SONIC EQUITY

Higher education institutions potentially act as sites of gender-based inequity and discrimination against women. This chapter draws on several discrepancies between existing literature on feminist theories in music education and their application in higher music education. Drawing on comprehensive literature, it investigates how scholars engage with these theories and how they were deployed within institutional contexts. Through a critical feminist perspective and analytical review, I argue the ways that these inequities are deeply embedded in hierarchical structures, and feminist theories have yet to significantly influence practices in higher music education. Missing are cohesive and preventive strategies to address structural gender-based inequities. Moreover, women’s lived experiences within the discipline remain insufficiently explored. While the literature is extensively dominated by debates over understanding factors and possibilities that have perpetuated gender-based inequity, I argue that while critiquing the political power structures and hierarchies through radical feminist theories is essential, the profession should galvanize its forces to narratively examine women’s lived experiences within higher music education contexts. Since feminist theories can best be judged by the impact they make on the equitable practice of music education, the profession might be able to align more deeply with feminist theories. Thus, despite scholars’ theorizing, given that gender-based inequities persist in music education higher education, the scope of feminist theorizing has fallen short.

This study explores how higher music education institutions position themselves in relation to wider social and political forces and the expanding professional responsibilities of musicians in increasingly complex Nordic societies, which in this study includes Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. By asking how the political—including various local and global social-ecological values, relations and power structures—is manifested in contemporary higher music performance study programs, the study aims to identify the challenges and possibilities of institutional change within higher music education in the Nordic context. Theoretically, we engage with Gert Biesta’s understanding of public pedagogy as an intrinsic part of educational endeavors that engage with the political and societal, thus promoting and serving as a catalyst for transformative change within higher music education. The data consists of five focus group interviews ( n = 13) and a questionnaire ( n = 29) addressed to the teachers and leaders of music performance programs in four higher music education institutions. We identified five emerging change identifications in the Nordic higher music institutions: (a) changing teacher roles, (b) students as change agents, (c) artists and/as citizens, (d) aesthetic and epistemic paradigm shifts, (5) negotiating institutional boundaries. The findings suggest that although the concept of public pedagogy is not yet fully established within these institutions, all three forms, (a) pedagogy for the public, (b) pedagogy of the public, and (c) pedagogy of publicness, are emerging. However, resistance to change could hinder higher music education from staying relevant amid current societal challenges and turbulence. By integrating public pedagogy into the daily practices and discourse of higher music education, both the necessary adaptation to political upheaval and the pedagogical and artistic identities of teachers and students could be strengthened.

This paper aims to explore transcendence as another fundamental human need within the framework of Max-Neef's Theory of Human Scale Development (THSD). While Max-Neef and other Latin American researchers, such as Carlos Mallman, have discussed various aspects of human needs, the explicit inclusion of transcendence as a fundamental human need in the framework HSD remains unresolved. However, Max-Neef's work provides foundations for reflecting on and potentially integrating transcendence into his original matrix of fundamental human needs. Given the current socioecological crises and global disasters such as wars, migrations and pandemic, there is an urgent necessity to reconsider our relationship with the planet and all forms of life on it. Transcendence, whether understood as transcending the ego or reconnecting with nature and life in its deepest sense, it is increasingly recognized both within and outside academia as a crucial dimension of the human experience. To support the argument for transcendence as a human need, this paper draws on insights coming from THSD, cognitive science, indigenous cosmologies, spirituality, and (eco)philosophy. Methodologically, the study employs a conceptual analysis with a hermeneutic approach to elucidate the nuanced understanding of transcendence in order to consider it as a universal human need.

Faculty research at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague focuses on a wide range of topics relevant to the artistic practice of its teaching staff, to the artistic develop- ment of its students and to the world of musical practice at large. Areas covered include informed performance practice, creative (artistic) research, instrument building, educational research, and music theory. One strand within the faculty research programme is directed towards the under- standing and the enhancement of the student-teacher relationship in higher music education. Two investigations within that strand – ‘Making Music: Being Heard and Seen’ by Paul Deneer, and ‘The Teacher-Student Relationship in One-to-One Teaching’ by Gerda van Zelm – were performed in close collaboration. This publica- tion brings together the outcomes of both research projects, including an appendix ‘Reciprocity: The Two Studies Combined’, which offers conclusions and recommen- dations to further enhance the student-teacher relationship in conservatoires. Help! A Talent! documents and communicates knowledge, understanding and practical recommendations, based on accumulated experiences, theoretical insights and data collection. Its empirical base is the practice of teaching and learning at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. The relevance of the findings, however, reaches beyond the confines of this institute. Other conservatoires and music departments might benefit from the insights and suggestions offered. Research into the student- teacher relationship in higher music education is gaining more and more attention lately. This publication is both a contribution to this emerging research field and an invitation to further research. Help! A Talent! is part of Royal Conservatoire Publications. With this series the Royal Conservatoire aspires to contribute insights and experiences, embedded in its higher music education culture and embodied in the professionals who study and work here. With the publication of Help! A Talent! we support the dissemination of knowledge and understanding, but we also show our commitment to research and our readiness to be in front of the development. In doing so the Conservatoire ma- nifests awareness that today’s higher music education is in constant need to refine and attune its programme to an ever-changing world.

At Brandon University, since jazz is an important part of Manitoba’s public school curriculum and music education is a leading programme at the School of Music, a new position in jazz music education was introduced in 2001. By collating and analysing data from case studies – cyclical reviews of undergraduate and graduate music programs in Canada – this chapter describes the practice of institutional priority setting. It discusses the outcomes of cyclical review processes and assesses the roles leaders play in realising review recommendations. Institutional success is predicated on visionary leadership that provides the framework and infrastructure to address the evolving challenges of student recruitment, curricular reform, and program relevance. Curriculum and all that goes with it must remain in a state of constant development, informed by student, industry input. It is this challenge, to maintain curricular relevance in light of evolving technologies, fluid student expectations and changing industry requirements, that higher music education first and foremost must address.

I begin by claiming that the widespread institution of meaningful work is a proper moral and political project, which is attentive to contemporary concerns for the nature and organisation of work.1 My reasons for making meaningful work for all a political project is grounded in a normative argument that being able to experience one’s life as meaningful is a fundamental human need, which, under present economic arrangements, is extremely difficult for most people to satisfy if their work lacks the structure for meaningfulness. I shall argue that meaningful work is a fundamental human need because it satisfies our inescapable interests in being able to experience the constitutive values of autonomy, freedom, and dignity. By requiring social organisation to ensure that all work is structured for meaningfulness, I distinguish my approach from liberal political theorists, for whom meaningful work, whilst an important ideal, is an individual preference which may or may not be expressed in any particular conception of the good life, and thus cannot be the legitimate target of state intervention without coming into conflict with the principle of liberal neutrality. Instead, I propose that meaningful work is a fundamental human need within a liberal perfectionist framework (cf. Roessler, 2012).

This article is based on the four-year project Conservatory Cultures, and was written by all five researchers in the project, based in four different European countries. The aim of the article is to review higher music education (HME) institutions’ actions in handling power and taking responsibility regarding issues of bullying and harassment in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary. All of the institutions discussed in the article had procedures and organisational bodies for handling such cases. The article presents and analyses four cases with experiences of incidents related to bullying and harassment and macro structures aimed at preventing such issues. The research questions asked are: What are the challenges for HME in becoming a genuinely supportive and safe environment? And how can these challenges be met? The article is based on a collaborative feminist method where the authors investigated their own experiences. Previous studies of bullying and harassment in music education, and Ahmed’s (2021) work on complaint, are the theoretical starting points. It concludes with providing recommendations to HME institutions on how to develop their work in handling bullying and harassment.

The Politics of Diversity in Music Education attends to the political structures and processes that frame and produce understandings of diversity in and through music education. Recent surges in nationalist, fundamentalist, protectionist, and separatist tendencies highlight the imperative for music education to extend beyond nominal policy agendas to critically consider the ways in which understandings about society are upheld or unsettled and the ways in which knowledge about diversity is produced. This chapter provides an overview of the scholarly foundations that this book builds upon before introducing the four sections of the book and contributing chapters. The first section of the book focuses on the politics of inquiry in music education research. The second section attends to the paradoxes and challenges that arise as music teachers negotiate cultural identity and tradition within the political frames and ideals of the nation state. The third section considers diversities that are often overlooked or silenced, and the final section turns to matters of leadership in higher music education as an inherently political and ethical undertaking. Together, chapters work towards a more critical, complex, and nuanced understanding of the ways in which the politics of diversity shape our ideals of what music education is, and what it is for.

Information technologies are played the important role and are effect our concepts and teaching methods in music education from MIDI, computer music, multimedia music to computers and network-based teaching. During the music education in college, the configuration and application of multimedia music learning system in higher music education, as the modernization of teaching methods, are to achieve the best solutions. This paper introduced the advantages of music appreciation class based on multimedia assisted teaching in college and introduced some hardware and software configuration of the teaching system and teaching in music, writing, research and management application. In the end, several issues were suggested on music appreciation class based on multimedia-assisted teaching.

This article examines how classical music students understand early twentieth-century recordings in higher music education. A qualitative research method was chosen to investigate the beliefs and self-reported practices of 16 students enrolled in a European conservatoire, whose attitudes were considered through the administration of a semi-structured questionnaire and an interview. Their responses identified seven main themes: (1) beliefs, (2) sources, (3) self-reported practices, (4) repertoires/performers, (5) educational implications, (6) limits and (7) benefits.Results show how much students value early twentieth-century recordings – especially when it comes to analysing the performance practices of the past and developing new interpretations – and how articulate their responses can be with regard to specific stylistic and technical issues. However, possibly due to informal learning strategies and the lack of curricular teaching activities focusing on listening to and analysing recorded interpretations, some responses highlighted a misrepresentation of our recent musical past and the need for a more structured curricular activity. This last should benefit from a vast body of scholarly literature whose relevance is still underestimated among music practitioners.

La motivación del presente estudio nace de nuestra preocupación docente ante el estado actual de la relación entre el sistema de acceso a Enseñanzas Superiores de Música en nuestro país y su fase antecesora; las Enseñanzas Profesionales de Música. Este estudio aborda la falta de correspondencia curricular y competencial existente entre dichas enseñanzas, agravado además por la transferencia competencial autonómica de la legislación vigente en España, la cual genera mayor desigualdad geográfica. La realidad de un espacio superior artístico que oferta diferentes líneas de estudios en Grado (interpretación, pedagogía, jazz, música antigua, dirección, sonología, etc.) está siendo enfocada previamente mediante una línea única –interpretación- en las enseñanzas profesionales, que no necesariamente capacitan ni para las competencias requeridas en el acceso ni en el currículum. Como objetivo principal planteamos una diversificación en los itinerarios mediante el uso de metodologías y determinación competencial específica respetando el currículum actual de las enseñanzas profesionales.

Current research has focused on gender as a conditioning factor in students’ study choices, highlighting the existence of gender stereotypes associated with these choice. The general objective of this article is to analyse if there are differences based on sex in the choice of musical instruments in music conservatories. The methodology used is quantitative. We have analysed the data on enrolment in the different instrumental specialities of two public music conservatories in Seville (Spain) at the three levels of music education: Basic, Professional and Higher Music Education. This article contrasts if there are instrumental specialities that are mostly chosen by one or the other sex, and to check if this sexual segregation has been produced by chance or can be explained by other causes. This investigation was carried out for a total of 4120 students from two different conservatories. The main conclusions of the study were the existence of feminized and masculinized instrumental families, and the relationship between the variables “students’ sex” and “instrumental families and musical specialities” was significant with a medium effect size. This research confirms that men and women choose the instruments that have traditionally been associated with their male or female roles respectively.

Moving from solo to ensemble performance is one of the significant developmental steps during higher music education. This article investigates how university music students, primarily trained as solo performers, acquire collaboration skills in a rehearsal setting. Based on nine central contributions, a simulated rehearsal of a student ensemble was created to focus on bodily coordination, feedback, leadership, flow, and self-efficacy. Five dimensions became visible during simulation: physical coordination, critical peer feedback, distributed leadership, flow states, and anxiety reduction. These dimensions are essential for turning isolated musicians into active collaborators. The results have implications for how music educators should embed training in bodily attunement, shared responsibility, and emotional regulation explicit in ensemble pedagogy. The findings indicate that ensemble learning is a technical, social, and psychological learning process, complex and corresponds to starting intensity in professional collaborative performance.

We have seen drastic changes in the music profession during the last 20 years, and consequently an increase of new professional opportunities, roles and identities. We can see elements of a collective identity in classically trained musicians who from childhood have been introduced to centuries old, institutionalized traditions around the performers’ role and the work-concept. Respect for the composer and his work can lead to a fear of failure and a perfectionist value system that permeates the classical music. We have to question whether music education has become a ready-made prototype of certain trajectories, with a predictable outcome represented by more or less generic types of musicians who interchangeably are able play the same, limited canonized repertoire, in more or less the same way. Where is the resistance and obstacles, the detours and the unique and fearless individual choices? It is a paradox that within the traditional master-student model, the student is told how to think, play and relate to established truths, while a sustainable musical career is based upon questioning the very same things. A fundamental principle of an independent musical career is to develop a capacity for critical reflection and a healthy opposition towards uncontested truths. However, the unison demands for modernization of institutions and their role cannot be solved with a quick fix, we must look at who we are and who we have been to look at who we can become. Central here is the question of how the music students perceive their own identity and role. To make the leap from a traditional instrumentalist role to an artist /curator role requires commitment in an entirely different way. In this article, I will examine question of identity - how identity may be constituted through musical and educational experiences. The article will discuss why identity work is a key area in the development of a sustainable music career and it will investigate how we can approach this and suggest some possible ways in this work. We shall see how identity work can be about unfolding possible future selves (Marcus & Nurius, 1986), develop and evolve one’s own personal journey and narrative. Central is how identity develops linguistically by seeing other possibilities: "identity is formed out of the discourses - in the broadest sense - that are available to us ..." (Ruud, 2013). The question is: How can higher music education (HME) facilitate students in their identity work in the process of constructing their professional identities? I draw on my own experience as a classically educated musician in the discussion.

This article reports on the self-regulated learning strategies of two advanced students in jazz/improvised music education when learning pre-played solos over well-known jazz tunes. The students were enrolled in a well-established performance degree programme in a music conservatoire, and videotaped their own individual practice sessions. In addition, stimulus-recall interviews were conducted. The findings indicated that the students used a range of cognitive strategies rather than only one particular type. They selected strategies designed to attain their goals, such as to select relevant problem areas in the pre-played solo, to join sections of the pre-played solo together to form a whole, and to facilitate memorising by developing auditory images of the solo and by relating the music to their existing knowledge. The students also made use of metacognitive strategies during the recorded practice sessions. They engaged in strategic planning, and mainly monitored and self-evaluated their strategic efforts and their performances of the solo during practice. However, the students did not always adapt their strategic activities based on their self-evaluations during practice. Further, the students’ use of learning strategies found during the first learning period appears to resemble the self-regulated learning of advanced classical students. In terms of education, developing and increasing students’ skills in instrumental practice is an important aim within higher music education, and approaching individual practice through the lens of self-regulated learning emphasises that students learn through experience and self-reflection.