The Social Organization of Post-Secondary Music Students' Work and Health: An Institutional Ethnography

Abstract

Post-secondary music students experience work-related health problems at high rates. These problems have persisted despite decades of research aiming to better understand music students' health and provide evidence-based interventions. Researchers have noted that students' institutional environment may significantly impact their health, and therefore systemic changes are needed to better facilitate health promotion. Implementing such changes will require better understanding the relationship between students' health and their environment. While some studies have documented certain aspects of post-secondary music education that may be harmful to students' health, more research is needed to understand how policies, discourses, and educational methods organize students' everyday work in ways that have health-related consequences.

This thesis addresses the challenges in improving music students' health by applying the theoretical framework of Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith (1926-2022), in two ways. First, it investigates the social organization of knowledge about music students' health, by critically analyzing the standard methods in health research commonly used to study this topic. Second, it presents findings from an institutional ethnography (IE) conducted to examine the social organization of students' work and health at a Canadian post-secondary music school. IE fieldwork began from the "standpoint" of students to understand their everyday activities and experiences. These experiences then formed the basis of further data collection on site, which included discussions with faculty and administrators, as well as observations and text collection. Data analysis explicated how students' activities were "hooked into" particular institutional processes in ways that significantly impacted their health.

For this thesis, Smith's framework and the data collected from IE fieldwork were used in three articles. Article 1 is a critical review of literature on post-secondary music students' health using Smith's approach to the "social organization of knowledge". Its analysis reveals how standard research practices organize knowledge in ways that can objectify music students and limit researchers' ability to understand and address students' health. It also establishes the overarching research problematic for the thesis: that music students' health problems occur in the context of their socially organized work activities, which are largely obscured in knowledge produced using standard health research frameworks and methodologies.

Article 2 expands upon this problematic through a more detailed examination of qualitative methodologies employed in three published studies on music students' health. It critically examines the methods used in each study and directly contrasts them with an IE approach by using similar data gathered during an IE study. Analysis demonstrates how IE research can elucidate aspects of music students' health that are not well explored and may be important for improving health outcomes.

Article 3 explores the institutional processes organizing the work and health-related experiences of first-year students at one post-secondary music school in Canada. Analysis reveals disjunctures between the expectations built into the music program (standardized performance assessments and teachers' expectations) and the actual abilities of first-year students. Students and teachers' work was organized locally by standard assessment methods and the discourse of "preparation". These processes were organized historically through the "conservatory model". Analysis also linked students' experiences to institutional priorities around declining program enrollment, which led some students to be admitted without meeting the official admission requirements.

Overall, this thesis provides insights into music students' everyday lives, beyond what is accounted for in more commonly used research methods. It argues that IE can be a useful method for exploring this problem further, and it provides a first set of findings that can benefit students at the institution studied, as well as institutions with similar organization.