Leadership Challenges in Music Education

This is an article about leadership in general, classroom leadership and leadership challenges in music education. The method that we have used is literature studies. One classical question is if leadership comes naturally or if it can be learned? Many authors mean that it is both. Lahdenpäre (2008) says that leadership is a social construction. It is not a quality in a person but how we can relate to other people. We have used ”The Leadership Diamond” by Koestenbaum (1991) that consists of four levels (professional, social, psychological and philosophical) and on every level there are four strategies (vision, reality, ethics and courage). One of the great issues in leadership is the balance between chaos and order, structure and creativity, planning and spontaneity. Denhardt & Denhardt (2008) compare being a leader with dancers and musicians and emphasize the importance of having theoretical knowledge connected with practise and the ability of improvisation. Another important aspect is what we call ”time to muse”, that is the time to reflect. A study from 1994 showed that teachers focus on the content but less on the students´ perspectives in the learning process. We have compared our model of the three feet that every school subject stands on (theoretical, skills and artistic) with necessary qualities in classroom leadership and we wish that the artistic feet will have more attention in the future