Informal Learning and Adult Music Activities.

Abstract

This has been an interesting and productive conference, and I congratulate our hosts for taking the lead in championing qualitative research to the music education scholarly community. Because the historical research that I do is pretty much qualitative in nature, I'm especially pleased that researchers are seriously exploring a mode of research that depends so heavily on informed subjective interpretation. Our society is so dynamic that change occurs continually. The magnitude and speed of change within the music education profession can easily be measured against that of the greater society. This gives music education researchers a good opportunity to develop studies related to current issues such as technology, the teaching of new kinds of music, new teaching methodologies, and special education, to name just a few. But I'd like to talk about a couple of not-so-new areas that seem especially appropriate for qualitative studies in music education. Sometimes we become so involved in what's new in education that we forget that not everything changes at a fast pace. I'm talking specifically about two topics informal learning and adult music activities. Informal learning and adult music are dynamic too, but they're generally practiced in much more traditional ways than education in the formal school setting. And they're both areas that have been largely overlooked by music education researchers. They're not totally ignored, but it would be good for the profession if more researchers undertook studies in these areas.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.