Knowing Better Music Education and Epistemic Authority, Responsibility, and Ignorance.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Music education, like all education, is inherently concerned with knowledge. This document is a philosophical exploration that, instead of asking “what we ought to know,” focuses on “how we ought to know.” I explore music education through three different epistemological lenses. Using epistemic authority, epistemic responsibility, and epistemic ignorance, I aim to draw a clearer picture of how epistemological thinking can shift how music education views its grounds for authority, responsibility, and relations with ignorance. Informed primarily by the work of social epistemologists, feminist epistemologists, and virtue epistemologists, I use a philosophical interrogation of music education practices to trouble assumptions and develop epistemic questions to illuminate tensions in music education.I conclude by synthesizing these questions and presenting some implications for the future of music education. I argue broadly that the authority educators hold entails a responsibility to think deeper about how our work relates to epistemological dominance and how systems of knowing that are commonplace in music education both at the individual and institutional levels are constructed to perpetuate both injustice and ignorance. I offer a sketch of a professional orientation to music education that decenters educators and demands intentional action in decisions considering epistemic consequences. I suggest that to ethically engage in music education the field needs not only to know more but also to know better.