Is the music student merely a reflection of higher music education, or does higher music education in fact reflect its students? In recent decades, scholars have encouraged institutional renewal to take place in higher music education, often with a firm emphasis on the importance of enabling student creativity. The implementation of genre independent music performance study programmes is one example of how individualised practices are emerging to support the creative development of students. In tandem with societal changes (such as increasing globalisation and digitalisation), it is argued that higher music education must adapt if today’s graduates are to be prepared for their professional careers in a dynamic labour market. Yet institutional change sometimes conflicts with the institutionalised hierarchies embedded in higher music education, typically illustrated in research where tension points between discourses and various subgroups of institutional members emerge. How, then, are music students and professors affected by this portrayed friction during processes of institutional change? Further, if the perceived conflicts are to be reconciled through institutional work, what power mechanisms dominate this complex landscape?
This PhD project investigates how underlying mechanisms of power (e.g. discourses, forms of institutional power and pressures) are connected to institutional change in higher music education. The study was designed to explore how members of higher music education experience processes of change and to shed light on the power mechanisms that mediate nstitutional change. Since its initiation in 2018 and throughout the project period, the doctoral thesis has evolved organically. In 2019, Ski-Berg conducted a comparative case study of the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Utrechts Conservatorium, obtaining institutional documents and conducting qualitative interviews with twenty-four music performance students and professors from classical and genre independent study programmes. The interviews were transcribed, anonymised and then coded in NVivo. The interview guide included questions about three recent cultural shifts targeted by the study to illustrate institutional change: 1) the shift toward student-centredness; 2) the endorsement of entrepreneurship; and 3) the call for innovation. In 2020, the empirical data was examined using Foucauldian discourse theory, and from 2021 to 2022, it was analysed with theoretical frameworks from organisational institutionalism.
The study resulted in three articles: article one explored how the overarching shift towards student-centredness is experienced in higher music education. The article identified four discourses on student-centredness (i.e. employability, artistry, craftsmanship, and holism) through a discourse-theoretical reading of the interview transcripts. The discussion centred on how the subject positions of students and professors in higher music education appear to be in flux. Article two built on the forms of institutional power identified in the informant interviews in an attempt to discuss the call for innovation in higher music education. The article found that innovative practices (e.g. genre independent programmes) have caused some institutional resistance yet also contributed to the institutional renewal that many scholars are advocating. Article three examined how various institutional pressures from the organisational field of higher music education are connected to institutional change. Central to the discussion was how and why institutional changes in higher music education could be better understood by employing organisational institutionalism, a theory offering a critical lens that few have employed in research on higher music education.
Implications from the three resulting articles were synthesised during the final stages of the research project. This synthesis is organised into three articles in the thesis: 1) the pitfalls of decentring authorities; 2) experiences with institutional change; and 3) institutional power and leadership. For instance, it was found that there is normative pressure to change higher music education (that is, the norms of the field are changing and should be re-evaluated). Moreover, there appears to be a shared quest for institutional legitimacy among higher music education institutions (or organisations, if adhering to terms from instutional theory). It was also found that leadership may ‘accessorise’ with institutional change, as members’ experiences at times differed from the declared strategic plans for institutional change (e.g. career courses were considered to be outdated, yet student employability was given priority in the strategies). Regardless of their affiliation (classical or genre independent), the informants wanted to balance innovation with tradition. Considering these (and similar) findings, the thesis discusses how the rise of student creativity is connected to power mechanisms that both inhibit and drive institutional change.
A balancing act between innovation and tradition–new and old, renewal and continuity–also echoes in the theoretical perspectives chosen for this thesis. Indeed, the power mechanisms that mediate institutional change rest upon a push/pull relationship between institutional control (e.g. disciplinary practices such as assessment criteria) and members’ initiatives for change (e.g. new projects and teaching methods). It is in this interplay that institutional politics unfold. Students and professors are thereby actors who mediate processes of institutional change (e.g. initiatives and resistance, power relationships and discourses) in the face of other forces for or against change (e.g. disciplinary practices, institutional pressures from the field). By combining the empirical data and the theoretical perspectives, Ski-Berg posits that the rise of student creativity is connected to the changing power dynamics within higher music education and to overarching societal developments and pressures for institutional renewal. The notion that higher music education is constituted by its inherent politics permeates the final chapters, leading to a conclusion that offers critical insight into how and why institutional change is unfolding in higher music education, and why it is vital for interested parties to act critically.