Who pays and who plays? Mapping the discourse of publicly funded instrumental music education in Ireland

Background to the study Instrumental music education, formalised as Western classical music, is provided as an extra-curricular activity on a fee-paying basis by a small number of Education and Training Boards, formerly Vocational Education Committees (ETB/VECs) through specialist instrumental Music Services. While concepts of social justice, universal access and inclusion inform and underpin the primaryand second-level education sector, such discourses have less currency in the area of instrumental music education. Although all citizens’ taxes fund the public music provision, participation in instrumental music during school-going years is predominantly accessed by middle class families. Research question/focus of the study/purpose of the study The research questions extend beyond constructs of social class and privilege to interrogate ‘taken-for-granted’ belief systems of practitioners and, by extension, organisations as factors which may be complicit in the reproduction of advantage. Foucault’s conception of discourse provides a lens with which to map professional practices. Drawing on Bourdieu’s analysis of the reproduction of social advantage through cultural capital and habitus, the study examines cultural assumptions, which appear to place the learning of musical instruments within the educational choices of middleand upper middle-class families to the exclusion of other social groups. Research methods/analytical framework Theoretical concepts derived from the research literature sensitise the study: musical taste and value, constructs of musical ability/talent and giftedness, social class and gender. The philosophical orientation of the research is within the transformational paradigm A series of semi-structured interviews sought to access the perceptions and beliefs of performance music education practitioners (N=14) in seven publiclyfunded music services in Ireland. Canonical dispositions were interrogated and emergent themes were coded and analysed in a process of Grounded theory. Research claims and findings Instrumental music education policy and practice inhabit a space, which is separate and autonomous from mainstream education. Findings show that within the musicservices, long-held aesthetic and pedagogic discourses of the 19 century Conservatory system exert a hegemonic influence over policy and practice. An enduring ‘examination culture’ located within the Western art music tradition determines pedagogy, musical genre, and assessment procedures. Tangible boundaries of fee-payment and restricted availability are compounded by invisible boundaries of concealed selectivity, aesthetic taste and ideologies of musical value. Practitioners are aware of a status duality whereby instrumental teachers working as visiting specialists in primary schools experience a conflict between specialist and generalist educational aims. Nevertheless, study participants advocated siting the point of access to instrumental music education in the primary schools as the most equitable means of access to instrumental music education. Significance of the study This study contributes to filling a ‘knowledge gap’ in the sociology of music education in Ireland. It provides an empirical basis for rethinking instrumental music in the Irish education system as equitable in-school musical participation. The conclusions of the study suggest starting-points for further educational research and provide key ‘prompts’ for curriculum planners of instrumental pedagogy modules in teacher preparation programmes.