A Conceptual Model of Spirituality in Music Education

Abstract

This article aims to describe the phenomenon of spirituality in music education by means of a model derived from the academic literature on the topic. Given the centrality of lived experience within this literature, we adopted a hermeneutic phenomenological theoretical framework to describe the phenomenon. The NCT (noticing, collecting, and thinking) model was used for the qualitative document analysis. Atlas.ti 7, computer-aided qualitative data analysis software, was used to support and organize the inductive qualitative data analysis process. After data saturation, we used Van Manen’s lifeworld existentials (corporeality, relationality, spatiality, and temporality) to help organize the many quotes, codes, and categories that emerged from analyzing the literature. The model that results assigns codes to quotes and codes to categories, which in turn appear within one of these four lifeworlds. This article not only offers a working conceptual model of spirituality in music education but may also help to foster an awareness of spiritual experience in pedagogical contexts and thus contribute to what Van Manen calls “pedagogic thoughtfulness and tact.”