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date: 06 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter investigates the evolution of three prevailing epistemological fields of thought in the twentieth and early twenty-first-century: positivism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner’s career-long interest in the mind and his changing attitudes and interests in knowledge and knowledge-making serve as an explicative for the changes that have taken place. A point is emphasized throughout: beliefs about knowledge and the mind shape and inform the questions researchers ask and the methods of investigation researchers choose to employ. Exemplifying this point, the chapter embraces a vision of research that is congruent with the diversity and fragmentation of contemporary society and alternative ways of knowing and being.

Keywords: Jerome Bruner, behaviorism, culture, epistemology, knowledge, mind, narrative research, positivism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, structuralism

Randall Everett Allsup

Randall Everett Allsup holds degrees in music and music education from Northwestern University and Columbia University. He is assistant professor of music and music education at Teachers College Columbia University in New York City. His research focuses on the intersections of democracy, pluralism, the arts, and popular education. His scholarship has been influenced by thinkers such as John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Maxine Greene. His forthcoming research looks at the domain of music and moral education. He is the recipient of a Fulbright research award, Outstanding Teacher award at Columbia University, and Outstanding Dissertation for Crossing Over: Mutual Learning and Democratic Action in Instrumental Learning. He is also past chair of the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education.

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