Educative Evidence-Based Practice in Music Education

“Evidence-Based Practice” is a widely used term in educational and popular discourse, yet it is a contested field itself in educational research, theory, and philosophy.

The EEBP model is drawn from research and practice in medicine, where models for Evidence-Based Practice have been properly debated and researched in the field itself. Our model is developed from the medical model of Hoffman et al. (2013, p. 4), and we substitute the consideration of the patient with the consideration of the student, and information from medical contexts with information from classroom contexts.

We invite researchers and practitioners to join us to define, research, and test EEBP. We hope to develop a raft of approaches, documents, and resources to help teachers advocate for, teach using, and engage with research through Educative Evidence-Based Practice in Music Education.

We are holding the inaugural Symposium for EEBP in Music Education online in all time zones on 30 September and 1 October, 2024. We invite researchers and practitioners to propose presentations for the symposium on these three key themes:

• Defining, theorising, and critiquing EEBP
• Practice and EEBP (for practitioners who want to use EEBP for reflection and/or planning)
• Research and EEBP (for researchers who want to study the effectiveness of EEBP)

Register for the symposium.

For more detailed context, read the introduction to our book proposal on EEBP (pdf, 13.4mb).

Fuller, B. A. (2023). Riding the Wonky Donkey of Evidence-Based Practice: Resisting the Neoliberalisation of Education Through Active Work in the Music Classroom [PhD]. University of Sydney.

Fuller, B. A. (2022a). Are Teachers Still the Problem? An Analysis of the NSW Education What Works Best Documents. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 47(8). 

Fuller, B. A. (2022b). Is what works best, best for music education? Australian Journal of Music Education, 54(2), 3–14. 

Fuller, B. A., & Humberstone, J. H. B. (2023). The Pendulum Swings Tired: Dewey’s “Passive and Inert Recipiency” versus “Active Work” in a Progressive Secondary Music Classroom. In C. Randles & P. Burnard (Eds.), Routledge Companion to Creativities in Music Education (pp. 263–277). Routledge. 

Fuller, B. A., & Humberstone, J. H. B. (2024). Defining Educative Evidence-Based Practice in Music Education. (In review).

Humberstone, J. H. B., Fuller, A., Chen, A., Kim, A., Hwang, C., Oh, G., Singh, I., Solo, J., Zhang, J., Brereton, J., Webb, L., Kim, L., Marcellino, R., & Lu, S. (2024). What pre-service music teachers know about neuromyths & think about their preparation to deal with them as professionals. Australian Journal of Music Education, 56(2). [Accepted, in print.]