Research Shorts: Musical Vulnerability in Music Education

Today I’m talking with Elizabeth MacGregor about her recent book, Musical vulnerability: Receptivity, susceptibility, and care in the music classroom (Routledge, 2025).

Elizabeth explained more: ‘We often hear in the media that music-making is good for us – and rightly so! But many of us know that music-making can also lead to frustration and discouragement. My research shows how these effects relate to music’s extra-musical associations and the way it affects our bodies through listening and moving.’

In her book, Elizabeth writes that she offers ‘a conceptualisation of classroom music-making that accounts for both its beneficial and detrimental effects, in such a way that it could be meaningfully applied to transform future policy, pedagogy, and research across diverse global contexts.’ To do this, she has come up with the idea of ‘musical vulnerability’ as a term. Elizabeth uses this concept to consider how music education – especially secondary classroom music education – can impact us both positively and negatively.

I asked her how she did this research, and she explains:

‘My initial research into musical vulnerability involved interviewing twelve secondary classroom music teachers about positive and negative experiences of music-making. I then spent a year working with one teacher and a Year 8 class at her school, observing how musical vulnerability related to pupils’ personal identities and interpersonal relationships.’

She told me that though music educators might be put off by her research because they might want to emphasise the positive outcomes for music education, ‘I think the case for learning music is made stronger when we recognise the vulnerability it can cause.’ She also emphasises the importance of acknowledging musical vulnerability for children and young people, in order to ‘support pupils to lead fulfilling musical lives as they grow up.’

I asked Elizabeth about her own musical life, and she explained ‘I grew up in Kent playing the flute and recorder, and then studied music at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield. Since completing my doctorate, I’ve worked at Birmingham City University and the University of Oxford, where I’m currently working on an action research project developing new classroom pedagogies in response to musical vulnerability.’

Find out more:

• Read a free short guide for music educators
• Read more about some of Elizabeth’s work in an open access article: https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X231162981
• Buy the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Musical-Vulnerability-Receptivity-Susceptibility-and-Care-in-the-Music-Classroom/MacGregor/p/book/9781032611532
• Follow Elizabeth on Bluesky ‪@ehmacgregor.bsky.social or read her research profile here

Written by Sarah K. Whitfield – Research Manager for Music Mark