| Popis: |
This chapter examines the role that research plays in the music education profession and introduces several ways to categorize different types of research. Research in music education includes quantitative, qualitative, historical, philosophical, and action approaches to systematic inquiry. Each of these types of research has a unique contribution to make concerning music teaching and learning. Quantitative researchers gather numerical information to answer descriptive questions (e.g., What is . . . ?), questions of associations (e.g., How is variable x related to variable y?), and questions pertaining to cause and effect (e.g., What causes variable y to be the way that it is?). Qualitative researchers explore complex phenomena within naturalistic settings, foregrounding participants’ perspectives. The researcher generates text-based data sources such as interview transcripts, field notes, and artifacts and analyzes them to illuminate themes that emerge from the data. The resulting research report provides a detailed description of and supports theorization about the phenomenon of interest. Historical researchers examine original documents, artifacts, and testimony to answer questions, uncover facts, and draw meaningful conclusions related to the past and its effect on present conditions. Philosophical researchers use logical arguments and examples to investigate the assumptions underlying current music education practices and to imagine how attitudes and actions within the profession might be. Action researchers typically study their local contexts in order to take action within and as a result of their inquiries. |
