In considering the merits of qualitative research in music education, Eisner (1996, p.11- 13) claims that the world can be known in multiple ways, that all knowledge is a
constructed form of experience, and that different forms of representation influence both what we are able to say and what we are able to see. Qualitative research has the capacity positively to expand the ways in which we can represent the educational world and, consequently, the questions we can ask about it. Indeed, it can produce "empathic forms of understanding" and give a privileged access to the meanings experienced by the participants involved, offer "a sense of particularity that makes people and situations palpable", and provide a kind of "productive ambiguity ... [in which] the meaning of the conclusions, in a significant sense, are developed in the context of interpretation, debate, deliberation, and dialogue". Qualitative research is holistic (Bresler & Stake, 2006, p.278) and case oriented, in that a specific and naturalistic context is studied in depth. More than making comparisons across large samples, it seeks to understand a single case by taking into account many different sources of qualitative data. "Researchers interested in the uniqueness of particular teaching or learning find value in qualitative studies because the design allows or demands extra attention to physical, temporal, historical, social, political, economic, and aesthetic contexts" (p.273). Given the sociocultural orientation of this
study, and the attention given in sociocultural research to different planes of analysis – individual, social, institutional, cultural (Rogoff, 2008) – such a holistic character and openness of the qualitative approach make it convenient for the questions I am posing.
A comparison between the main characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research can confirm that a qualitative approach is best suited for the kind of enquiry I am carrying out (see Table 9, elaborated from Suter, 2011):
Table 9. Key Differences Between Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches and why this study should adopt a qualitative approach
(adapted from Suter, 2011, p.347, and further elaborated)
Quantitative Research Qualitative Research Why this should be a qualitative study
Tests hypotheses built on theory
Generates understanding about complex, multiple realities
Purpose: understanding the phenomenon of children's musical creativity, in particular their creative interactions and the meanings associated to their experiences Focuses on control to
establish cause, permit prediction, or identify exact relationships
Focuses on interpreting and understanding a social construction of meaning in a natural setting
Favours the laboratory (as in experimental research) or uses large sample sizes (as in surveys)
Favours fieldwork and studies in depth single cases or small groups
Setting: a group of children in an educational context (a music school in Rome)
Deals with statistical complexity
Deals with conceptual complexity
The study is not looking at quantitative relationships, rather it explores how creativity can be conceptualised with regard to this particular situation. Uses designs (and research
questions) that are fixed prior to data collection
Allows designs (and, to some extent, also research
questions) to develop during the research process
Emergent, flexible design: the
research process is largely open, and both the ongoing review of literature and the practical conduct of the study contribute to progressively define the focus of the inquiry.
Attends to precise
measurements and objective data collection
Attends to accurate description of process via words, texts, etc., and observations
Data collection: the research questions require rich information to be gathered from an array of different sources (musical processes and products, talk, nonverbal behaviour, documents, drawing, teachers' notes, etc.) Favours standardized tests
and statistical instruments that measure constructs
Favours multiple sources of evidence (interviews,
observations, and documents) Uses instruments with
psychometric properties
Relies on researchers who have become skilled at observing, recording, and coding
Researcher as instrument: I, as the teacher-researcher, am immersed in the process and am the main instrument of data collection and analysis
Quantitative Research Qualitative Research Why this should be a qualitative study
(continued)
Conducts analysis after data collection
Conducts analysis along with data collection
Recursive character of data analysis: the analysis runs parallel to the data collection and may feed back into it, in that the teacher may be stimulated to try out new ideas, or the researcher might find some issues worth of further investigation. Also, the longitudinal character of this research allows for a mutual influence between data collection and analysis
Performs data analysis in a prescribed, standardized, linear fashion
Performs data analysis in a creative, iterative, nonlinear, holistic fashion.
Draws meaning from multiple sources of complex data
Conducts analysis that yields a significance level
Conducts analysis that seeks interpretation, insight and metaphor
Findings: based on the interpretation of the data, some form of
conceptualisation, framework or model for understanding children's group musical creativity should eventually emerge out of the research process. Generates a report that
follows a standardized format
Generates a report of findings that includes expressive language and a personal voice Bases its quality on criteria
of validity and reliability
Bases its quality on criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability
Quality: This will be a 'good' study if it offers a trustworthy representation and interpretation of these children's creativity and if it can be relevant and useful for others in similar
circumstances. Generalizes from a sample
to the population
Applies ideas across contexts
Having concluded that this study is rooted in the constructivist-interpretive paradigm and adopts a qualitative approach, in the following I examine which research design(s) are consistent with the research questions.