‘Yes, the strong gets more While the weak ones fade’ ‘God bless the child’, Billie Holiday
Initial plans: I detailed no plans. I understood the basic tenets of postmodernism and the contested, constructed notions of truth and authenticity in a postcolonial globalised world. I recognised that the world and its’ long and infinitely complex history and peoples could be viewed through different lenses which manifested different outcomes. However, I didn’t connect such thinking to the methodological approach I brought to this research. I didn’t really understand that an epistemological paradigm would need to be acknowledged and applied to my inquiry.
Reflections: Having written the data presentation chapters I felt ready to tackle the discussion of the data. I knew this was a crucial part of the thesis. This was to be the unpacking of the data, where I came to terms with the major themes being raised and attempted to make sense of what all the stories really meant. However, I found the process uncomfortably difficult as I shifted ideas and data around again and again, struggling to say something meaningful. This went on for some time and I became increasingly despondent about putting anything of substance together. I lost confidence. I let the writing go for some time and, somewhere at the edges of the space I had afforded myself, I came to an important realisation: I simply didn’t know enough about what other researchers and educators thought about the kinds of challenges and ideas that I was attempting to discuss. The reading I had undertaken prior to and during the process to that point was insufficient. At that point in the candidature I had been firmly positioned outside the thinking and writing in the area(s) I was attempting to explore, a ‘mere bystander’ rather than an ’active participant’ in the literature communities (Montuori, 2005, p. 375). I had become preoccupied with the collecting, presenting and thinking within the participant stories, but now I realised that I had to engage with some more external ideas and perspectives in order to contextualise my data.
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This realisation was both revelatory and awkward for me. On one hand I felt immensely relieved that I could stop trying to mould, shape and understand the data and simply read about what other researchers had done in the field. On the other hand, I felt like I was holding the process up, delaying the onward march towards completion. The idea of stopping to read felt somehow remedial. It was difficult (yet of obvious import, in hindsight) for me to admit that I lacked the necessary understanding of the area and that I had not sufficiently prepared for the process of analysis. Furthermore, I felt like I was disappointing my supervisors when I explained that no further drafts would be available for some time. I felt like I was making excuses for not getting on with it. Nevertheless I had made the decision and so I went away from the writing and started to read again.
I deliberately avoided trying to locate texts and ideas specific to my research but rather read widely about music education and the creative and collaborative processes of music. I read a wide range of various investigative approaches. I encountered researchers who spoke about power and position within music education, some of whom used sociological and philosophical themes to explain and understand the experiences of music students (e.g. Mills, 2008, Moore, 2012, Azaola, 2012). The link between agency and the educational experiences of students resonated with me. Some authors utilised cultural theorists and sociologists such as Barthes, Foucault and Bourdieu. I came across Bourdieu’s ‘Outline of a Theory of Practice’ (1977) and then read ‘Distinction’ (1986) closely. From the outset light bulbs of recognition began to burn brightly. The concepts of habitus, capital and field seemed to describe the stories at the hearts of my investigations so aptly. Bourdieu’s work explored the construction, nature and use of power; those who possessed it, how they had come to have it and how these factors played out in the world(s) we live in. The dynamics of power appeared an effective way to contextualise many of the challenges that abounded in so many of the experiences of the participants. Reduced, limited or non-existent agency seemed closely linked to the motivations, actions and encounters of the protagonists in the stories I had written to capture my observations and feelings about the student experience of formal education. This realisation mirrored Montouri’s (2005) assertions that certain literature
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speaks to us in different ways and the importance of the subjectivity in interpreting and discussing what these ideas mean to us.
‘The political bricoleur knows that science is power’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 5).
The word ‘science’ is derived from the Latin ‘scientia’ meaning knowledge. Knowledge can be constructed and presented as certain, factual, absolute and is often associated with claims of truth or authenticity. Knowledge is power because it arms the possessor of it with the armour of truth and rightness. Music education existed, at least in part, to provide circumstances for the accrual of knowledge, and my stories were about agents’ experiences in pursuit of this knowledge. I decided that the data could effectively be viewed and discussed through a lens of power (place and cultural capital), disposition (background or habitus) and situation (field). In fact habitus appeared to be a highly appropriate concept that could be extended to incorporate the actual or whole story of each protagonist within the research.
These multidisciplinary lenses helped me start to make sense of the data I had collected. The exploration of ideas from different literature communities ‘can open up the inquiry…by breaking down what might have become fixed disciplinary lenses’ (Montuori, 2005, p. 381). Themes from this wider and deeper reading resonated with(in) my stories and helped to clarify what was really going on. These approaches constituted the ‘theoretical paradigm’ that I had chosen to house my discussions, what Denzin and Lincoln (2011, p. 13) refer to as writing and thinking ‘guided by a set of beliefs and feelings about the world and how it should be understood and studied’. Extensive reflexive thinking about myself as teacher, researcher, musician and person led me to commit to an epistemological standpoint, a set of underlying principles by which I might proceed to explore the stories before me. Combining cultural theory with a sense of social justice and equality suited the fundamental idea that the student voice, so often silenced and unheard, should be sounded. This was both the premise and outcome of the entire body of work. It was empowering to acknowledge that methodology was a way of exploring the data that also involved the potential as an active way of changing things for the better ‘for understanding and for producing resistances to local structures of domination’
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(Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p.14). In outlining the development of qualitative inquiry and epistemological paradigms Erickson (2011, p. 45) felt that these researchers wanted to ‘advocate for and to inform social change’. Qualitative investigations, like my inquiry, have often focused on power dynamics and the possibility of change within local or community contexts (Grossberg and Pollock, 2012).
This methodological paradigm appeared wholly relevant to music education particularly as ‘the school curriculum should in part be shaped by problems that face teachers and students in their effort to live just and ethical lives’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 165). I was attracted to the notion that those involved in music education should ask questions and engage in critical thinking as they moved about in and investigated the(ir) world(s). Teachers and students occupy many spaces simultaneously – often in highly localised contexts but always as part of the educational transactions in a global space. I came to understand better the inextricably related roles of teacher and researcher. Teachers could also be researchers, naturally by virtue of their educative role ‘studying students so that can be better understood and taught’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 166). ‘Critical teachers listen carefully to what students have to say about their communities and the problems that confront them’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 166) and they do so because they acknowledge the right and importance of the student voice in educational contexts. It was reassuring to find literary support for my initial idea of listening to students for the purposes of improving the experiences in music education.
I came to understand more clearly this theme of power as it related to me, my teaching, students and music education within (and without) institutional contexts. It was therefore interesting to read about the role of the critical researcher, who understands that ‘all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are socially and historically constituted’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 164). After collecting, reading, thinking about and unpacking the data, I came to see our experiences in music communities and in formal tertiary music education as being bound in the dynamics of power positions and processes. Kincheloe et al (2011, p. 164) argued that ‘certain groups in any society and particular societies are privileged over others…and…the oppression that
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characterises contemporary societies is most forcefully reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable’. However, as Pelias (2003, p. 370) acknowledges ‘it’s hard when you have so little information and no funds and no power to make anything happen’. So the critical and qualitative methodology employed herein is deliberately attempting to question this privilege and the status of the agents in these fields, for the ‘empowerment of individuals’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 164). These are the students, researchers, teachers and musicians alike, who become active players in ‘constructing research that contributes to the struggle for a better world’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 164). As Pelias (2003, p. 360) confirms ‘public realisations (like research findings)…often carry an implicit or explicit call to action’.
My meandering journey from a somewhat utilitarian understanding of research methodologies to a more nuanced, engaged interest in investigative paradigms was illustrative of the often complicated nature of qualitative research. A breakthrough of sorts was to understand that methodological approaches could overlap, defy specific delineation and description and move and shift just as the narratives of the subjects being investigated did: ‘bricoleurs move into the domain of complexity. The bricolage (as it applies to multi-disciplinary research methodologies) exists out of respect for the lived world and the complications of power. Indeed it is grounded in the epistemology of complexity’ (Kincheloe et al., 2011, p. 168). My methodological approach has, in this messy way, been recursive and I have ‘constantly revise(d)…questions…and data collection as (I) gather and analyse data’ (Kervin et al., 2006, p. 58). My approach to research, reflection and writing has not been neat and linear, in keeping with the winding, idiosyncratic stories at the heart of this research.
The notion of complexity applied to a broader understanding of the research subjects’ narratives. I became concerned that cultural reproduction theory might somehow lock students and teachers into powerless, hopeless positions within institutional fields. However, looking again and again closely at the stories, there were so many examples of resilience and harmony. Powerlessness and passivity did not tell the whole story. I read further and began to understand that there were emancipatory possibilities within cultural theory (e.g. Azaola, 2012,
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Driver, 2011, Mitchell, 2007, Scott, 2012). I came across authors who identified and applied sociological and philosophical lenses to student experiences to identify challenges but also strengths and triumphs (e.g. Pitts, 2007, Kokotsaki and Hallam, 2007). A bricolage of lenses allowed for a complex interplay of understandings of the experiences of the agents in this research.
I had always been attracted to the idea of framing my writing with reference to musical terms and language. I thought that a metaphor analysis framework might be useful for discussion of the themes arising from the data (Keller-Cohen and Gordon, 2003). My thesis was rooted in music stories and expression so I reasoned that the use of music concepts might assist to make fluid, unstructured ideas more ‘concrete’ (Lakoff, 1993, p. 245). I hoped that employing the language of music might make the writing (and reading) more interesting, creative, or, well, musical and that the approach might set my work apart from more formalised writing. I began to think of the thesis like a story with themes. Story can be seen as (is analogous to) a composition. A composition is comprised of melodic themes and other music characteristics that come together to form the structure of the work. In music, a theme is a kind of musical expression or idea identifiable as a part of the overall music structure. Thematic changes and processes are often structurally important. Musical themes are recognizable, repeating, and developing within the music structure of a composition. The various musical themes within a composition combine to underpin or describe the ‘compositional narrative’. I felt that the data in this research might be presented with musical themes employed to tell (or contextualise) this story which was, after all, about music. I sensed that the music analogy could be a creative way of organizing the presentation of the data – the story or narrative - of the thesis. The use of musical themes as musical metaphors for the ‘real’ data themes could be ‘precisely the ties that bind: the very artificiality/artifactuality of links that ‘create’ things, or rather create stability, out of the shifting/mobile/unmoored things-at-hand’ (Bono, 1998).
However, my first efforts at framing a discussion using music concepts seemed trite and constructed. It was as if I was simply using metaphor as a way of re- telling the same stories without saying anything about what they really meant.
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The discovery and choice to use the investigative paradigms outlined above allowed me to frame stories with music analogy as well as understand experiences in wider social, cultural and philosophical contexts. These lenses helped me to explain the releases as well as the tensions – the major evaluative dynamics/themes of the discussion chapters.
My methodological approach to this research involved a choice about which approach best suited the project and was illustrative of my own philosophical self-systems. I now see that the nature of my inquiry and the way in which I chose to structure and present the findings are symbolic representations of me as teacher, researcher and person. As Pelias (2003, p. 660) argued ‘personal realisations (through writing) inform writers about themselves as individuals. They place them in touch with their own attitudes, beliefs, and feelings; with their own relational attachments and political investments; with their own sense of the world.’ This process of reflexivity, of questioning and discoursing with the self throughout the research journey, has been a ‘process of discovery: discovery of the subject (and sometimes the problem itself) and discovery of the self’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011, p. 124).
These reflections on the investigative paradigm constituted just some of my ‘teachable moments’. Havighurst (1953) is credited with the term which broadly refers to the timing and contexts in which different individuals develop understanding and learning. Teachable moments are the subjective, idiosyncratic times in our lives. In Greek mythology the god Kairos represented the concept of the right time whereas the god Chronos came to be associated with a notion of time as exact and universal. Like these differing concepts of time ‘teachable moments’ are actively found by individuals at different times, rather than imposed collectively. Many of my right times were not at the start of the thesis, or within traditional chronologies of research processes, but appeared during and after much of the work had already been completed. This partly explains the writing of the methodology chapter as the penultimate chapter of the thesis. Similarly, teachable moments might exist for musicians by allowing for flexible or idiosyncratic conditions, rather than linear and traditional (chromatic) learning.
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2.4. Strategy of inquiry