This text presents the partial results of doctoral research that aims to build the state of art of scientific production in music education in Brazil. In this article, we present data referring to a review of the research already developed on the state of the art of scientific knowledge in the areas of Education, Music and Music Education in Brazil. Initially, we set out the main references of each of these three areas and later, draw a parallel between them, to understand the methodological aspects inherent to this type of research, especially the definitions of literature review, research review, systematic review, meta-analysis, and qualitative research synthesis.

Keywords: research, state-of-art, musical education

In the context of a larger research, we aim to raise the State-of-art of scientific production in music education in Brazil. For this, we need to know the productions already done with this same purpose, which leads us to present here a review of the research that is configured as 'State-of-Art' research. Our focus is on research related to music education as an area that identifies with education and music.¹ The following text presents a panorama based on the revision of the scientific literature, presenting the already developed studies on State-of-art or State of Knowledge in the research in Education, in Music and in Music Education. We classify the authors by areas and highlight the way each area develops analyzes of its scientific production and brings elements of contribution to the related areas. We identify and differentiate the objectives, methodological aspects, and categories of analysis used by the researchers of each area in this type of research. We present and compare some methodological contributions used in these areas of knowledge to carry out State-of-the-Art research. This, in the context of the meta-analysis, literature review and systematic review, what time have the purpose of analyzing quantitative data, qualitative time, thus seeking to bring light to this intricate methodological context, not always clarified in the academic papers.²

The area of Education stands out from Musicology and Music Education since it is the area that has been developing academic research for a long time. The area has a larger quantity of scientific production and, consequently, was one of the first, in the twentieth century, to develop studies to review scientific production. In this sense, we consider the data of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil, which show, in chart 1, the growth of post-graduate programs by major area of knowledge, from 1998 to 2014. In this graph, it is possible to observe that the large area, which is linked to Education, Human Sciences, has grown much more than the area to which Music is linked: Linguistics, Literature, and Arts. However, as you can see in Figure 1, both areas in 15 years have more than doubled their programs.^3–9

Figure 1 Growth of postgraduate programs, by major area, from 1998 to 2014 – Brazil.
Source: Ministry of Science and Technology

With regard to Master's and Ph.D. programs in Arts/Music, it is possible to check with the Ministry of Education's website that 52 academic masters courses, 7 professional master's degrees, and 28 Ph.D. courses in Arts/Music, totaling 87 postgraduate in Arts/Music in Brazil. Table 1 below shows that we currently have 19 institutions offering masters and 10 courses in which doctoral researches are developed in the field of music education.¹⁰

In Education in Brazil, we currently have 74 doctoral courses, 175 master's degrees, totaling 249 courses in Brazil.^11–18 According to Fernandes,¹⁹ the majority of researches in music education are developed in graduate programs in Education or Arts / Music. In this sense, we present here some national surveys of the State-of-art type, in the areas of Education, Music and Music Education. In Table 2 we present a classification of authors who develop State-of-art research on scientific production in music in Brazil.²⁰

The studies of State-of--art in music education research in Brazil, to which we had access, were presented in Table 3, classified by general objective, which in the case may be by a survey of original data, analysis by periodical or by subject and contextual reflections based on previous studies.^21–26

Table 4, below, exemplifies authors who have developed State-of-art research on scientific production in education in Brazil.²⁷

This study is based on a systematic literature review.²⁸ We also use here techniques of content analysis, based on the methodological indications of Bardin²⁹ that guides the work of analysis by classification and categorization. Although we identify this study as a systematic review of the literature, it is verified that the national publications on methodology do not present a clear systematization on this type of research identification and generalize the work of literature review to construct the theoretical framework.³⁰ In this sense, we intend to reflect on this methodological question, based on the international literature on research methodology.^31–49 Based on these authors we arrive at the most used expressions related to the studies identified as State-of-art, organized in Table 5, below.

We start from the simplest to the most complex, to reveal how literature review research has evolved, where we first have the non-systematic literature review; the systematic review; the meta-analysis and the qualitative synthesis of research. We thus punctuate the main procedures indicated by the authors. Initially the non-systematic review of literature, which is a thematic choice of the researcher, being arbitrary and usually with a subjective trait, also called narrative literature review.⁵⁰ The systematic review of literature can be labeled differently: literature review, research review, systematic review, research synthesis, and meta-analysis. Some of these terms are interchangeable, while others have broader or narrower meanings, but the more comprehensive term is the literature review.

In these typologies of studies, most categories of analysis are easily identified. Literature reviews can focus on research results, research methods, theories, or research applications for real-world problems. According to Cooper,⁵¹ the literature review is indicated where the reviewer hopes to present the theories offered to explain a particular phenomenon and to compare them in the works. The comparisons will examine the breadth of the theories, internal consistency, and the nature of their predictions. Cooper⁵² creates a taxonomy for the systematic review of the literature described in Table 6 below. In this context of the research of systematic review of literature, the concept of Bibliographic or Bibliographic / Documentary research appears. Some authors will bring together these two approaches and others will argue that documentary research refers only to documents that have not been processed - unlike scientific works: articles, dissertations, and theses. In this sense, the work of Volpato,⁵³ by Sá-Silva, Almeida and Guindani⁵⁴ and the work of Pizanni et al.,⁵⁵  review these typologies of studies and explain that although there is disagreement in relation to conceptualization, the treatment of information is similar. In this context of the research of systematic review of literature, the concept of Bibliographic or Bibliographic / Documentary research appears. Some authors will bring together these two approaches and others will argue that documentary research refers only to documents that have not been processed - unlike scientific works: articles, dissertations and theses. In this sense, the work of Volpato,⁵⁶ by Sá-Silva, Almeida and Guindani^57,58 and the work of Pizanni et al.,⁵⁹ review these typologies of studies and explain that although there is disagreement in relation to conceptualization, the treatment of information is similar.

In analyzing several works developed on the State-of-art, Ferreira⁶⁰ questions whether it would be possible to interrogate the history of academic production in a certain area of knowledge by choosing only to read bibliographic data and abstracts. The author criticizes studies based on the lists of institutional catalogs taking the productions as a documentary source. Thus, this type of analysis would be insufficient for a mapping of academic production in research. For the author, it is necessary to create a network formed by different links of categories linked from the same material medium, whose analysis must be "by the theoretical option manifest, by the theme that announces, by the explicit purpose of the research, by the methodological procedure adopted by the researcher".⁶¹ For Romanowski⁶² State-of-art, in the field of education, seek the constitution of the theoretical field of an area of knowledge, because they seek to understand how the production of knowledge occurs in a given area. They examine topics covered in the research, methodologies used, theoretical references, the relationship between research and pedagogical practice. For the author, this type of research usual in the American scientific literature is little known among researchers in Brazil. The term state of the art results from a literal translation of English, and, according to the author, aims to carry out surveys of what is known about a certain subject based on research conducted in a given area.⁶³

The work of Vosgerau and Romanowski⁶⁴ presents a very thorough analysis of the types of studies involved in State-of-the-art research. The authors highlight nomenclatures, identifications and methodological procedures based on examples of concrete research. However, although they cite the typologies of systematic reviews, they suggest that the whole framework is clustered on the axis entitled: review studies. On the other hand, it is verified that the systematic reviews of literature depend on deepening in quantitative and qualitative treatments of the data coming from the "bibliographic documents" in question. Borenstein⁶⁵ explains that systematic reviews began in the mid-1980s and took root in the 1990s, where researchers departed from the narrative review and adopted systematic analyzes and meta-analyses. For systematic reviews, a clear set of rules are used to collect studies and then to determine which elements will be included or excluded from the analysis. A key element in most systematic reviews is the statistical synthesis of data, meta-analysis. In contrast to the narrative review, where the reviewers implicitly attribute some level of importance to each study, in the meta-analysis, the weights assigned to each study are based on specified mathematical criteria.⁶⁶ Although reviewers and readers may still disagree on the substantial significance of results, the statistical analysis provides a transparent, objective, and replicable framework.⁶⁷ The meta-analysis is offered as a method or even a paradigm, from which the researcher takes a new approach when gathering results and conclusions from others. It is distinguished from the usual bibliographical review, common in scientific activity, because quantitative techniques assume a prominent place in it.⁶⁸

On the other hand, the synthesis of qualitative research, according to Cooper is intended to replace the previous documents that were lost sight of and to direct future research. For the author:

Research syntheses focus on the results of empirical research and aim to integrate past research by drawing general conclusions (generalizations) from several separate investigations that address identical or related hypotheses. The purpose of the research synthesizer is to present the state of knowledge about the relationship (s) of interest and highlight important questions that the research left unsolved.⁶⁹

At its most essential level, the synthesis of qualitative research is an approach that uses qualitative methods to analyze, synthesize and interpret the results of qualitative studies. According to Major & Savin-Baden⁷⁰ the qualitative synthesis has the following advantages: It provides a way of dealing with the explosion of scientific information; Helps researchers avoid reinventing the wheel; Makes connections between existing studies; It complements primary empirical studies or existing syntheses; It provides a different perspective on a given phenomenon; Provides a way to advance theory; Helps identify gaps and omissions in a particular body of research; It allows dialogue and debate; It allows the development of practices and policies based on evidence; Provides a cost-effective approach to qualitative research.

We have developed a timely analysis of cutting-edge research in these three areas: music, education and music education. Tables 7–9 below, show the expressions taken from abstracts and texts searched State-of-art investigations. Through this work of codifying texts and selecting expressions and terminologies, we arrive at an interpretation of how each area develops, conceives this type of research here still in an exploratory way. We consider the objectives, methodological aspects and categories of analysis worked on in these investigations.

It is verified that in music the works are more descriptive and quantitative, arriving at thematic classifications of the several subareas of the musical knowledge. In music education, in addition to quantification and thematic classifications, there are analyses of comparative, explanatory, conceptual/pedagogical categories, as well as an analysis of the relationship between scientific production and the development of socio-cultural / educational policies. In addition to these aspects of research in music and music education, research on education presents other elements such as: analysis of the structure and internal quality of scientific production, analysis of concepts linked to pedagogical ideas (conception of man, society, education, school, teacher, teaching-learning), as well as philosophical / sociological / epistemological analyzes.

In relation to the impact on the pedagogical practice or the creation of policies aimed at sociocultural change, few works were found. Researchers generally focus more on surveying and processing data or on epistemological and sociological interpretations. There is a certain difficulty in meeting these two fronts, collection, and analysis; this is the function of the complexity and volume of work inherent to this type of research. In general, there is a lack of methodological foundation in the elaboration and development of this type of research in the areas of music and music education, mainly. At this point the international references mentioned here can collaborate, to allow a refinement in the proposal of researches that go beyond the comprehensive analyzes. Thus, the totality sought by the 'State-of-art' research can be added to more focused analyses of the theoretical/academic/scientific works.

The research of State-of-art, or research of systematic review of bibliography, is configured by an epistemological approach that takes into account concrete elements that are not always quantifiable. The theoretical elaborations, the conceptual data, and understandings about certain phenomena are among these qualitative data types. State-of-art researches that seek to publicize the productions of qualitative studies are not strictly meta-analytic but have in the methodology of categorical content analysis a structured procedure for conducting qualitative research syntheses.

Thus, due to the considerable development of the qualitative researches in music education in Brazil, it is up to the researchers of the area to advance beyond the simple description of the research already done. We believe that the studies already were undertaken corroborate and enable complex and relational interpretations with cultural and social elements reflected on the educational context.

None.

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

None.

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