This book challenges the dominant expertise professionalism rationale for music education by responding to the call to develop 'ecological awareness' at a time when all professions have a moral obligation to place sustainable and interdependent life at the center. The book aims to expand music education's professional horizons to acknowledge the responsibility of the music field to contribute to the demands of complex questions of sustainability and identify the ways in which sustainable music education may be strengthened through an activist relational ecological stance. It suggests a radical moral turn by asking: What if music education is recognised as part of the problem of sustaining unsustainability? and What if music teacher education was developed in and through dialogue with a futures perspective? These questions are interrogated through a critical analysis of the historical positioning of music in education and an interdisciplinary application of theories of ecology and professionalism.

Autorentext

Margaret S. Barrett is Professor and Head of the Sir Zelman Cohen School of Music and Performance at Monash University. She has held national and international leadership positions in music education including ISME President (2012 - 2014), Chair of the World Alliance for Arts Education (2013 - 2015), and Chair of the Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education (2009 - 2011). Her research funded by the Australian Research Council explores music early learning and development, artistic citizenship, creative health, pedagogies of creativity, expertise, and creative collaboration, and, musician and teacher professional learning. Recent awards include a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship (2018), a Beaufort Visiting Professorship at St Johns' College, Cambridge (2019), and a Foundation des Sciences de L'Homme Fellowship (2019), and the Albi Rosenthal Fellowship in Musicology at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (2023). Recent publications include the Oxford Handbook of Early Learningand Development in Music (2023). Heidi Westerlund is Professor at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include higher arts education, music teacher education, collaborative learning, cultural diversity and democracy in music education. She has published widely in international journals and books and is the Editor-in-chief of the Finnish Journal of Music Education. She has led significant research projects involving 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). She is currently the lead-PI of Music Education, Professionalism, and Eco-Politics (EcoPolitics, 2021-2025).