Researching Music Education from Within

This contribution is a written version of the author’s inaugural lecture and articulates a personally grounded vision for music education research, framed as an extended autobiographical “positionality statement”. Acknowledging the inherent subjectivity of research, it examines how the author’s professional identities as a music teacher, musician, and researcher intersect and inform a practitioner‑researcher stance. The paper analyses the current state of the researcher’s local, Flemish music education ecosystem, identifying structural fragilities across primary and secondary education, music schools, non‑formal education, and music teacher preparation. From this observation, the author proposes a set of guiding principles for future research that emphasise the centrality of music teachers, the value of practitioner research as agency, the complementarity of practitioner and scientific approaches, the integration of musical research data, and sustained engagement with the local context. The article ultimately positions these principles as foundations for a coherent and future‑oriented research agenda.