Theoretical framework

At every point in our research – in our observing, our interpreting, our reporting, and everything else we do as researchers – we inject a host of assumptions. There are assumptions about human knowledge and assumptions about realities encountered in our human world. Such assumptions shape for us the meaning of research questions, the

purposiveness of research methodologies, and the interpretability of research findings. Without unpacking these assumptions and clarifying them, no one (including ourselves!) can really divine what our research has been or what it is now saying. (Crotty, 1998, p.17).

The significance of making explicit the philosophical assumptions (as well as the ethical and political values) which frame the technical-methodological procedures of a study is more and more emphasised in educational research (Burnard, 2006a; Paul & Marfo, 2001; Pring, 2000). However, given the growing variety of genres of enquiry and particularly the complexity of the associated vocabularies – often not fully consistent among different authors – it can be problematic to define what particular stance to adopt and especially how to label it through a well-organised set of related concepts. In order to describe my own approach, therefore, I will derive my terminology from the literature on methods, conscious of the fact that certain key words may have been used differently by other authors or that different frameworks may have been proposed to illustrate the heterogeneous landscape of research approaches in education. My aim is here to make my own methodological position clear, trying to avoid simplistic labelling but also not drowning in overly subtle and unpractical distinctions.

This section presents a rationale for adopting an interpretivist-constructivist paradigm and a qualitative research methodology. Denzin and Lincoln (2005) claim that "the

constructivist paradigm assumes a relativist ontology (there are multiple realities), a subjectivist epistemology (knower and respondent co-create understandings), and a naturalistic (in the natural world) set of methodological procedures" (p.24).

The ontology of the present study – i.e. the kind of reality that is investigated here – is that of the creative musical interactions of a group of children who are learning as a group within a local, particular, and culturally situated context. A word of caution for the label 'relativist ontology' is offered by Denzin and Lincoln (as opposed to the critical realist ontology of postpositivist research): I use it here to indicate that the focus is on actions and practices that, even if objectively performed in the real world, assume different cultural, social, and personal meanings for the participants involved, so much so that they are not 'facts', but rather 'intentional actions' that have a distinct significance in the lived world of each member of the group (including the teacher-researcher and the co-

teacher). In sociocultural terms, the learning processes that constitute the object of this study are not viewed as the acquisition of musical skills and knowledge that can be quantified and measured by an external and neutral observer. Rather, following Rogoff (2003), learning is seen as transformation of children's participation in the sociocultural activity of a music educational community led by a teacher-researcher and a co-teacher. There is not one reality here, rather there are multiple realities and multiple perspectives to be understood and, in this sense, the ontology of the study is relativist.

The epistemology of the study, i.e. the nature and the extent of the knowledge generated by it, is subjectivist (as opposed to objectivist) in the sense that the questions raised will produce knowledge that is largely co-constructed by a practitioner-researcher and his colleague through the encounter with a group of children. This knowledge is context- based and not generalisable (though to some degree transferable to other contexts), and expressed and communicated through analytic frameworks and interpretive models rather than statistically significant results. The research questions aim to describe and understand, rather than explain, what happens when children interact creatively together and how they make sense of it. I want to look at something 'complete', which is children working in a real-world situation, experiencing and inventing music together through a range of different creative activities.

With regard to subquestion 3 (about children's meanings), a relevant theoretical perspective is offered by phenomenology. The point is that, in order to understand the nature of children's experience of creatively interacting with one another, I need "to look more closely at not only what children actually do but also what they have to say" (Burnard, 1999, p.59). Indeed, to the extent that I am looking at children's experiences and the meanings they ascribe to them, I am also adopting a phenomenological perspective.

According to van Manen (1990, p.9-13) hermeneutic phenomenological research is:  the study of lived experience and of the meanings associated to it

 the explication of phenomena as they present themselves to consciousness. 'Phenomenon' refers to appearance, i.e. that which shows itself and appears in consciousness. There is no subject-object ontological dichotomy, rather an object is 'real' in that it is embedded in consciousness. What is of interest here is the "significant world" (p.9) of the human being

 the study of essences, the nature or essence of a human experience. "Phenomenology is the systematic attempt to uncover and describe the structures, the internal meaning structures, of lived experience" (p.10)  the description of the experiential meanings we live as we live them in our

everyday existence, in our lifeworld

 the human scientific study of phenomena, whereby 'scientific' is broadly intended as systematic, explicit, self-critical, and intersubjective (i.e. dialogic).

 the attentive practice of thoughtfulness, in order to be better prepared "to act tactfully in situations, [...] to produce action sensitive knowledge" (p.21)

 a search for what it means to be human "as a man, a woman, a child, taking into account the sociocultural and the historical traditions that have given meaning to our ways of being in the world" (p.12)

Thus, the breadth of issues that the research questions raise and the theoretical

perspective I am assuming call for a qualitative methodology and a naturalistic approach. In the following, I further discuss the reasons for this choice.