Abstract
This article investigates how music students’ work is institutionally coordinated within a higher school of music in Canada and how this shapes student health and wellbeing. This study reveals a problematic in students’ everyday experiences as the work required to succeed extends beyond what is formally recognized and made visible through institutional structures. Using Institutional Ethnography as the method of inquiry, we begin from the standpoint of music students, exploring the local and extra-local relations that coordinate what and how they do their work. Through interviews with students, faculty, and administrators, we trace students’ negotiation of contradictory discourses of ‘care’ and ‘grindset,’ as well as an institutional crediting system that renders invisible forms of work crucial to student success. We then trace students’ work of receiving and negotiating performance feedback through their engagement with institutional texts, revealing a disjuncture between the work students do and how it is made visible institutionally. We began this study from an interest in understanding how music institutions contribute to the prevalence of performance-related health issues among music students. We conclude by considering how students’ work might be ‘reorganized’ to make visible the work they do and the conditions under which they do it.
Recommended Citation
Zavitz, Kyle; Araújo, Liliana; and Guptill, Christine
(2026)
"Examining The Organization of Student Work and Wellbeing in Higher Music Education,"
Journal of Institutional Ethnography: Vol. 1:
Iss.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/journalofinstitutionalethnography/vol1/iss1/3
Included in
Other Sociology Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, Theory, Knowledge and Science Commons