classroom is complex and often shapes a different path in a beginning-level ensemble than a more experienced group of music students. Additionally, she asserts that all students need space to talk in the classroom. Her study exposes the need for students to feel heard by their peers and teachers, particularly as those who control the discourse carry a different power within the ensemble. From a methodological standpoint, Dobbs contributes a unique and important research design: the researcher as embedded, subjective participant.

Each chapter in Part II: Social and Institutional Contexts represents a broader view of music teaching and learning than those in the previous section. James Austin and Joshua Russell begin this section with an examination of arts inclusion in charter schools. Due to discrepancies in arts education offerings across the United States, Austin and Russell chose to examine music education as the most visible and widely offered arts discipline in charter schools. Using a survey design, they sent questionnaires to charter school administrative leadership to gain a better understanding of music classes, instructional time, student enrollment, instructional facilities, teacher qualifications, and instructional support in comparison to public schools. They mailed the questionnaire to 400 administrators in 15 states with the largest percentages of charter schools. Although their response rate of 31% was relatively low, they felt that it was representative of their total sample in terms of school location, teacher qualification, and curricular focus.

Austin and Russell report that charter schools often employ less qualified music teachers than do public schools, and schedule less instructional time for music over the course of each school year. They also state that when compared with standard public schools, charter schools are less likely to provide a dedicated music classroom and have a written music curriculum. Tempering these findings, the authors also state that charter schools are neither embracing nor excluding arts education. The school structures, diversity in curricular foci, and autonomy of the institutions appear to impact variance in charter schools’ arts education programs. As the authors suggest, further studies analyzing charter school policy and accountability, case studies of instructional quality, and large-scale surveys examining demographics would be most useful to better inform our understandings of arts education in charter schools.

The second chapter in this section explores a different type of institution, the university. Conkling and Henry present a narrative inquiry of the socialization of doctoral music students into university teaching. The participants included 18 doctoral students enrolled in the authors’ classes at two different universities. The authors present a very interesting finding regarding observation. The participants in this study often did not challenge or critique the methods by which their university instructors taught them. Recent scholarship in teacher education supports this finding as student experiences often become preconceptions about teaching and learning that new teachers bring to their careers (NAOE, 2005). The authors report that in most cases, the doctoral students received very little, if any, feedback from mentors on their teaching as teaching assistants. Such feedback is necessary for new teachers to challenge preconceptions and misconceptions about the teaching and learning process (NAOE, 2005). Conkling and Henry state:

We should be intentional in the consideration of doctoral education as a time of socialization into faculty roles, and a fundamental part of our mission should be to help address doctoral students’ questions about their abilities to act as collegiate faculty members, their desire to do the work, and whether they feel a sense of belonging in the music field or department. (p. 196)

They further posit that university faculty may help shape a professorate that values and rewards good music teaching at the college level.

Thorton’s inquiry regarding the impact of IRBs on music education research provides an interesting conclusion to this text. This study was prompted by concerns “caused by the very real potential for the questions being asked in a profession to be guided by what can be done (or allowed), rather than what needs to be examined” (p. 203). Thorton posits that research questions are influenced by researchers’ abilities to quickly and successfully navigate the IRB process, rather than by what questions are most important to the field. Tempered by the author’s respect for the role of IRBs as protection for research participants, she questions whether complete confidentiality or true informed consent in qualitative research is even possible. She also questions whether qualitative researchers are “extraordinarily inhibited” by the varying constraints IRBs often place upon them in order to protect the liability of institutions.

All three studies in this section are noteworthy for their examination of the changing institutional contexts in which music education occurs. If I must list a limitation of this section, it would be brevity. Music education scholars appear to produce more scholarship on that which takes place at the micro, rather than macro, social context. This section seeks to explore broader contexts through scholarship regarding the larger social context of schooling and education. In order to appropriately respond to changing societal needs, music educators and scholars may want to look more carefully at the bigger picture of schooling. By doing more research in this category, scholars may better respond to demands for advocacy by preK-12 practitioners.

There exists a lack of scholarship in this text that speaks to questions regarding class, race, gender, and sexuality. Perhaps this omission is due, as Thorton suggests in the final chapter, to scholars’ perceptions of what might gain approval from colleagues in the profession and those on review boards than the need to state such research questions. That which might appear controversial has yet to gain large response from the music education research community. Although some of the authors in this text raise concerns regarding racism, dominant traditions, and issues of equity and access, few frame their scholarship in critical theories currently used in other education fields. I suggest looking towards such critical theories, such as critical race theory, so that music educators might “construct alternative portraits of reality- portraits from subaltern perspectives” (Ladson-Billings, 2004, p. 58).

Just as Dobbs’ chapter “began as a journey into the uncharted territory of the familiar” (p. 138), this text serves as a beginning for music educators and researchers seeking to reexamine that which has a long history and particular musical traditions for students and teachers alike. I applaud the editors and authors in this book for their forays into the previously unquestioned territory within music education as well as their commitment to questions that have stirred debate over many decades. New points of entry into music education research have been found and doors opened for emerging scholars seeking to inform our understanding of music teaching and learning. Personally, I look forward to future volumes in this series and new voices in our field.

References

Goodlad, J. I. (2004). A Place Called School. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2004). New directions in multicultural education: Complexities, boundaries, and critical race theory. In Banks, J. A. & McGee Banks, C. A. (Eds.) Handbook of research on multicultural education, 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. pp. 50-65

National Academy of Education. (2005). A good teacher in every classroom: Preparing the highly-qualified teachers our children deserve. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. (2007). NCATE Unit Standards. Retrieved January 4, 2009 from http://www.ncate.org/public/standards.asp?ch=4

About the Reviewer

Adria Hoffman recently earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include questions regarding the intersections of race, class, gender, and early adolescent identity construction. She has taught middle school music students in Virginia public schools and particularly enjoys developing curriculum projects that integrate arts disciplines.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Gustavo Fischman, Melissa Cast-Brede

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