Governments are calling on their citizens to ‘build back better’. What does ‘building back better’ look like for music education? Although it’s too early to be definitive – we are all at different phases of emerging from the pandemic – our thoughts must surely turn to how, if at all, our focus has changed regarding what matters to music educators. Thade Buchborn, Pamela Burnard, David Hebert and Gwen Moore are members of the editorial board who have paused to consider a post-pandemic era in music education research. They share their viewpoint in this issue. It makes for compelling reading and I welcome it as a powerful provocation to all of us grappling with music education and its purpose.
Two research articles in the issue address barriers in place in the [music] education system in England, applying a post-humanist lens to their data analysis which allows for insights to emerge which might otherwise go unnoticed. Ursula Crickmay and Hermione Ruck Keene take a non-hierarchical approach to their partnership project, finding moments of musical connection which extend the boundaries of what is possible with pre-service primary teachers, while Victoria Kinsella, Martin Fautley and Adam Whittaker point to structural boundaries which act as an impediment to partnerships between schools and out-of-school music providers. Barriers in place at the start of the project which were based on hierarchical power tended to fall away over time and to be replaced by a move towards greater trust and openness. As each one grew in trusting and understanding the role of the other, the result was an increasingly tactful and sensitive interaction between the partners.
Christine Vellacott and Julie Ballantyne report on barriers identified by professional musicians to maintaining and developing their expertise. They note that, whereas much attention is paid in research on this topic to young learners, little is known about the practice habits of more advanced musicians. Their study addressed this gap, providing insights into the perspectives of six instrumentalists on how each one finds a way to deal with competing priorities on their time and attention and develops strategies to retain high levels of motivation. Barriers at a systemic level are at the heart of the paper by Henna Suomi, Lenita Hietanen and Heikki Ruismäki who looked at the challenge posed by levels of musical skills expected of primary teachers in the Finnish educational context. Their concern was that the construction of music as a school subject demands skills that are difficult to achieve for this group within the time allowed in teacher education.
Karen Howard reminds us that music does not exist in a vacuum. Nor does education and it is for music educators to show leadership in calling out bias and in resisting hegemony. Her phenomenological study of Whiteness in education is undertaken in a choral setting in the US. Also based in the US, Adam Patrick Bell, Atiya Datoo, Brent Matterson, Joseph Bahhadi and Chantelle Ko call for communities which promote diversity across backgrounds, perspectives, and abilities. They applied a mixed-methods approach to researching accessibility with members of a community music group to assess how accessible they thought the group was and how it might improve.
The piece by John O’ Flynn, Gwen Moore, Frances Burgess and Jayne Moore is a timely reminder that it’s a 100 years since Ireland has gained its independence from England. Theirs is a comparative study of policy and provision of teacher education in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This is certainly a watershed moment: a collaborative shared endeavour intended to transcend boundaries and create new understandings through music education.
I’ve included two papers which address technology in education. The first, by Manuel Jacinto Colemenero, is set in Spain and the second, by Liudmyla Havrilova, Olena Beskorsa, Valentyna Oriekhova and Liliya Khmarna reports from within the Ukraine. Both of them focus on the tertiary level, and are undertaken in pedagogical settings, with pre-service music students. Each one confirms the extent to which the everyday use of technology has become increasingly commonplace in practice during the pandemic, with the capacity for teachers and learners to break down barriers to learning and in doing so, to forge new relationships with knowledge. For Colemenero this relationship leads to the creation of a new challenge that enriches the practice of musical pedagogy, with ICT acting as a valuable support and complementing the teaching activity. For Havrilova et al. the use of technology facilitates new relationships between learners and knowledge in the virtual and physical environment, as the example of their project on Tchaikovsky demonstrates to good effect.
Finally, a word about RiME. I’m pleased to confirm that the dates for RiME2023 are April 11th to 14th. I’m planning to hold it online again. Further details to follow.