My response to this is inevitably a small part of a huge picture - I’m focusing on the issues I’m coming across as part of my PhD research, which uses mixed methods (primarily linguistic analysis) to explore discourses of adult music learning.

Excellence

I absolutely agree with the idea that before deciding if these are the right terms to use, we need to look at what they mean. This is where I believe linguistic research methods could be incredibly helpful.

My research uses linguistic analysis methods to look at how adult learners and music teachers talk/ write about adults learning music. In particular, I use corpus linguistics to look at the sort of words that are used around adult learning and the associations that seem to crop up around particular terms. Corpus linguistics uses large data sets of texts as a database from which analysis software can run reports. For example, the [ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS)](http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/) has used corpus methods to examine the representation of Islam and Muslims in the British press (Baker, Gabrielatos & McEnery, 2013).

Although much community music/ music education research is text based (interviews, life stories, questionnaires), there has been little use of linguistic methods - I’m only aware of one published study using corpus linguistics (Mantie, 2012). By building and analysing a corpus of texts written by adult music learners, I’ve discovered patterns around how learners describe their experiences of, for example, exams (lots of negative emotional language, metaphors of war, pain and violence, and metaphors of movement - both in the sense of exam preparation as a journey, and of being â€˜pushed and pulled’ between their own desires in learning and external pressures from teachers and the exam system) (Shirley, 2015).

What would be particularly useful in this situation, I believe, is using the readily available general corpora of written/ spoken language (built by linguists over a number of years) to investigate how â€˜excellence’ (and indeed â€˜inclusion’) is generally used as a word - what contexts is it used in, what associations does it have? A corpus of texts from the music education/ community music world could be compiled and compared with a more general corpus to see if we tend to use the terms differently. This could inform the discussion about whether it’s a term we should be using.

Inclusion

I think one of our biggest issues with deciding what inclusion means is making sure we don’t jump to conclusions about who is currently included and excluded. We may automatically think of whoever we consider to be â€˜disadvantaged’ or minority groups, but we need to consider whether there are hidden groups of excluded people.

There’s a danger of assuming that if you’re an â€˜average’ child or adult you can easily access musical education and participation. From my experience as a private instrumental teacher, access for children seems to vary hugely within one city depending greatly on which school they attend (and there isn’t a clear match between the â€˜better’ schools and more music). My research and experience with adult learners is also showing a real gap in opportunities for participation for adult learners/ players. Where I live there are opportunities for musical activity for some children, for some particular groups in therapeutic settings, and for advanced adults, but there’s a real gap in the middle (which some of us locally are trying to address). It can be a struggle if you are an adult learning in, say, your 30s or 40s, with a mid-range income and not considered part of a disadvantaged or minority group. There are limited places where you can play as part of a group, and educational courses (even lessons) are sometimes not available to adults, or can be just too expensive when you’re trying to pay a mortgage, bring up children, etc. When there’s so much evidence of how beneficial music can be, it’s a great shame that there seems to be this gap and assumption that â€˜normal’ adults don’t need help to access it.

Finally, I think we also need to ask the people who are affected by this - what do excellence and inclusion mean to the people who are learning and participating in music, and are these what they want from their participation in music?

References

Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T. (2013) Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: the representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mantie, R. (2012). Music education and avocational music making: examining discourse using techniques from corpus linguistics. In Thompson, L. & Campbell, M. (eds.), Advances in Music Education Research, Volume 5 (pp. 119-146). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Shirley, R. (2015). “You’re never too old for music!”: online discourses of adult music learners, a corpus-based study. (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Available from http://www.sheffieldflute.co.uk/research.html

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