Research Studies in Music Education

Teacher education is increasingly being questioned. In England, politicians and others have misinterpreted statistics on teacher performance to imply that initial teacher training is at fault. In spite of evidence and argument, moves to place training either entirely or mostly in schools are well advanced. Funding for training is bound to follow this re-distribution of professional input and the whole area of educational studies (in England at least) has become problematic, as funds are taken out of education departments of universities and given directly to schools. The only way forward is to identify the essential elements of curriculum subjects- in our case music - and stress the unique and necessary elements of teacher education that cannot be generalised to the school setting.

The traditionally held operant definitions of creative and critical thinking betray a dichotomy particularly when applied to music education. However, boundaries between creative and critical thinking have blurred as the result of recent developments in music cognition research. Research directions and policy issues need to be approached from a much more global understanding of musical thinking as a function of both cognitive and affective components.

In this ethnographic study of classroom music programs, 43 secondary schools in England and Australia were visited and 380 music lessons involving more than 50 classroom music teachers were observed. Though the focus was on junior secondary classrooms, the findings have relevance across a wider age range. In this article, aspects of this project are presented, the first being the identification of the three underlying teaching perspectives, music as knowledge, music as accomplishment and music as an empowering agent and the affirmation that the teaching of music is most effective when it is approached from a music as an empowering agent perspective. The three syllabus structures used by teachers who projected this focus are briefly outlined, and 16 strategies to facilitate student composing identified during the reflective period that followed the observation of 131 lessons are presented.

Many treatment studies have been undertaken to determine the effectiveness of standard psychological treatments for musical performance anxiety. However, little has been undertaken in the way of naturalistic studies to examine the strategies employed by successful professional performers in managing performance anxiety. This study attempts to ascertain these strategies as a basis for developing programs for the education and training of developing musicians and those prone to experiencing performance anxiety. Thirty professional performers from the classical and jazz fields, with a national and international profile and soloist experience, were interviewed on an in-depth basis by the researcher. It was found that these performers all experienced some degree of performance anxiety and viewed it as an accepted and positive part of performing provided they were able to maintain control of it. They achieved this by preparation prior to performing and using a variety of musical, cognitive, behavioural and lifestyle strategies. Most performers felt that a better understanding of these strategies should be provided in the training of musicians.

Over the past two decades, structuralism and post-structuralism have become ways respectively of analysing and interpreting music. Through consideration of writings influenced by these critical methods, structuralism, as an analytical strategy for post-tonal music, and post-structuralism, as a way of investigating meaning(s) in popular music, are discussed for their implications for music education.

Musical analysis as a form of music education appears in Phelps (1969) A Guide to Research in Music Education. In this text's second edition (1980), analysis is replaced by aesthetics. In this article this replacement is investigated, and an alternative in the form of idio-cognitive structure of music performance is suggested.

This paper provides an overview of music education research from an Australian perspective. It is argued that there needs to be a closer link between research and practice, that major areas for research include the music learning process, the cultural context of music programs, artists in schools, teacher education, professional development and performance, plus historical perspectives. Qualitative research is viewed as a legitimate and important means of illuminating the teaching learning process and a distinguishing feature of Australian research as it is now practised.