ABSTRACT
Due to rapid changes in diversifying societies, there is a need to create new transformative practices and policies that support systemic interconnectedness, including institutional music education. This need also transposes what is expected from music education research. Engaging with future-oriented, transformative research that aims towards a larger societal shift takes music education researchers beyond their traditional disciplinary boundaries and comfort zones. Even the wider methodological scholarship suggests that the social impact of research, including qualitative approaches, can only be constructed with a future-altering insight, not simply through illuminating existing societal problems (Gergen, 2015; see also Cairney, 2016). In Finland, which is the context of the authors of this chapter, the weak signals also include the altered status of the public use of scientific knowledge and criteria for competitive research funding, indicating, for example, how governmental funders and policymakers aim to bring research out from the silos and “ivory towers” towards inter-, trans-, and multi-disciplinarity that serves contemporary polycentric societies. At the same time, since contemporary academic work is conducted under a neoliberal political climate, evaluation, public trust, and valuation of research are increasingly affected by economically driven, quantifiable criteria leading to simplified impact measures and requirements towards intensified stakeholder collaboration. The shift thus requires music education researchers to have the capacity to navigate the complexities of political steering of funding systems and educational cultures while expanding their professionalism towards a socially responsible public scholarship.
