Music Teachers’ and Administrators’ Perspectives on Entrepreneurship in Norwegian Higher Music Education: An Exploratory Pilot Study

Abstract

Arts entrepreneurship education has been increasingly offered in Nor- wegian Higher Music Education (HME) since 2011 (Watne & Nymoen, 2017). I argue that a teacher’s perspective and definition of entrepreneurship influences how they teach the subject. Using a qualitative content analysis approach (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008; Mayring, 2000), this article explores a small (n=37) pilot survey of administrators and teachers from four institutes of HME in Norway. In addition to mapping respondents’ definitions of entrepreneurship to the most influential defini- tions of entrepreneurship from the literature, I explore their perceptions of the need for entrepreneurship in HME and their prescriptive changes for entrepreneurship education’s integration into the curriculum. Respondents most commonly defined entrepreneurship in the “opportunity creation, recognition, and exploitation” sense, with definitions related to “self-employment” and “innovation” being the second and third most common response, respectively. 95% of respondents perceive a need for entrepreneurship education in HME. Prescribing curricular changes, 57% of respondents see a need for a more market oriented and entrepreneurial focus in the current curriculum to “some extent”, 19% to a “large extent”, 16% to “a little extent”, and 8% to a “very little extent.” Rationale for such changes is further analyzed using Bridgstock’s (2013) typology of arts entrepreneurship pedagogical approaches. I conclude by guiding educators and readers to existing knowledge and tools in the literature as they relate to each arts entrepreneurship pedagogical approach – an organization of knowledge that is important given the field’s diversity of perspec- tives and the power an educator has in the subject’s implementation.