The general approach of this study is best described as belonging to the realm of practitioner inquiry. My decision to adopt this general approach was guided by my beliefs regarding the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and the nature of reality (ontology) (Stanley & Wise 1993; Guba & Lincoln, 2005; Cochran-Smith 2003; Cochran-Smith &
Lytle 2009). Although these beliefs may be made explicit independent of one’s approach, this seems even more important in teacher research, where the researcher plays the dual roles of practitioner and researcher, and where the lines between those who know and those who are studied are blurred (Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009, p. 338). In other words, the epistemological and ontological starting points of this study are intimately connected with the methodological choices. This chapter articulates these choices from a theoretical point of view, while Chapter 2 describes the methodological approaches used to generate, analyse, and present the data.
The concept of practitioner inquiry as stance, as applied by Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle (2009), emerges out of the dialectic and synergy of inquiry, knowledge, and practice. It intentionally blurs theory and practice, knowing and doing, conceptualizing and studying, analysing and acting, researchers and practitioners, and public and local knowledge. As a common label encompassing a variety of methodological choices in educational research, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (ibid.) conceptualize practitioner inquiry as including action research, teacher research, self-study, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the use of teaching as a context for research. My study is built on the idea of engaging in sustained inquiry into my own teaching practices and the students’
learning processes, and it started from an assumption that it is impossible to divorce the self either from the research process (e.g. Stanley & Wise 1993) or from educational practice. Therefore, my journey of overcoming routines and set habits as a practitioner by working as a member of a learning community represents an integral part of the inquiry, one that includes aspects of self-study as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning.
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009, pp. 39-40.)
Liz Stanley and Sue Wise (1993) already argued twenty years ago that personal is political within the research experience as much as with any other experience, meaning that systems and social structures can best be examined and understood through an exploration of relationships and experiences within everyday life (p. 63). They called for recognizing the importance of the presence of the researcher and her personal experiences in all research (p. 157), claiming that the researcher’s experiences and consciousness should be involved in the research process as much as in life (p. 58). Following their ideas, and those of many qualitative researchers since then (e.g. Barone 2001; Kemmis 2006; Riessman 2008;
Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009) I see inquiry as being possible only through the medium of one’s experiences.
Acknowledging one’s partiality and subjectivity is especially important in the field of music education inquiry. The vast majority of music education researchers possess embodied experiences of music going back decades, as well as a background in studying and teaching music in various settings. Most music educators start their research already ingrained with conceptions of what constitutes good and bad teaching and assumptions about learning based on our personal experiences, thus projecting our own past into the future of our prospective students. Conducting research with this level of admitted personal involvement makes claims of absolute objectivity pointless. Faced with this dilemma, I chose to take the pragmatist stance (Biesta & Burbules 2003) that the
in an intersubjective world for which we share a responsibility (p. 108). In line with this train of thought, I aim to make my own experiences of the research process explicitly present in this study in as transparent a way as possible for the reader, by reporting who I am, how I experienced the inquiry, and how this impacted what I saw, did, interpreted, and constructed (Stanley & Wise 1993, p. 60).2 Through this study, I aim to provide the reader with an organic fusion of the temporal occurrence of events and the logical development of an argument (ibid. 152). However, it is worth keeping in mind that what you are now holding in your hands has been written in the fourth year of the inquiry, while the research questions, theoretical views, and methodological approach developed and came into focus over a process of those four years.
In addition to letting go of the traditional perspective on objectivity, I also abandoned the modernist quest for absolute knowledge. This connects my study to the broad spectrum of postmodern and feminist epistemologies that seek out and celebrate meanings that are partial, tentative, incomplete, even contradictory, and originating from multiple vantage points (Lyotard 1979/1984; Greene 1988; Stanley & Wise 1993; Barone 2001; Minnich 2005). I especially concur with Biesta and Burbules (2003), who argue that in discussing the problems of contemporary educational research we can draw on Deweyan understanding of knowledge and action, since Dewey’s philosophical account is ultimately motivated by an attempt “to restore rationality, agency, and responsibility to the sphere of human action”. (p. 22.) Dewey (1910/1997) claimed that information cannot be accumulated apart from use and then later on be freely employed at will in thought. (pp. 52-53.) In the same spirit, educational theorist Etienne Wenger (1988/2003, p. 220) sees information that does not contribute to an identity of participation as remaining alien, literal, fragmented and unnegotiable. To Wenger, what makes information knowledge and what makes knowledge empowering is the way in which it can be integrated with participation. Importantly, Dewey also argued that although action is a necessary condition for knowledge, it is not a sufficient one; in addition, we need thinking or reflection. It is this combination of reflection and action that leads to knowledge. (Dewey 1910/1997;
Biesta & Burbules 2003.) Dewey’s understanding of knowledge in general thus supports the view that education is a thoroughly human practice in which questions about how are inseparable from the whys and what fors. It is in this pragmatist manner that action and reflection are used in this study as tools for striving towards better educational practices.
2 Following the ideas of Stanley and Wise (1993, p. 150), in this inquiry the personal idiosyncrasies,
‘confusions’, and ‘mistakes’ of research are not considered as confusions and mistakes, but as an inevitable
As an educational inquiry, the goal of this study is to enhance meaning rather than reduce uncertainty3 (Barone 2001; Dressman 2008). My pedagogical practices have emerged from a mutually illuminating interplay of critical, feminist, holistic, and dialogical pedagogies. These educational theories all emphasize the political aspect of teaching and learning as knowledge creation, as well as the implications for the distribution of power and resources in society that are inherent in all knowledge creation processes and products (e.g. Freire 1970/2006; Giroux 1988; hooks 1994, 2003; Brydon-Miller & Maguire 2009).
At the same time, these educational theories also resonate with sociocultural approaches by treating the participants in the process of learning (students and teachers), with their range of experiences, as the starting point for teaching and learning. In this study, I make use of these educational ideas to examine how redistributing power-relations changes the context of group vapaa säestys teaching, both from the point of view of the teacher and that of the students.
While working within an overall pragmatist framework, this study draws on several related theories that all view theory, experience, practice, and research as inextricably interwoven. In what follows, I will use these ideas as tools for approaching and addressing specific issues that arise from the inquiry. This study should thus be understood as a fusion of experiences, theory, research, and practice, with each element being involved in the development of the rest and vice versa.