One of the major shifts in music education research over the past decade or so has been the emergence of a diverse range of studies that makes full use of available qualitative research methodologies. This trend has emerged alongside an increased awareness and confidence among music education researchers to engage in qualitative approaches that have been relatively mainstream in the wider world of educational research, but which were relatively slow to be adopted by the world of music education – at least in its published journals. Furthermore, this expanded perspective on research methods within music education has been part of a much wider interest in the use of educational research data to inform the actions of national and local government policy makers as they engage with educational reform, often badged under the umbrella of "evidence-based" or "research-based" practice (e.g., Davies, 1999; Oakley, 2002; Oakley, Gough, Oliver&Thomas, 2005)