Page 32 - IJPS-9-3

International Journal of
Population Studies Re-conceptualizing music education

3.4.4. Coherence in lifelong musical experience that were deemed to demand specific types of facilitation

Several studies have highlighted a lifelong learning (e.g., Hallam et al., 2016; Talbert & Edelman, 2018;
perspective in their later-life music learning and Varvarigou et al., 2013; Wehr & Coffman, 2018). Several
participation accounts. Accounts of lived experiences, studies focused on the specific expertise in facilitation that
is, as it is positioned in these studies, necessary support
including the link between specific moments and for personal and social musical engagement in later life
significant songs, have illuminated the complexity, depth, to be achieved fully (Bonshor, 2017; Coutts, 2018; Creech
and uniqueness of meanings embedded in participants’ et al., 2014; Giebelhausen & Kruse, 2018; Haddon, 2017;
musical lives, personhood, preferences, and history (Cho, Harrington, 2018; Lee et al., 2016; Lum, 2011). Overall,
2018; Cohen & Wilson, 2017; Sirek, 2018), with lifelong this higher-order concept of developmental possibility was
musical experiences connecting past, current and future founded on the idea that lifelong musical development can
learning (Kang, 2016). Likewise, several studies have be achieved and sustained through later adulthood, but this
demonstrated how music may be entwined with meaning- is dependent on access to expert, differentiated facilitation
making over time (Lamont et al., 2018), nostalgia, or and peer support, particularly about age-related physical,
reminiscence (De Araujo & da Rocha, 2019). cognitive, or attitudinal constraints.
Some researchers have investigated whether music
education earlier in the life course may predict adult 4. Discussion
musical engagement. For example, 35,735 survey responses In this article, we have addressed the state-of-the-
concerned with public participation in the arts revealed art research on older adults and music education,
that “lifelong engagement with music and the arts is one identifying and analyzing studies published since the
measurable outcome of school-based music education in the release of UNESCO’s Seoul Agenda (2010). As stated in
United States … even after controlling for socioeconomic the agenda, the division into “children, young people,
status, sex, and race/ethnicity” (Elpus, 2018, p. 155). In and lifelong learners” (UNESCO, 2010) inadequately
the context of a New Horizons Band for older adults, Glen addresses treating adults as the only lifelong learners –
(2018) too identified a potential relationship between indeed, lifelong learning skills are already developed in
early music education and later-life music participation. childhood. Based on our findings, especially in the case
Likewise, participation in choral singing or instrumental of music, a previous musical engagement predicts active
learning as an older adult has been found to have roots musical participation in later life, and correspondingly, a
in childhood experience and lifelong musical interests lack of musical experiences in earlier life makes musical
(Joseph & Southcott, 2015; 2018; Petrovsky et al., 2020; participation difficult and/or less likely in old age.
Rohwer, 2017) and earlier musical ambitions (Perkins & Furthermore, our findings show that majority of older
Williamon, 2014). A Taiwanese survey study (Lee, 2013) adults’ music learning takes place in informal/non-formal
similarly found that lifelong musical interest and pleasure settings. Hence, the goal of establishing systems of lifelong
in music-making was a characteristic of older adults who and intergenerational learning in […] arts education”
were most likely to engage with music learning. However, (UNESCO, 2010) continues to be relevant in the 2020s.
the relationship between early music education and lifelong Throughout the research process, we confronted the
learning in music is not necessarily predictable nor is it challenge of defining an older adult. Research participants
linear, with multiple issues such as opportunity, attitudes, were consistently described as “older” or retired, but little
and skills as well as “confidence, personality, emotional and information was found regarding other dynamics of their
social needs [and] as well as the complexities of everyday identities, such as socioeconomic status, educational
life” (Pitts et al., 2015, p. 132) intersecting in complex ways background, professional identity, or previous roles in
(Pitts & Robinson, 2016). work life. Perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and People of
Color (BIPOC) were completely missing from the data. In
3.4.5. Developmental possibility
the same vein, gender was consistently conceptualized in
The idea that there may be potential for lifelong musical a binary way, raising questions about the persistent lack of
development emerged from these studies as the fifth sex-gender and body politics discussions concerning older
higher-order concept. This broad idea expressed in 29 of individuals (Woodward, 1999). An explicit limitation of this
the retained papers, encompassed sub-themes somewhat body of research concerning older adults in music learning
in tension. For example, a belief in the possibility of and participation is that it reinforces a message of the aging
development (e.g., Coutts, 2018; Creech et al., 2014; Laes, population as a homogenous group whose identities are
2015; Pike, 2011; Redman & Bugos, 2019; Woody et al., 2019) reduced to chronological age, thus perpetuating the numeric
co-existed alongside interrogations of age-related issues discourse of aging (Woodward, 1999, p. x). Although

Volume 9 Issue 3 (2023) 26 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.383