A Critical analysis of selected aspects of music education

Abstract

Music educators currently face five major problem areas in the determination of appropriate administrative, pedagogical and research policies and approaches, namely, problems respecting the nature of the musical symbol itself ; socio-cultural issues; problems respecting the pedagogical process and its nature; problems in music education research; and the lack of a theoretical base in musical pedagogy. The writer, therefore, develops three logically distinguishable areas of focus in the analysis, i . e., structural or musical, sociocultural, and pedagogical. Each of these areas is composed of several assumptive sets. In each case a review of the extant relevant research and/or theoretical formulations precedes an attempt to evaluate these, and where feasible, to offer alternate assumptions, which hopefully will prove more desirable. Resultant from the analysis are twenty propositions which in turn address the five problem areas in music education which have been identified by the writer. The study constitutes an attempt to re-evaluate "the present state of the art" of music education. In so doing, it represents a first step in the development of a theoretical formulation which is not only consistent with the evidence from extant research but tends to be internally and logically consistent. Further it is illustrative of attempts to explicate the crucial role of assumptions, for in the explication of assumptions, the roots of action, the logical premises of behaviour are examined and evaluated.