This proposal presents a conference session conceived not as a demonstration of completed research, but as the next empirical phase of an ecosocial music education framework. Building on published theoretical and practice-based work on attuning to sound, reconnecting with sound memories, and co-composing with the more-than-human world, the session serves as a live, practice-based test of this model with international conference participants as co-researchers.

Earlier research proposes that ecosocial music education can support a sustainable life orientation by cultivating embodied listening, relational awareness, multispecies sensitivity, and shared creative agency. In this session, we move beyond theorizing and illustrating these ideas and instead examine how the model operates in a new research context: a heterogeneous group of international arts education scholars in a conference setting.

The session treats the conference room as a temporary research site. Rather than presenting predetermined findings, we invite participants to engage in a structured series of embodied and sonic practices derived from our ecosocial framework. Through these practices, we investigate how ecosocial music education principles function when applied to a new setting with a group of international scholars with diverse backgrounds.

The research focuses on three interrelated questions:
(1) How do arts education researchers from diverse backgrounds respond to ecosocial listening and sound-based practices?
(2) What kinds of embodied, affective, and relational knowledge emerge when participants engage in attuning, sound memory work, and co-composition?
(3) How does the ecosocial model operate when agency is distributed across human participants, space, sound, memory, and material environment?

The session unfolds through three phases that operationalize our model. First, participants engage in an attunement practice that shifts attention from analytical listening to embodied awareness of sonic environments. This phase explores how participants experience relational listening and how their sense of self, space, and environment change through focused sonic attention. Second, participants reconnect with personal sound memories, allowing remembered sonic experiences to surface as research material. These memories are shared through sound rather than narrative, enabling us to study how memory, emotion, and place become audible in a collective research process. Third, participants engage in a collaborative co-composition process in which voices, objects, ambient sounds, and spatial acoustics function as co-creative agents. This phase allows us to examine how creativity and authorship are redistributed when sound-making is understood as a more-than-human practice.

In this way, the session functions as a practice-based experiment that both enacts and evaluates our ecosocial model. Rather than treating theory and practice as separate domains, the research unfolds through action, participation, and reflection. Knowledge is generated not only through verbal analysis but through embodied experience, sonic interaction, and relational attunement.

The format intentionally involves uncertainty. Outcomes are not fully predictable, and participants’ responses shape the session's direction. This openness allows us to study how ecosocial music education principles operate under real-world conditions of variability, cultural difference, and institutional framing.

By positioning conference participants as collaborators in an ongoing research process, this contribution reframes the conference presentation as a site of knowledge production rather than knowledge dissemination. The session thus extends our prior work by transforming an ecosocial theoretical framework into a live, collective, and empirically generative research event.

Practice-Based Research Design The methodological approach combines ecosocial music education theory with practice-based and performative research. The session is designed as a situated field experiment in which our previously developed ecosocial model is tested in action. Participants and Role Conference participants are invited to join the session as co-researchers. Their embodied experiences, sonic contributions, emotional responses, and reflections form the primary research material. The facilitators function less as presenters and more as research orchestrators, guiding the process while allowing participant responses to shape its unfolding. Research Procedure: Three Phases Phase 1 — Attuning to Sonic Environments Participants engage in a guided listening practice that foregrounds bodily sensation, environmental sound, and shifting attention. This phase explores how relational listening alters participants’ perception of space, presence, and sonic agency. Phase 2 — Sound Memory Activation Participants are invited to recall personally meaningful sound memories. Instead of narrating these memories verbally, they express them through sound, voice, rhythm, or gesture. This allows us to examine how memory operates as an embodied, multisensory, and relational form of knowledge. Phase 3 — Co-Composing with the Environment Participants collaboratively create a sonic composition with each other and the acoustic environment. Voices, objects, room acoustics, and ambient noise are treated as active contributors. This phase investigates how creative agency becomes distributed across human and more-than-human actors. While the session is conceived as an extended practice-based research encounter, its three phases can be condensed into a shorter conference format without losing their experiential or methodological integrity. Data and Documentation Research material consists of audio traces of the collective soundscape, facilitator field notes, participant reflections (optional verbal or written), and embodied observations of group dynamics, affect, and interaction. Analysis is conducted reflexively, attending to emergent patterns in participation, relational shifts, sonic structures, and affective responses. Ethics Participation is voluntary. Silence, withdrawal, and passive observation are recognized as valid forms of engagement. The session prioritizes care, consent, and respect for vulnerability, while avoiding the extractive use of participants' experiences.

This session positions a conference presentation as a site of ongoing research, extending an existing ecosocial music education framework into a new empirical context. Rather than presenting finalized results, it treats the event itself as a moment of data generation, theoretical testing, and methodological experimentation in an international setting. The contribution demonstrates how ecosocial music education theory can be examined through live, practice-based inquiry. By inviting participants into attunement, sound memory work, and co-composition, the session explores how the model functions beyond its original educational settings and how it resonates with an international research community. Methodologically, the project expands understandings of what counts as empirical research in arts education by treating embodied sensation, sonic interaction, memory, and relational dynamics as legitimate sources of knowledge. It offers a model for how conferences can serve not only as dissemination platforms but also as temporary research laboratories. The session also generates insights into how an international group of researchers responds to ecosocial pedagogical practices, how collective sonic creation shapes relational awareness, and how more-than-human agencies participate in knowledge production. These insights will inform future iterations of our ecosocial model and contribute to broader discussions on practice-based research in arts education. Overall, the contribution frames ecosocial music education as a living, evolving research program rather than a fixed theory. It demonstrates how theoretical models can be tested, refined, and transformed through participatory, embodied, and sound-based inquiry.

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