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This book addresses the need to rethink the concept and enactment of professionalism in music, and how such concepts underpin professional higher music education. There is an urgent imperative to enable the potential of professional musicians in our contemporary societies to be more fully realised, recognising both intense challenges that are currently threatening some traditional music practices, and significant scope for new practices to be imagined in response to deep veins of societal need. Professionalism encompasses the conduct, aims, values, responsibilities and ongoing development of a practising professional in the field. Professional higher music education engages both with providing future professionals with relevant education in particular craft skills, and with nurturing their visions for their work as artists in future societies. The major focus of the book is on performance traditions that have dominated professional higher education, notably western classical music.

Professor Helena Gaunt is Principal at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Helena is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Research interests include one-to-one instrumental/vocal tuition in music, ensemble practices and collaborative learning in the performing arts, and creative entrepreneurship. Helena directs the international Refl ective Conservatoire Conference hosted triennially at the Guildhall, and is the Chair of the Innovative Conservatoire (ICON), an international partnership dedicated to curriculum and leadership development in specialist music education. She is also co-editor of Music Performance Research and a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Music Education. Alongside research, she is an oboist, was a member of the Britten Sinfonia for many years, and is a Trustee of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Heidi Westerlund is Professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, where she is responsible for the music education doctoral studies. Her research interests include music teacher education, collaborative learning, cultural diversity and democracy in music education, and philosophy of music education. She is the Editor-in-chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education and has served in the editorial and reviewer boards in numerous international journals. She is the co-editor of Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education (Ashgate, 2013), Music, Education, and Religion: Intersections and Entanglements (Indiana University Press, 2019), and Visions for Intercultural Music Teacher Education (Springer, 2019). She is currently leading two research projects funded by the Academy of Finland that have engaged altogether over 100 researchers: ArtsEqual - The Arts as Public Service: Strategic Steps towards Equality (2015-2021) and Global Visions through Mobilizing Networks: Co-developing Intercultural Music Teacher Education in Finland, Israel and Nepal (2015-2020).

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