Experts, entrepreneurs and competence nomads: the skills paradox in higher music education

Karin Johansson

36 citations0/0 files storedMusic Education Research

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Diverse Music Education Insights Innovative Education and Learning Practices Music Education and Analysis

Abstract

In this study, one-to-one tuition in higher music education (HME) was theorised as a culturally and historically grounded activity system consisting of relationships between musicians, instruments, music-making traditions and audiences. The ‘skills paradox’, as seen in the inherent conflict between musicians' need for long-term artistic training and society's demands for flexible knowledge producers and artistic entrepreneurs, forms a background to the study. With the aim of exploring how qualified experts with extensive experience verbalise the processes of transmitting musical craftsmanship and expressivity, the study was organised as a series of semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 12 professional musicians teaching in HME. The study also formed part of an institutional developmental project spanning one academic year. Results point to the challenges in musicians' positions as being both carriers of tradition and innovative artists, and describe one-to-one teaching as a dynamic activity, where the sum of personal experiences often remains on an individual level and is seen as the property of a genial personality rather than as knowledge attainable for the collective of musicians/music teachers. It is suggested that the development of practice is dependent on an interaction between personal, educational and institutional levels and on an opening up of new zones of proximal development in which all agents in HME need to participate. By linking the individual and collective levels of knowledge, all aspects of the conservatoire tradition may be seen as potentials for development and expansion through the use of reflection and collaborative methods.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.

References

1997The Tacit Dimension 2012Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research 2003Social Research Methods 2002The individualized society 2005A Companion to qualitative research 2001Reflexive methodology - new vistas for qualitative research 1982Problems of the Development of the Mind 2002How Popular Musicians Learn: A Way Ahead for Music Education

Cited by

2018With their feet on the ground: a quantitative study of music students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship education 2013Undergraduate students' ownership of musical learning: obstacles and options in one-to-one teaching 2020Processes of academisation in higher music education: the case of Sweden 2018Kulturskolen og kulturskolelæreryrket - fenomener i endring 2024How workers meet new expertise needs throughout their careers: An integrative review revealing a dynamic process model of flexpertise 2017Music instrument teachers in higher education: an investigation of the key influences on how they teach in the studio

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.