Globalizing Music Education Research

Educational values? Musical values? What is important as an educator and why?

What is important in music education and why? (Researcher diary, 15.2. 2016)

This report began with a commitment to Kertz-Welzel’s (2018) vision of a globaliz-ing music education community, where the representation of voices is globally more equally distributed and engaging in knowledge building collaboratively is “a signif-icant element in a conceptual framework facilitating globalizing music education”

(Kertz-Welzel, 2018, p. 64). It is presumably fair to argue that this inquiry would not have achieved any of its potential without its globally collaborative nature. The re-search process has received tremendous support by being part of the wider rere-search project Global Visions. The collaborative research group enabled a multivoiced con-tribution to developing theoretical and methodological lenses among a group of mul-tifaceted music educators and scholars. The project has consisted of junior and senior researchers and individuals from various nationalities with diverse backgrounds as scholars and also as practitioners. Secondly, the unilateral approach to research was challenged by incorporating the Nepali participants as “co-researchers rather than objects of research” (Stern, 2014, p. 203). As such, the design of this inquiry responds to the call for multivoicedness in research, which incorporates different perspectives

equally from the research participants and “consulting experts who have critical in-sight into the ontological and epistemological nature of concepts that are considered to be integral to the individual’s research” (Welch, 2010, p. 152). Therefore, viewing the Global Visions research project and this sub-inquiry as a small-scale manifes-tation of a globalizing music education community, where the multiform research group has played a crucial role in creating a compelling platform for rejuvenating research ideas, might provide a useful exemplar for co-constructing a globalized mu-sic education research. The task is hardly an easy one and requires a shift in the research paradigm as well as trust on multiple levels. In the Global Visions project, trust was exemplified in including the non-academically trained practitioners as ac-tive producers of knowledge, and also in the multivoicedness of including the doctor-al researchers as some of the centrdoctor-al contributors of knowledge, with the support of senior researchers.

The multivoicedness was particularly supported by the practice of collaborative writ-ing. During the process, we, the core team, together wrote curriculum documents, essays, literature reviews, conference presentations, lesson plans, grant applications, and publications. Indeed, co-writing proved to be an efficient way 1) to learn to learn together, 2) to learn from one another’s cultures, 3) to refine practical-level ideas for education, 4) to articulate the meanings more profoundly, and 5) to learn to express our ideas in different contexts, such as journal articles, presentations, and curricu-la documents (see Timonen, accepted, in revision). The process of having ‘critical friends’, i.e. the Global Visions research team and other scholars, provide their crit-ical comments on our work was a tremendous help in discovering both the fallacies and the important findings in our written works. Most importantly, the process of collaborative writing supported our pathway to becoming researchers, and therefore enhanced our abilities to contribute to the scholarship in music education.

Through the findings of this inquiry as presented in Chapter 5, I argue that this inqui-ry indeed illustrates that collaborative critical educational development work carries the potential to support music education professionals in exercising their “informed

citizenship” (Appadurai, 2013, p. 269). More precisely, the kind of citizenship that

“requires the capacity to make strategic inquiries and gain strategic knowledge on a continuous basis” (ibid, p. 270). Already at the beginning of this research process, I have attended to Appadurai’s (2013) argument that the portion of the population in poorer countries that technically has opportunities for education, but who due to the instabilities and partialities inherent in those opportunities cannot take full ad-vantage of them, should be supported in their efforts to take part in the “knowledge game” (p. 270) by promoting their “right to research” (p.270). This also applies to music education. To expand upon Appadurai’s argument, I will further suggest that the commitment to collaborative global knowledge production is not only beneficial to the development of poorer countries but is also an asset to enhance a more ethi-cal, inclusive, and democratic execution of educational practices and research glob-ally. Nonetheless, this might require that music education scholars and academia as a whole are willing to stretch their conceptions of research towards the direction pointed out by Appadurai (2013), by showing a willingness to open up the process of academic knowledge production to ‘non-academic’ practitioners, and trusting that this kind of turn would in the long run remarkably benefit individual practitioners, music education institutions around the globe, and the overall development of the discipline. As Day and Hadfield (2004) note, the establishment of emancipatory and critical communities

depend for their fulfilment upon the willingness, social skills and abilities of participants to create and negotiate contracts, either collectively or individual-ly, which are based on forms of moral responsibility, critical friendship and the exercise of trust (Day & Hadfield, 2004, p. 584).

As discussed in Chapter 3, the critical participatory action research approach advo-cates inherently for a more democratic approach to participating in research. For instance, Wallerstein’s (1999) core principles of PAR stresses that “the [PAR] process should develop the capacity of community people to appropriate and use knowledge from which they would be normally excluded” (p. 41) and that “the process should

be democratic, enabling the participation of a wide diversity of people” (ibid). Simi-larly, Stern (2014, p. 207) highlights the potentials of PAR as a stimulant to creating learning communities that consist of academic researchers and practitioners, where the “right for research” (Appadurai, 2013, p. 270) is evenly distributed within such a community. Therefore, I suggest that critical collaborative intercultural educational development work, constructed on a participatory research basis, might provide a sustainable way of constructing a more balanced approach to genuinely globalizing music education scholarship by offering the opportunity for a voice to those whose voices have been silent until now, and also by helping the global music education community become more aware of “diverse cultural logics” (Biddle & Knights, 2007, p. 6). On this note, the global turn for music education scholarship might also re-quire directing future research from fairly pragmatic attempts to improving class-room practices locally (see, Cain, 2008) towards critical and reflexive research. A critical approach (see, e.g. Kemmis, 2006) that incorporates an ongoing revisiting of the power, values, and ethics embedded in music education practices in relation to the changes occurring in surrounding societies (see, e.g. Allsup & Westerlund, 2012;

Shepherd, 2010) might be a key asset for music education in these rapidly changing times of globalization. To extend from there, the findings of this inquiry suggest that the critical approach might be notably supported by a participatory approach to re-search that is constructed upon a model of collaborative intercultural learning.

Even though the aim of research should not be directly harnessed to producing im-proved practices per se, as “research can only indicate what worked, not what works or will work, which means that the outcomes of research cannot simply be translated into rules for action“ (Biesta, 2007, p. 18), it might provide one route to more mind-ful, inclusive, and ethical practices. The important notion here is that the primary aim of critical research should be to enable and enhance the practitioners’ access to me-ta-level knowledge and their deep understanding of the phenomena related to music education. As stated by Kemmis (2006), quality research is “a matter of addressing important problems for education, for the good of each person and for the good of our societies. This is what it means to be ‘critical’ “(p. 471). Therefore, as illustrated

in the findings of this inquiry, the critical turn in research might produce a scenario that does not seek ‘evidence of what works’, but rather is experimental, encouraging the exploration of action plans related to future scenarios (Biesta, 2010). In other words, a scenario that goes beyond only focusing on practices in terms of defining

‘what works’ and developing a cognitive and emotional understanding of the praxis by enhancing the critical intellectual capacities of teachers as practitioner-research-ers through a critical approach.

As the final argument of this chapter, I will highlight that a critical turn in music