Addressing Narrative Methodologies in Music Education Research

In this chapter, the three editors address the book’s main theme, namely how methodologies unfold in narrative inquiry (NI). Narrative inquiry is perceived as a complex and ambiguous endeavor that could be subject to vast and broad ways of methodological diversity. The chapter displays an interest towards enhanced methodological awareness when conducting Narrative Inquiry in music education. The chapter discusses how methodologies in music education NI are made explicit and reflected over when chosen, when in use, and in (re)presentation, and the authors offer examples of narrative methodologies originating from other academic fields than music education as sources for reflection and inspiration. The authors sort methodological approaches to NI in music education into three spatial core features: Across (transdisciplinearities), between (positionings, power, structures) and beyond (futures, multimodalities, posthumanist ontology) to group and address methodological issues in music narrative inquiry.