Toward a Research-Based Foundation for Doctoral Programs in Music Education

We start largely from scratch in the task of building a research-based foundation for doctoral programs in music education. Two dimensions of the task are to address, from a research base, the operational and the philosophical foundations for what our programs have been, now are, and need to become. Little exists to help us do so, either in our research and scholarly literature or in our recognition of the urgency of the need. At the operational level even the most basic questions of why we do what we do are unanswered in any systematic way. And at the philosophical level, having to do with what our values and goals might be, we have no viable mechanism allowing us to work toward a synergistic set of principles that would lead us to provide the profession with its highest-level visionaries, researchers and leaders. Until we provide for a means to accomplish those ends doctoral degree study will continue to be less influential in forging a more well-grounded, more effective profession than its distinctive mission requires it to be.