Veronica Ski-Berg: Pressures to Change. Institutional Politics in Higher Music Education

Field of study: Music Education

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?

Title: Pressures to Change. Institutional Politics in Higher Music Education.

The dissertation includes three articles and a précis, and it is written in English.

'The dissertation is available in NMH's digital archive.