Situating inquiry

This installment of the Advances in Music Education Research series uses "situated inquiry" as a way to describe how music education scholars build knowledge. The idea is that the methods a researcher uses to shape, produce, extend and sharpen understanding are tied to the activities, settings and cultures in which the work happens. Knowing and acting are both "located," so research is placed, positioned and embedded in its context, an idea the volume draws from Lave and Wenger (1990).

The studies gathered here show that there are many routes to knowledge. Each rests on a different theoretical framework, follows its own path toward the problems it cares about, and speaks to different audiences or stakeholders. Still, every study begins with a phenomenon as it is perceived or with people's interpretations of a context. The volume argues that situated inquiry is neither quantitative nor qualitative, and it is not a mixed-methods design. It depends instead on the beliefs and behaviors of the people carrying it out, and on how those people join a community of researchers.

The contributors chose particular approaches, yet their reports reveal their membership in research communities through the language and structure of their writing. Active perception stays central to their inquiry and to the way they shape and refine what they know.