Abstract
Summary
Title: Towards Institutional Accountability: An Institutional Ethnography of Australian Post-Secondary Music Students' Work and Health
Authors and affiliations: Mona Oikarinen, PhD Candidate, University of Western Australia, Suzanne Wijsman, Associate Professor, University of Western Australia (suzanne.wijsman@uwa.edu.au) Christine Guptill, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa (cguptill@uottawa.ca)
Background: International research has found that over 50% of music students experience musculoskeletal problems and mental health issues (Cruder et al., 2020; Payne et al., 2020). For decades, researchers have made calls for 'cultural change' at schools of music to address these pervasive issues (Chesky et al, 2006). Presently, music students' health issues have mainly been considered at the individual level, resulting from a lack of health awareness (Rickert et al., 2015) and to be addressed by improving students' health behaviours (Ginsborg et al., 2009).
Aim: To map the activities of individuals at different social locations (e.g. administrators, students) to understand how these come together to form work processes that shape the lives of individuals in these contexts.
Methods:This presentation is grounded in data gathered for an Institutional Ethnography project at one Australian university. Data collection involved interviews, focus groups, and observations, and an examination of texts (e.g. sheet music, university social media pages), with the aim of understanding how music students' health relates to the organisation of their daily activities at school and beyond.
Results: Analysis to date has shed light on how the activities of music students, instructors, and administrators come together to form work processes that shape the lives of students at this site. Preliminary findings highlight the disjuncture between the school's goal of offering extensive performance opportunities, and students' day-to-day work managing limited time for practice, self-care, employment, and performance commitments.
Conclusion: The goal of this project was to reveal specific empirically-grounded insights into how music education is lived by students and how this may shape their health. This study adds a much needed perspective to the field of musicians' health that is dominated by discourses of personal responsibility. It may also inform changes to music education more conducive to setting students up for musical longevity.