Both the Resonaari music school and the Floora project can help to redefine the purpose of the whole music education system. Although this redefinition may not necessarily have direct consequences for the pedagogies or even repertoires that teachers use in music schools, the recognized social responsibility of music education increases the understanding of their societal role and helps us to consider inclusion as one important criterion for increasing the quality of the system. In this way, it might also suggest new means of judging the value of public regulation.
In theoretical terms, both Floora and Resonaari can be seen as cases of interpenetration of one system with another, in this case the music therapy and social sector systems, leading to enhanced readiness of both systems not only to adapt to changes in their shared environment (Münch 2001;
Luhmann 1995), but also to respond to the new ethical imperative pertaining to publicly funded systems. Here, “interpenetration” refers to the sharing of interests that channel the actions of individuals who operate within social systems (Parsons 1971; Münch 2001). Thus, our focus has been on how individual actions can transform social systems by changing their mutual relationships. It can be argued that such changes are first of all constitutive of a qualitative difference in the operation of the systems. In other words, through interpenetration social systems can restructure themselves and redefine their purposes in coordination with one another so that they are better able to adapt to their shared environment. A more familiar term for such qualitative change could be learning: We can say that both institutional (Senge 2006) and professional learning (Sachs 2003, p. 29) takes place when systems adapt to each other’s operations in a changing environment.
Both Floora and Resonaari can also be understood as institutional
innovations (Väkevä, Westerlund & Ilmola-Sheppard 2017) that reflect and exemplify the institutional learning that is manifest in the qualitative changes of the social systems. Such changes can only be understood against the changes in the systems' environment, which consists both of other social systems and of the whole society (Luhmann 1995). Thus, as Finnish society enters into the late modern phase, characterized by the rapid fragmentation and “liquidation” of modern institutional structures (Bauman 2000), music schools find themselves in need of institutional and professional learning, as they need to be able to identify areas that overlap with other social systems that have adapted more effectively to social change. Understood as zones
HOW MUSIC SCHOOLS JUSTIFY THEMSELVES / WESTERLUND / VÄKEVÄ / ILMOLA-SHEPPARD
of interpenetration (Münch 2010), such areas can be best detected by individuals and groups able to work between the institutional lines towards institutional learning (see also Väkevä 2015).
Based on the above-mentioned examples and other emerging innovations in the Finnish music school system, there is a need to reconsider the
professional ethos that has historically driven not only music school systems but practices of music pedagogy in general, justifying music education in terms of maintaining the expert tradition. Even if sustaining the expert tradition is important, as we believe, the social practices that fuel this process need to be constantly scrutinized against the emerging needs of a late modern society. This is where social innovations are vital. Our examples have illustrated how inter-professional work, which is increasingly acknowledged as critical to the health, social care, and welfare of future generations (Byrne 2004), can also be a way to enhance inclusion in music education beyond what, for instance, music schools could do solely based on their musical expertise and related subject-specific responsibilities.
Importantly, the “co-configuration work” (Edwards et al. 2009, p. 16) between disciplines still sustains the importance of individual expertise by seeing
“practitioners as parts of local systems of distributed expertise” (p. 10).
Contrary to the commonly held beliefs and fear, individual expertise can become even more rather than less important in inter-professional work (Edwards et al. 2009). Fuzzy, transdisciplinary professional collaboration may result in a blurred but still individualized professional identity rather than a sharpened, bounded professional one (Emprechtinger & Voll 2017, p. 144), typical for modernist disciplinary silos.
Hence, in line with Sachs (2003) and other professionalism researchers (e.g. Whitty 2008; Barnett 2008; Sugrue & Dyrdal Solbrekke 2011; Cribb
& Gewirtz 2015), we suggest that, by expanding professionalism in music education through inter-professional collaboration, it is possible to break the institutional silos that are too “self-serving and inward-looking” to adapt to societal change (Sachs 2003, p. 11). Expanding professionalism necessarily means reaching beyond the “value-free, technically defined [and] authoritatively prescribed competences” (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2015, p. 73).
We now need to ask: What can we contribute towards encouraging our own institutions to take responsibility for societal change (Stevenson 2011)?
Or, as Giddens suggests, how can we earn our rights through our actions towards being responsible (Giddens 1998, p. 65)? These are ethical questions that concern who we are and who we want to be as music education
professionals in today’s society (Westerlund 2017).
Conclusion
In this article, we have aimed to illustrate that proactive participation in societal change is neither a question of which musical genres should be taught in music schools, nor does it necessarily question maintaining esthetic standards. These questions were central in attempts to increase cultural democracy; however, they are insufficient to provide answers to the present situation in Europe. What we have today are much larger questions of how to define our professional interests and values, and how to justify our work as responsible human beings. We need to reconstruct our professional perspectives in music education to develop an enhanced sense of
responsibility for transforming societies, so that music teachers will be better prepared to justify their profession in the twenty-first century.
Acknowledgments
This publication is part of the ArtsEqual project funded by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council in its Equality in Society program (project no. 293199).
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Background
Publicly funded music schools across Europe cite a number of both similar and different purposes for their activities. As cultural institutions, music schools “help shape life” in their communities, and they are “centers of artistic-musical education” (Pröll & Sobotka 2016, p. 7). In Belgium, the aim of education in music schools is to promote “self-fulfillment facilitated by music” and “the enrichment of the individual and of society as a whole”
(Riediger, Eicker & Koops 2010, p. 11). In Bulgaria, music schools “are closely connected with the cultural life in the country” and student performances at concerts and competitions are expected to “maintain the international prestige of the Bulgarian educational system”2 (Demerdzhiev 2014, p. 179).