PhD Options - Education or History

Hey all,

First post under my current user name. I made a new Facebook account so I couldn’t get into my old account, which was through my Facebook…

Anyway, I’ve recently realized that I’m interested in the history of music education as an academic subject. I’m currently halfway done with my master’s program in music ed at Oberlin and my plan for now is to finish the degree and get a teaching job for next year no matter what comes next. That said, I’ve known I wanted to get a doctorate for a very long time so this post is not about whether I should pursue one, but rather what type of doctorate I should look at.

My question is - if one were to seriously consider academically studying the history of music education (in the United States), would it be better to look into a) a music education PhD and focus research/dissertation on historical music education or b) a music history/musicology PhD with a research focus on music education?

I’ve thought it through somewhat and I can see the merits to both. My undergraduate degree is in piano performance and pedagogy and my master’s will be in instrumental music teaching so my guess is it would make me a little more unique to have “musicology” or “music history” as my next label, but I’d imagine that might take longer than a music ed PhD since I believe that would require me to also go through an MA in musicology in the process, at least depending on the school.

Thanks.

Why exactly do you want a doctorate? You mention that once choice might make you a little more “unique.” Is your primary motive attaining prestige, or do you want to work in academia, or are you driven by a passion for the subject and just love school? What are you positioning yourself for, specifically or in general?

I don’t know very much about music education so I defer to others to actually answer your question : ) If there is a PhD in music education, it would seem to make sense to do that, given your master’s in that area and your research interests.

Maybe you could post a program or two in this area of PhD study, just for the rest of us to see.

You are well-positioned to teach at this point, and of course Oberlin’s program is so well-respected. Did you go there as an undergrad as well?

Have you read any books on the history of music education, or taken a course on it at some point?

I want a doctorate because my ultimate goal has always been to be a music professor of some kind, although exactly what I would be a professor of has shifted a bit, as I’ve changed music subfields from college to my masters. I went to Lawrence for undergrad (I was under piano dude or piano guy or something like that before), and I actually sort of re-realized this interest while cataloging the Oberlin Community Music School library. There are some really old piano method books from the 1930s and 1940s and they really caught my eye because of the social context behind them. For example, one was all about learning good behavior through the lyrics to each song and it employed this very deliberate technique of having the last two measures to each song be the exact same (musically) with the song’s respective moral restated at the end. It’s very odd and kind of pervasive in my mind, but this reinforcement technique provides tons of insight into the pedagogy, sociology, and music of the year 1940, when the book was written. There was another book from 1930 that was “for girls” and all of the pieces were named after “girls’” activities, namely jumping rope, cleaning, etc. This is the kind of stuff that really intrigues me.

Given my own educational pedigree so far, I feel pretty confident that I can analyze the materials for their musical and pedagogical content. I also learned how to write papers pretty well in college because I went to Lawrence, but what I don’t have is the skill set that would be specific to a historian - ie historical research, etc. I did really enjoy my musicology classes in college, though. The other tough thing is that from what I can tell, the history of music education doesn’t seem to be a super well-developed field, nor does there seem to be a preeminent scholar on the subject, but I could be dead wrong about that; I need to do more research. But to answer your last question, I didn’t “read” a book about it; the primary source documents I found are what got me going.

This sounds fascinating. Thanks for enlightening me. I wonder if this could be part of a field like American Studies. I have never heard of the field of history of music ed/pedagogy but I’m hoping others in this forum who are more knowledgeable will come on to comment. Meanwhile, I can see why you are intrigued : )