Reflective Practice at the Heart of Higher Music Education

The main challenge of today’s musicians and music educators trained in our conservatoires and music academies is navigating in a rapidly changing cultural landscape. In short, these changes are helping to shape a very different workplace for musicians and music educators. Flexible portfolio careers are held by musicians and music educators, which require finely tuned transferable skills and a more entrepreneurial attitude towards work. Increasingly musicians and music educators work collaboratively with professionals in other fields – in cross-arts, cross-cultural and cross-sector contexts. Moreover, they now have to perform different roles as they are expected to respond creatively to new cultural and educational contexts. They need to be entrepreneurs, innovators, connectors, partners and, most of all, reflective practitioners